<\/p>\n
While some level of frustration about 2025 remains, the Kansas City Royals are poised to secure back-to-back-to-back winning seasons immediately after tying the franchise record for most losses in a year. That comeback is impressive, especially considering how the Royals accomplished it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Yes, the Royals signed some free agents to do so, but they\u2019ve largely limited their spending and their long-term financial outlook is very good. Yes, they\u2019ve made some efficient trades, improving at the margins and making use of some team depth to attempt to shore up areas of weaknesses. And yes, they\u2019ve watched a couple young players blossom\u2013chief among them the wunderkind Bobby Witt Jr.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The Royals are still searching for a difference maker or two, though. Unfortunately, their payroll (which has increased by a respectable $14 million<\/a> per Cot\u2019s Baseball Contracts) is probably maxed out. And more unfortunately, it doesn\u2019t seem that the Royals are going to swing the big trade that they\u2019re looking for, at least per Ken Rosenthal<\/a>:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Kansas City Royals are increasingly unlikely to land either of the two hitters they pursued in trades: the St. Louis Cardinals\u2019 Brendan Donovan and Boston Red Sox\u2019s Jarren Duran.Barring further moves, the Royals expect to rely heavily on offseason acquisitions Isaac Collins and Lane Thomas in their outfield, as well as rookie Jac Caglianone and holdover Kyle Isbel.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n You can quibble on whether Donovan or Durran are worth the assets that would have taken to acquire them. But both are only 29, under control for multiple seasons, and would be huge improvements over what the Royals have right now. They would make the team better right now and in the future.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Even so, there were other deals that could have been out there that the Royals should have been able to work out. There has been just one problem: the Royals don\u2019t have a good enough farm system to leverage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The last time the Royals wanted to take the next step, they had that farm system. That was in 2012, after a frustrating season that ended in a 72-90 record. Nevertheless, the Royals moved aggressively to better the club, leveraging top prospects Wil Myers and Jake Odorizzi in a trade to acquire pitchers James Shields and Wade Davis. They improved by 14 games in 2013, narrowly missing the playoffs starting a three-year run as the best team in the American League.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This time around, they just don\u2019t have anybody who can anchor a trade. Since 2020, Royals first round draft picks have lost huge portions of their trade value (Asa Lacy, Frank Mozzicato, Gavin Cross, Blake Mitchell), haven\u2019t played an inning yet of pro ball (Sean Gamble, Josh Hammond), or made it to to the big leagues and have flopped hard (Jac Caglianone). Meanwhile, key high-upside draft picks in the second or third round have also lost significant value after their draft (Blake Wolters, Ben Kudrna, Hiro Wyatt).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Before anybody claims that I\u2019m being unfair here, I don\u2019t at all blame Gamble or Hammond\u2013a pair of high schoolers drafted seven months ago\u2013for anything. Caglianone, as we all know, could be a monster as soon as this season. And the Royals should receive plenty of credit for selecting Carter Jensen and Noah Cameron in the 2021 MLB draft and developing them into players who had excellent debut seasons this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Caveats and successes aside, the reason why the Royals couldn\u2019t make an impact trade this year is that they simply couldn\u2019t without trading established big league talent. If the Royals had a better farm system, I think we would have seen a big trade. They don\u2019t, and we didn\u2019t. Farm system rankings are somewhat overrated in and of themselves\u2014the point is to win MLB games, not win MiLB talent arguments\u2014but when push comes to shove, having talent to trade is how teams can take leaps forward.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.royalsreview.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While some level of frustration about 2025 remains, the Kansas City Royals are poised to secure back-to-back-to-back winning seasons immediately after tying the franchise record for most losses in a year. That comeback is impressive, especially considering how the Royals accomplished it. Yes, the Royals signed some free agents to do so, but they\u2019ve largely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2245314,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[340874],"class_list":["post-2245313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-royals-editorials-reactions"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Kansas-Citys-farm-system-keeps-biting-the-team-in-the.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2245313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2245313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2245313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2245315,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2245313\/revisions\/2245315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2245314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2245313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2245313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2245313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n