Royals must consider one drastic decision before entertaining trade deadline sale

The sky is falling in Kansas City right now as the Royals continue to plummet in the standings. At 3-11 in their last 14 games, they now hold the fourth worst record in baseball and sit 10 games below .500 with the end of May just around the corner. Now 4.5 games back of an AL Wild Card spot and 8.5 games back of top spot in the AL Central, fears of the season getting away from the Royals are entirely valid.

While some might be gearing up for a 2026 fire sale at the deadline, given a murky a American League postseason picture with a 24-25 record being good enough to hold a Wild Card spot, perhaps it's not time to throw the towel in on competing for a spot in October. That being said, standing pat with their current strategy likely won't solve anything and the one change fans are clamoring for is a change in clubhouse leadership with Matt Quatraro on the hot seat.

Despite missing the postseason last year, Quatraro has brought the Royals to heights many managers haven't been able to do in the franchise's history with back-to-back winning seasons. However, past results don't have bearing on the Royals' 2026 season and so far they've been underwhelming across the board.

Their lineup is filled with underperformers and only holds a below-average 93 wRC+ as a unit. Their bullpen sits in the bottom 10 in baseball in ERA and bottom five in WHIP. And their once prized rotation is now a middling-entity with just the 15th best 4.15 combined ERA.

Better play on the field theoretically comes down to the players taking the field everyday, but when it's a widespread show of underwhelming form like it is in Kansas City at the moment, the common denominator has to be the one in charge of it all.

Matt Quatraro's questionable decision-making is doing Royals no favors

Quatraro coming under fire isn't something exclusive to this recent run of poor form. It's seemed as though he's been on the hot seat since his arrival. And looking at this season in particular, his decision-making has come into question more intensely than ever.

His consistent desire to stick with the likes of Vinnie Pasquantino and Salvador Perez in the heart of the order despite the veteran duo looking lost at the plate with sub-70 wRC+ totals for nearly two months now hasn't done the lineup any favors. In fact, it's essentially divided it and killed any sort of momentum that Maikel Garcia and Bobby Witt Jr. create atop the order.

Then there's his consistency in not giving Jac Caglianone consistent run against left-handed starters, until the past two games. Now, his lefty splits historcially aren't great, but at the end of the day Caglianone is second to only Bobby Witt Jr. among Royals qualified hitters in OPS and wRC+ this season. It's not even about protecting his development at this point, if the Royals want to win, they should have their highest-performing bats in lineup on an everyday-basis.

On top of that, there's the traditional error that every manager makes of questionable bullpen decisions, but that's no excuse for Quatraro as his have been just as costly. Wednesday night's series finale against the Red Sox provided the perfect example of that. Rather than going to breakout lefty Daniel Lynch IV in the seventh inning with a 3-2 lead and left-handed leadoff man Jarren Duran coming to the plate, Quatraro turned to Steven Cruz and his 7.45 ERA. This of course lead to Duran hitting the go-ahead two-run homer which ended up being the difference.

Now many within the Royals sphere have cited the fact that Quatraro is guaranteed to be under contract until the end of the 2029 season as reason why the team would hesitant to move on from him year one of his extension.

However, after what they saw last season in a down year and the putrid form they're getting now, perhaps the benefit of the doubt is out the window and finances can no longer play a factor in a team that clearly has desires to replicate the magic the produced in 2024.

The Royals just got swept by a team who made dramatic coaching decisions, perhaps Kansas City should take a page out of Boston's book and have the same uncomfortable conversation with Quatraro that the Red Sox had with now former manager Alex Cora - a World Series winning manager at that.

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