Kansas City Royals: More than one way to build a bullpen

The future stars in the Kansas City Royals minor leagues signal a bright future for this pitching staff. But we should still keep them on a realistic timetable.

We do have help on the way, at least when it comes to pitching. The Fab Five draft class of 2018 is quickly becoming the Super 6. It is reasonable to expect at least 2 of those to become major league starting pitchers, at some point. It is probably even reasonable to expect a couple more of them to become good bullpen arms. It is not reasonable, however, to expect that next year.

So, let’s talk about next year for just a moment. If we had signaled this season that we were content to stockpile future talent to be ready to rule the world in 2021 or 2022 I think I would feel differently about all of this. But, we didn’t.

We did the opposite. We wanted players that were ready to play right now in any prospective Whit trade. I am still not sure what we want for Ian Kennedy, but it was not prospects, apparently. If we are not stockpiling prospective talent for 2021 and beyond then we need to make some moves now.

Enough with the 100+ loss seasons. Enough with paying Ian Kennedy a bunch of money to close out utterly meaningless 9th innings. Enough with watching September games with nothing on the line except Whit going for another Hits title. Enough.