The Kansas City Royals came out of the All-Star break at 38-59, tied with the Los Angeles Angels for the worst record in baseball.
This was supposed to be a team fighting for the AL Central after FanGraphs gave them the second-best preseason odds to win the division.
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Instead, they sit fifth, 13 games back, with almost nothing left to play for in the standings.
The front office has resisted the idea of a sell-off so far, but the case for one keeps getting stronger as Aug. 3 approaches.
The Season Is Already Over
The playoff math has stopped being a debate.
Kansas City is 13 games out in the Central and 10 back of the final wild card spot, and FanGraphs puts their playoff odds at 0.2 percent.
The injuries have removed any hope of a miracle run, with Cole Ragans done for the year after UCL surgery, Kris Bubic still sidelined by elbow and shoulder trouble, and closer Carlos Estevez not expected back until August at the earliest after straining his rotator cuff.
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A team this banged up is not climbing over ten teams in eleven weeks, so the only real question left is what the front office does with the roster it has.
Michael Wacha is the obvious name to move.
The 35-year-old made the All-Star team with a 3.77 ERA and an AL-best 119 1/3 innings, and his contract runs one more guaranteed year at $14 million with a club option for 2028, which is exactly what contenders want in a deadline starter.
Ken Rosenthal reported the Royals will listen on both Wacha and Seth Lugo but only for massive offers, a stance that suggests they still see themselves as something other than sellers, and that approach feels backwards for a last-place team.
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Lugo has slipped to a 4.56 ERA at age 36 after a rough stretch that followed his early hot start, and Wacha is not going to be more valuable at 36 than he is today, so holding both pitchers past the deadline means watching real returns slip away for nothing.
Pending free agent Matt Strahm should be dealt too, even while he sits on the injured list, if a contender will pay something for the lottery ticket.
The Farm System Needs the Help
Bleacher Report ranked the Royals farm system 25th in baseball even after the draft, and that is a problem for a team built around Bobby Witt Jr. in his prime.
Jac Caglianone and Carter Jensen have shown this summer that the young core is real, but there is not nearly enough talent coming up behind them, and injuries like the Ragans surgery only make that thinner.
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Trading Wacha, Lugo, and Strahm would restock the pipeline without touching a single piece of that core, and it would give the next contending Royals team the depth this one never had when everything started breaking down.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source sports.yahoo.com ’
