The KC Royals have an interesting trade history with Seattle

The KC Royals dealt away a no-hit hurler for a utility player in 1978.

On June 1, 1978, Kansas City and the Mariners made their first player-for-player deal when Seattle swapped outfielder Steve Braun to the Royals for pitcher Jim Colborn, who’d tossed the third no-hitter in club history just a year before

Colborn, who came to Kansas City with Darrell Porter in a 1976 offseason deal with Milwaukee that sent Jamie Quirk, Jim Wohlford and Bob McClure to the Brewers, went 3-10 the rest of the way with the Mariners in 1978. He was released the following spring, ending his 10-year major league career.

Braun spent the first six years of his career with the Minnesota Twins, posting a solid .284/.376/.384 slash line with 35 home runs and more walks than strikeouts. After the trade to the Royals, he spent the rest of 1978 and all of ’79 with them, and started 1980 with Kansas City before being released. He finished his KC career with a .246 average and four home runs, filling in mostly as a pinch hitter and outfielder, and occasionally at third base.

After finishing 1980 with the Blue Jays, Braun signed with St. Louis and in five seasons there, mostly as a utility player and pinch hitter, posted a .258 average. He got an at-bat against the Royals in Game 7 of the 1985 World Series, flying out to center field against Bret Saberhagen with the Cards already down 11-0 in the seventh inning.

Seattle traded a little-known lefty pitching star-to-be to the KC Royals.

In October 1981, Kansas City shipped infielder Manny Castillo to Seattle for a player to be named later. Castillo had 10 at-bats with the Royals late in 1980, then hit .335 with 91 RBIs in 1981 at Triple-A Omaha. After the trade, he hit .257 in extensive action with the Mariners in 1982, but when his average slipped to .207 in ’83, he was released. He spent 1984 in Toronto’s minor league system and was out of baseball after that season.

Then, during 1982 spring training, the Mariners sent little-known lefthander Bud Black to the Royals to complete the Castillo trade. Black had two appearances with Seattle in 1981, just his third year of professional baseball after the M’s picked him in the 17th round of the 1979 amateur draft out of San Diego State University.

Black became a mainstay of the KC pitching staff and posted a 17-win season in 1984 to help the club win the American League West for the first time since 1980. Before being traded to Cleveland for Pat Tabler in June 1988, Black helped the Royals to the 1985 World Series title and posted 56 wins, 10 saves and a 3.73 ERA in nearly 1,000 innings with the club.

Now the manager of the Colorado Rockies, Black gave up Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson’s 500th home run.

A 1986 trade with Seattle netted the KC Royals a slugging future All-Star.

The biggest deal so far between the Royals and Mariners came in December 1986 when Kansas City made a big swing for a big swinger. The Royals shipped pitchers Scott Bankhead (who had gone 8-9 with a 4.61 ERA as a rookie in 1986) and Steve Shields (three appearances and 8.2 innings in ’86), and outfielder Mike Kingery (.258 in 62 games as a rookie in ’86) to Seattle for pitcher Rick Luecken, who spent time in Omaha before making his KC debut in June 1989 and was traded with Charlie Leibrandt to Atlanta for Gerald Perry and Jim Lemasters after the season.

But the big prize for the Royals in the 1986 trade was outfielder Danny Tartabull, who hit .270 with 25 home runs as a rookie in that ’86 season. For the next five seasons, Tartabull was among the top slugging right fielders in baseball with a .290 average, 124 home runs and 425 RBIs. He was a 1991 AL All-Star.

Tartabull left as a free agent following the ’91 season and signed with the Yankees. But in his five Kansas City seasons, he left his mark among the best hitters in Royals history in several categories—per Baseball Reference, his KC career .894 OPS and .518 SLG both rank first, his .376 OBP is third best and his .290 average is tied for ninth best. He’s the best player the team has ever acquired from the Mariners.

Bankhead lasted five seasons in Seattle, logging a 33-31 record and 4.15 ERA for the M’s. His best season came in 1992 pitching out of Cincinnati’s bullpen to the tune of a 10-4 record and 2.93 ERA.

Kingery spent parts of three seasons with the Mariners and hit .255. He bounced between the majors and minors over the next three seasons with San Francisco and Oakland before returning to the Royals and spending 1995 in Omaha. A .349 average in 1996 with the Rockies highlighted Kingery’s career, but he was out of baseball after one more season in Colorado and his final season with the Pirates.

Kansas City and Seattle don’t have an extensive trade history, but they’ve made some interesting deals.