Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the MLB. Throughout the year, we ask questions of the most plugged-in Kansas City Royals fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.
Earlier this week, we asked which kinds of players the Royals should target during the upcoming trade deadline.
Poll results
Well, I’ll say this about the poll results. Only 1% of Royals fans were willing to wait/pessimistic enough to believe that the Royals should try to target players who may not be ready to contribute until the 2030s. And, honestly, I think they’re correct in that. This is still a team that not only has Bobby Witt Jr. and Maikel Garcia but also Carter Jensen and Jac Caglianone, who seem to have started coming into their own in the month of June after each slumped a bit through May.
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That said, they were pretty evenly split on whether the Royals could compete next year or might need to wait until 2028/2029 when the top prospects in the low minors should be really establishing themselves as the new core of the team. 2027 got 25% of the vote, while 2028-2029 got 29%. That, of course, means the plurality voted that the Royals should just target the best talent available, regardless of when that talent might be able to contribute.
Given that we accept that the answer doesn’t include guys who would try to seriously contribute to the 2026 roster, I think we can accept that this represents a block of people who don’t know whether the team can compete next year, but think they should be able to compete sometime within the next three. If that’s the understanding, then yeah, it makes sense to not lock out any options in those three years by refusing someone who is ultra-talented but only in AA because it doesn’t fit the window, or vice versa with a guy knocking on the door of the big leagues now.
Of course, as guys continue to get hurt, there are a lot of questions about who the Royals might even be able to trade. Let’s all cross our fingers that people can get healthy in time to bring us back some fun prospects to dream about in August and September.
These survey results are sponsored by FanDuel.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source sports.yahoo.com ’
