KC Royals Trades: 3 mistakes the club must not make

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Other than Monday's promotion of speedy outfielder Dairon Blanco to the majors, there's little left to trigger positive discussion about the last-place KC Royals who, after Monday's 4-3 extra-innings loss to Cincinnati, are 30 games below .500.

After all, talk of postseason play, if any could have been taken seriously, ended almost as soon as the season began. Chatting about who'll represent the Royals in the All-Star Game is pointless—whether fans choose him to start or he's selected as a reserve, Salvador Perez will be the only Royal on the club. While July's amateur draft offers something to chew fat about, many fans pay it no mind. And it's too early to talk about 2024.

But there is the Aug. 1 trade deadline to spur some interest in a KC team headed straight for a 100-plus loss season. The Royals are going to sell, perhaps in a big way, with Aroldis Chapman at the top of a list of possible trade chips that could include Scott Barlow, Taylor Clarke, Matt Duffy, Amir Garrett, Brad Keller, and perhaps even MJ Melendez.

Whoever they deal, though, general manager J. J. Picollo must avoid making three trade market mistakes. What are they?

The KC Royals shouldn't make trades just for the sake of fan interest

Diving into headline-making but ultimately meaningless deals is a temptation teams like the Royals sometimes find hard to resist. Trapped in hopeless seasons, such clubs seek trades to pique dwindling fan interest only to consummate deals that make no long-term sense.

Giving into the lure of selling a few more tickets is a mistake Picollo can't make. His club is already saddled with players whose claims to roster spots make little sense; adding more will only hurt the franchise. It's better to make no deals than poor, ill-conceived ones.

Moving on to mistake No. 2 to avoid...

The KC Royals must not trade away catcher and team captain Salvador Perez

The "trade Salvy" chatter is out there and easy to find. Just keystroke Perez's name into any search engine and the wait for stories and speculation about Kansas City moving him won't last long.

Some Perez-related Internet talk and writing is well-intentioned, designed to outline big deals the Royals might make to shake up and improve an organization mired in trouble. Much, however, is clickbait and nothing more.

What matters, of course, is what the Royals want to do and with whom they want to do it. The club probably doesn't want to trade Perez.

But should they trade him? The argument is certainly makeable: more baseball is behind than in front of him, time to net a decent return for him may soon be gone, and dealing him could save the Royals all or part of the $62 million-plus left on his contract when the season began.

But Perez remains the face of the franchise and favorite of its fans and shows no significant signs of slowing down anytime soon—his 14 homers and 37 RBIs lead the club, he's hitting .275, and he catches far more often than not. And as its strongest veteran presence and leader, he's invaluable to a club teeming with young, inexperienced players fighting to find their way.

Two things could make all the Perez trade talk moot: his 10-and-5 rights and the club responding to the chatter with an emphatic and unequivocal public denial.

As a player boasting 10 years of major league service time and playing the last five seasons only for his present team, Perez can nix any deal involving him. And he just might consent to a trade. Few players want to stay with a team trying to move them to another club, and only a contender will pursue him, meaning he could taste the postseason again, an opportunity he may never again get in Kansas City.

And what of the club? Perhaps it's already issued its denial: Picollo, certainly an authoritative source on the subject, recently told Kansas City Star Royals beat writer Jaylon Thompson "We don't have any intention of trading Salvy, and it's not something we are looking to do."

And the third mistake KC must avoid?

The KC Royals shouldn't be too reluctant to trade pitcher Brady Singer

First-round draft picks typically aren't mentioned in trade talk before their last season of team control nears. But that may not be the case with Kansas City starter Brady Singer.

Singer is becoming an enigma, a pitcher who dominates one game and gets battered the next. His dumbfounding pattern of inconsistency is preventing him from achieving the elite status the Royals foresaw when they picked him with the 18th overall selection of the 2018 draft.

He's 4-5 with an unsightly 6.58 ERA after Baltimore drilled him for four runs in 4.1 innings Saturday, just six days after his 5.2 scoreless innings propelled the Royals to a 2-0 victory over Colorado, the fourth time he's held an opponent to a run or less while pitching at least five innings. But the fourth-year major leaguer has also surrendered five or more runs six times.

Many blame Singer's sparing use of his changeup for his off-again, on-again struggles. His obvious reluctance to regularly use the pitch, despite the success he began to find with it last season when he went 10-5, reduces his pitch "arsenal" to a sinker and slider and spells trouble if one or the other doesn't work on a given night.

Avoiding the changeup is a choice Singer seems to make too often and one the Royals can't like. The club is the employer, Singer the employee. If the Royals can't convince him that throwing the changeup more often is best, they should find another club for Singer.

And even if the changeup, or lack thereof, isn't the problem, he hasn't, at 23-25 since his 2020 big league debut, proven himself untradeable.

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