Until they pull off an acquisition of a difference-maker in the outfield, the Kansas City Royals will constantly be scrutinized for not having landed one yet.
Kansas City had the least productive outfield in baseball this season, and on Wednesday, it watched as trade deadline acquisition Mike Yastrzemski signed with the Atlanta Braves. General manager J.J. Picollo has been working the phones all winter, but thus far, no impactful free agency signings nor trades have crossed the transactions ledger.
Because the Royals have a limited budget and may not even be able to afford someone like Harrison Bader (whose eyes had to light up when they saw the reported two years, $23 million Yastrzemski got), they may just have to get a bit more creative than their rivals when it comes to making deals.
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Royals float three-team trade possibility
As the winter meetings concluded in Orlando on Wednesday, Picollo floated an interesting possibility about the sort of trade the Royals might make. Maybe, Picollo said, there could be a three-team deal to facilitate getting the Royals the impact outfielder they crave.
“It may not be one team involved,” Picollo said, per Anne Rogers of MLB.com. “It may be multiple teams involved. It’s hard enough to think for yourself, let alone other teams and how they value players. You’re not just going to get one team to see equal value, you’re trying to get three teams to agree on equal value. And that can be challenging. But there are some good ideas. There are some things worth pursuing and continuing discussions on.”
It cannot be overemphasized that all of this is hypothetical, but here is an example of how a third team could be necessary to facilitate the kind of trade the Royals are trying to pull off.
Kansas City has frequently been linked to Boston Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran. But the Red Sox seemingly want either an impact bat (which Kansas City doesn’t have to trade) or a high-end starting pitcher (Cole Ragans is too high a price for the Royals to pay).
Instead, perhaps the Royals could ship prospects to a rebuilding team with starting pitchers to move (say, the Miami Marlins), who could then send a starting pitcher (say, Edward Cabrera) to Boston. Then, although there would surely be other pieces exchanged amongst the three, Duran could go to Kansas City.
All we really learned from Picollo is that everything is still on the table, but a trade like this might well wind up the most effective route to landing an All-Star caliber outfielder the Royals can afford.
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