It’s never too early to start thinking about how the Kansas City Royals can finally fix their broken outfield in the offseason.
Kansas City wasn’t able to find an impact bat with years of control at the trade deadline last week, which is understandable. They did well for themselves to acquire right-handed hitter Randal Grichuk and left-handed hitter Mike Yastrzemski to provide some base-level veteran competency.
Even assuming injured rookie Jac Caglianone becomes a star, though, the Royals will need another outfielder with long-term control and standout potential. Where might they be able to find it?
Caleb Moody of FanSided doesn’t think the Royals should have to look too far to find that impactful outfielder — because they just faced him in their most recent series.
On Thursday, Moody implored the Royals to go after Jarren Duran of the Boston Red Sox, who hit a three-run home run in his first at-bat of the series and made an impact on the stat sheet in all three games, two of which were Boston wins.
“The Royals will always have limited financial means compared to many mid-to-large market teams. That makes Duran, with an $8 million club option for 2026 and then two additional years of arbitration after that, an affordable option for Picollo to utilize some of the prospect assets he has at his disposal to acquire an All-Star caliber name to address his team’s biggest weakness,” wrote Moody.
“The fit seems to make itself at this point. And after seeing firsthand the damage Duran can do when things are clicking for him, he would be the perfect fit to occupy an everyday role in the Royals outfield.”
Duran has an OPS over 1.000 since the start of July, coming off an All-Star campaign in 2024. And the Red Sox, who just extended rookie Roman Anthony for eight years, $130 million, have three extremely talented outfielders under contract longer than they have Duran.
With that said, the Red Sox showed at the deadline that they aren’t willing to just give Duran away. They seem to be most interested in pursuing starting pitchers with multiple years of control, and the Royals don’t have any obvious fits there (you’d have to assume Cole Ragans is off the table).
The logic behind acquiring Duran makes sense, but it remains to be seen if the Royals have the chips to make it happen.
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