KC Royals: Worst Scenario for 2017 Season is to be Average
The KC Royals are going to be a tough team to predict in 2017. They look much different from the group that won the World Series two seasons ago, but have added some power. The absolute worst scenario for them is to barely be contenders in 2017.
A lot of expectations were high for the 2016 Kansas City Royals, and why wouldn’t they have been? The Royals were coming off two straight World Series appearances and won the whole thing in 2015.
That’s why when the injuries started to pile up and the team won a whopping seven games in the month of July, it was considered to be a bust of a season. Even worse was that the Royals weren’t bad enough at the trade deadline to offer up some players for prospects.
A large part of why Dayton Moore probably opted to keep the band together through the end of 2016 was because he knew 2017 was the last shot this team had to win a World Series with this current core group of guys.
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The 2017 season won’t be like that. There is no way that Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar, Eric Hosmer, and Mike Moustakas will all be back in a Royals uniform for 2018 and beyond. Hell, it’s unlikely that any of those guys are back in Kansas City past this season.
That is why if the Royals are just average at the trade deadline, it’d be the absolute worst thing for this franchise.
Now I’m not saying I enjoy watching my team lose, but for the sake of what’s at stake, it’d be better than simply just being average. If the KC Royals are tanking at the trade deadline, they’ll be seeking offers for the guys I listed above and likely others too like Kelvin Herrera, Ian Kennedy, and Jason Vargas.
That’s a whole lot of good talent that could be shipped off to other teams and we’ve seen just how much teams are willing to give up for a guy that could help their team get to the World Series. Just imagine how stacked the Royals farm system would be if they traded all of the aforementioned players.
Holy smokes, the farm system would be replenished! The Royals would surely have one of the best minor league systems in all of baseball again after trading a lot of their prime young talent off for the likes of Johnny Cueto and Ben Zobrist in 2015.
Simply put – Yes, I want the Kansas City Royals to contend in 2017. I want them to win the American League Central and make it back to the World Series again for the third time in four years. This article isn’t me saying the Royals should tank.
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My point is that if the Royals aren’t going to contend for a postseason berth in 2017, then hopefully they’re bad enough where they can start selling guys off. I know it’d be tough to part ways with Hosmer, Moose, Cain, and the others, but Major League Baseball is a business and the Royals could get bank in return for said players.
Just being average at the deadline would probably lead to the team thinking they could make a late season run and keeping everyone in tact. That’d be disappointing if they then missed out on the playoffs and didn’t get any type of talent from other teams.