As we are all aware of by now, the Kansas City Royals traded Kelvin Herrera to the Washington Nationals. But what should we make of the return the Royals received?
Without getting too sentimental, the Kansas City Royals traded one of the few players that fit the mold of “Forever Royal”. Unfortunately, due to the rebuild, the Royals are currently in, anyone who has a high amount of value or one-year left on their contract is on the trading block.
We all knew Kelvin Herrera was going to be traded. It’s just a matter of what type of return the Royals would get in return.
So what kind of return did the Royals get? Did this help accelerate the rebuild? At first, it didn’t look like it but maybe we are seeing a repeat of the past.
The Royals got three players in return for Herrera. They got Kelvin Gutierrez, Blake Perkins, and
Yohanse Morel. For obvious reasons, we didn’t know anything about these prospects and had to wait until more information came out.
At first, it wasn’t all a lot of great information. The way many talking-heads reported on the trade, they made it sound like the Royals came in well below expectations.
Which for obvious reason brought a lot of negative vibes about the trades. However, after the dust settled and people started digging deeper into the trade is when the positives started coming out.
So the question comes up again. Did the Royals get a good return for trading arguably the best trading chip in baseball this year?
In short. Maybe? And that is 100% acceptable. As of right now, the idea that they have two players who are above-average defensively, someone they can work on offensively and is known to be a very strong athlete, should bring a lot of optimism.
The main thing that fans need to understand is that the market for rent-a-players in 2018 is completely different than it was in 2016. When the Yankees traded Aroldis Chapman in 2016, they got the 17th best prospect in baseball (Gleyber Torres) along with three other prospects. But the market is different now. What the Royals got, it looks pretty decent for the era of baseball we are now in.