Ambitious Royals offseason dreams more necessary after latest moves around league

After they started to check things off their offseason to-do list after a quiet Winter Meetings, the Kansas City Royals have seemed to turn their efforts to some more universally ambitious moves.

It started on Friday, having gone out and addressed their need for a back-end left-handed reliever by trading for one of the better ones in baseball in Matt Strahm.

And then over the weekend, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported that the Royals would still like to "acquire one more hitter, ideally the Red Sox’s Jarren Duran or St. Louis Cardinals’ Brendan Donovan".

Then on Monday, the rest of league may've started to shift the narrative from the Royals having ambitious visions to the Royals needing to materialize on those ambitious goals to fill the rest of their needs. This is because two potential Royals outfield targets came off the board after the A's traded for Jeff McNeil and the Mariners signed Rob Refsnyder.

Two notable offseason moves around the league could make Royals dreams that much more necessary to achieve

Given the signing of veteran free agent Lane Thomas and the acquisition of Isaac Collins from the Brewers, the Royals need to dream big was a lot more reasonable having taken care of some of the more middle-of-the-road type moves.

However, having that safety net of good but not great fits in names like McNeil and Refsnyder was certainly a reassuring thought in case their pursuit of Duran or Donovan didn't work out in their favor.

McNeil has his flaws, as he's not the type of player that he was back in 2022 when he was winning batting titles in 2022.

However, if you look past his steeper eight-figure salary, his .243/.335/.411 slash line with a 111 wRC+ as well as his ability to cover both of the biggest positional holes in the lineup, second base and the outfield.

Then there's Refsnyder, who before signing Thomas, was one of the better right-handed platoon options the Royals could use in either left field or in right field with Jac Caglianone. Still, even after Thomas now being in the fold, having a lefty-masher like Refsnyder would not have been the worst option in the world to deepen this outfield.

In 209 plate appearances as a platoon bat for the Red Sox in 2025, the 34-year-old Refsnyder slashed .269/.354/.484 with nine homers, 30 RBI and a 128 wRC+.

Again, the Royals can and should aim bigger than names like McNeil and Refsnyder. However, their ambitious efforts to pursue coveted names like Duran and Donovan comes at a hefty price and has now only been made more necessary to pay as the consolation pool dwindles.