KC Royals: Examining Kansas City’s 3 worst trades ever

Few things in baseball evoke as much thought, scrutiny, discussion, argument, and visceral reaction than trades. As deals the KC Royals have made demonstrate, some trades are good, some bad, and some turn out to have no real impact. No one knows immediately how a trade will turn out: healthy players may suffer injuries, hot players may slump, others may simply fail after being traded and trade “throw-ins” may suddenly catch fire and become stars.

The Kansas City Royals have completed hundreds of trades since acquiring Buck Martinez, Mickey Sinnerud and Tommy Smith from Houston in exchange for John Jones 1968. (KC acquired four players before that trade, including former Kansas City Athletics pitchers Orlando Peña and Dave Wickersham; because those deals were purchases involving no other players, the Martinez deal was the Royals’ first true player trade).

Martinez became a solid catcher, making the deal good for the Royals. Other trades have been better, others worse. Here, in reverse order, are three trades worthy of the label “worst trades in Royals’ history” and another worthy of honorable (or dishonorable) mention.

The Royals made a major trade blunder during the 2017 season

Royals general manager Dayton Moore faced the classic “buyers or sellers” dilemma as the 2017 July trade deadline approached: trade soon-to-be free agents Eric Hosmer, Lorenzo Cain, Mike Moustakas and Alcides Escobar for prospects to begin a Royals rebuild or, with the club still eyeing a playoff berth, trade for stretch run help?

Moore chose to make one last run with his stars. Needing pitching but having to give up pitching to get it, Moore sent lefties Matt Strahm and Travis Wood and and minor league infield prospect Esteury Ruiz to San Diego for veteran pitchers Brandon Maurer, Trevor Cahill and Ryan Buchter. Immediate help was the goal; a failed trade became the reality.

Although Buchter appeared in 29 games for KC and went 1-0 with a 2.67 ERA, Cahill and Maurer flopped. Cahill walked 21 batters and gave up 21 runs in 23 innings (8.22 ERA and 8.22 RA9), struck out six fewer batters than he walked, and had a 10.24 FIP.  Maurer surrendered 18 earned runs in 20 innings  (8.10 ERA) and posted a -5 WAR.

The trade was a mixed bag for the Padres: Strahm, high on the Royals’ list after pitching 21 innings for them in 2016 with a 1.23 ERA but injured when the trade was made, returned in 2018 and has pitched in almost 100 games for the Padres. Wood went 3-4 for the Padres, but tore an ACL in 2018 spring training and has been out of baseball since. At 21, Ruiz has a bit of pop, can drive in some runs, and steals a lot of bases, but has yet to play above High A.

For the Royals, though, this was a miserable trade. Two things distinguish it from other poor KC deals: the Royals should have known the Maurer component was destined to fail and, when it did, their continued reliance on Maurer in 2017 and 2018 defied logic. Despite his 20 saves, Maurer was a struggling reliever with the 2017 Padres: he was 1-4 with a 5.72 ERA and a negative WAR. He was even worse in Kansas City; his 8.10 ERA in relief and -5 WAR were catastrophic. He brought no value to the franchise.

Unfortunately, Maurer’s woes continued in 2018, when his performance required a brief demotion to the minors. In 37 games for the big club, Maurer went 0-4 with a horrendous 7.76 ERA; he gave up 27 earned runs in 31.1 innings and posted an alarming 8.33 RA9. Despite Maurer’s glaring ineffectiveness, manager Ned Yost repeatedly thrust him into game situations that demanded someone better. Not surprisingly, Maurer (and Yost) drew the fans’ ire and disenchantment; seldom had they seen such misplaced reliance on a Royals reliever.

The “Maurer-Strahm” trade wasn’t the worst in Royals history, but it warrants honorable mention here because it was ill-advised, predictably bad for the franchise, and triggered atypical degrees of fan frustration, anger and angst — especially when Yost stuck inexplicably with Maurer.

A 1995 trade repeated and aggravated a mistake the Royals made years before. It ranks as the club’s third-worst trade.

The sun shone a bit brighter than usual for baseball fans on April 2, 1995, the day the strike that washed away the last two months of the 1994 season and the World Series came to an end. But dark clouds returned to Kansas City just four days later when the Royals defied history and traded away David Cone for the second time.

Although Cone wasn’t yet a star when the Royals sacrificed him to get Hearn in early 1987 (Cone I) and spent his first Shea Stadium season in relative obscurity, he went 79-45  the following five seasons, winning 20 games once, 14 games three times, and 17 in a 1992 campaign split between the Mets and Toronto. He became an All-Star and one of the game’s brightest stars. That the Royals erred seriously when they traded Cone for Hearn is beyond dispute.

The Royals delighted their fans when, needing pitching help after going 72-90 in 1992, they brought free agent Cone back to Kansas City. Despite an 11-14 record his first season back, he lived up to expectations in the strike-shortened 1994 season, going 16-5 with a 2.94 ERA and winning his only Cy Young Award. There was every reason to believe Cone’s winning ways would continue.

But Cone’s Kansas City years were again numbered: just four days after the ’94-’95 strike ended, and less than three weeks before the ’95 season started, Kansas City startled the baseball world by trading Cone to Toronto, the team he had left to rejoin the Royals. Not surprisingly, success followed him to Canada before the Jays dealt him to the Yankees and Cone began his famous Bronx tenure that included a 20-win season and perfect game.

The difference between Cone’s six-year record of 84-51 following Cone I, his 27 wins in his two years back in Kansas City, and his eight-year record of 83-56 after Cone II, suggests the Royals traded almost as good a Cone in 1995 as they originally traded in 1987. So why did they trade him again?

Times had changed. The strike soured fans; the game’s future popularity was in doubt. Teams worried about the high salaries players of Cone’s stature commanded. And it was obvious the Royals were in the early stages of decline.

It was against this backdrop that the Royals traded Cone again. Although he might not have won as many games with the Royals as he did without them, he would have won a lot, and the Royals would have been better with him. That financial concerns motivated the second trading of Cone is a safe assumption and it reflected the Royals’ developing conservative approach to expensive players.

And what of Chris Stynes, Kansas City’s main target in the trade? He spent most of his two seasons in the organization at Omaha and played only 58 games in KC. The other two players the Royals received for Cone, pitcher Dave Sinnes and utility man Tony Medrano, never made it to the majors.

Cone II was, like Cone I, a bad trade. The Royals failed to learn from their first mistake, traded away a fan favorite dominant pitcher with overwhelming talent and received virtually nothing in return.

Fool me once…

Only four Royals players have reached the Hall of Fame. They traded a young, budding star and future Hall of Famer in 2004 in a deal still questioned today.

The Royals lost one thing they’ve always craved, and another they like when they can find it, when they traded young phenom Carlos Beltrán in 2004–gone with Beltrán were his speed and power.

Beltrán was just 24, but a veteran of five full productive big league seasons when the Royals shipped him to Houston as their contribution to a three-way deal with the Astros and Oakland that saw Houston send Octavio Dotel to the A’s, who sent Mark Teahen and Mike Wood to Kansas City while Houston sent John Buck and cash to the Royals. Beltrán was the key man and biggest piece in the deal and the only player involved who went on to stardom.

Wood went 11-19 in three KC seasons; claimed off waivers by Texas in late 2006, he never pitched in the majors again. Buck and Teahen, however, became important short-term assets for the Royals, Teahen at third base and in the outfield and Buck at catcher. Teahen made his debut as a KC regular in 2005, batting .270 and averaging over 12 home runs and 73 RBI’s in four seasons. He declined sharply after the Royals traded him to the White Sox (and obtained Chris Getz) after the 2009 season and played only three more years in the majors.

Before giving way to Miguel Olivo in 2009, Buck was the regular KC backstop and averaged over 11 home runs and 43 RBIs in his six Kansas City seasons. He averaged almost 16 homers and over 56 RBI’s in four seasons after leaving via free agency after the 2009 season, but then declined and was out of the big leagues for good after a poor 2014 season.

In the five seasons they played together in Kansas City, Teahen and Buck combined to hit 117 homers and drive in 522 runs; during the same span, Beltrán belted 127 homers, drove in 466 runs (averages of over 25 and 93) and hit .281. He was an All-Star each season and won three Gold Gloves and two Silver Sluggers. Beltrán, a superb base stealer with the Royals, averaged almost 20 steals a season during the period while Buck and Teahen were never threats to steal.

And while Buck and Teahen were both gone from the majors within a few years after coming to Kansas City, Beltrán remained productive and didn’t retire until he returned to the Astros and won a World Series in 2017. He finished with solid Hall of Fame numbers: 435 home runs, 1,587 RBIs, 312 steals, a .279 average, and a career .279/.350/.486 slash. He made the All-Star team nine times.

The Royals lost Beltrán’s outstanding and consistent production for 14 seasons. Although they truly contended in only three of those seasons–2013, 2014 and 2015–the Royals would have been better with him than without him. In the end, it was the Royals’ conservative approach to high salaries that doomed Beltrán in Kansas City, and reflected their inability to retain key potential free agents.

And who knows if Beltrán, considered a hot managerial prospect and a front-runner for the Mets’ managerial opening, might now be a candidate to replace Ned Yost if the Kansas City Royals hadn’t traded him so long ago?