Royals' pitching conundrum is a blessing and a curse after latest offseason wrinkle

Now that the Royals have brought in a couple of outfielders, their once duo of most pressing needs has narrowed to just one; they must find a way to narrow their starting pitching surplus.

There's no shortage of suitors for Kansas City's starters, but the conundrum they face is finding the right return for the valuable surplus they have at their disposal.

And a new offseason wrinkle has possibly made things that much more complex for J.J. Picollo and Co., not just for KC's pitching situation, but for structuring their entire organization in general. According to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic the value of prospects (or lack there of) has thrown quite the loop in the trade market.

"One executive put it, 'no team wants prospects. If you’re willing to take prospects, you’ll get more on the dollar than you will for major-league players'," Rosenthal wrote.

Now, for the Royals this can certainly be seen as music to their ears in some ways, but in others this situation seems more of a curse than it is a blessing.

Tanking prospect value across MLB both a blessing and curse for Royals

To start, apart from the Cardinals beong an exception to the rule (which is a whole other can of worms for the Royals and their pursuit of Brendan Donovan), the Kansas City Royals are in a good place to receive major league value from a trade partner for their major league starting surplus, which seems to be what they desire.

What also can be seen a blessing to this new trade market development is that, the Royals are in a situation where their farm system is fairly shallow at the moment anyways, or at least has two many question marks for prospective trade suitors to feel full comfortable about.

So, if the trade market is filled with teams that would rather have major league help than prospects, then advantage Royals.

However, sunny skies only last so long before the clouds start to roll in and put a damper on things. And this situation is no different.

As mentioned already, the Royals' farm system is in a confusingly shallow spot right now. They have two promising Top 100 names, according to MLB Pipeline, atop their system in Carter Jensen (No. 39) and Blake Mitchell (No. 62), however Jensen will graduate soon enough leaving Mitchell as the top-caliber name across the industry.

After that, the majority of their remaining Top 10 is filled with teenaged talent with limited pro-experience, like Yandel Ricardo, David Shields and Kendry Chourio, or none at all, like their pair of 2025 first-rounders, Sean Gamble and Josh Hammond.

This means the Royals could stand to gain from being a team willing to take on prospects beacuse it would certainly help boost their ailing system. The one issue is, should they surrender one of their superfluous starting pitchers for a solely prospect return, rather than a piece that could immediately help their big league lineup, then it puts them no closer to fulfilling their contending ambitions.

Sure it could help the their long-term future, but if Kansas City is really committed to "not wasting the prime years of Witt and Garcia", as ESPN's Jeff Passan reported last week, then prospects aren't what they should be pursuing.

Obviously it seems as though the Royals will lean towards the latter here, however it's a shame the market wasn't in this place a few years ago when the Royals seemed at their lowest, because perhaps they'd have an even better outlook on their future with a stronger farm system.