Kansas City Royals mostly stand pat at the trade deadline
The Kansas City Royals decided not to trade off a ton of their players, only making two trades prior to the deadline.
It wasn’t surprising when the Kansas City Royals decided to ship Trevor Rosenthal off elsewhere due to him being on a one-year contract and hitting free agency after this season.
That was the only major trade the Royals made prior to the deadline, as their other trade involved sending outfielder Brett Phillips to Tampa in exchange for Lucius Fox. Phillips wasn’t doing much in Kansas City, so the Royals trading him wasn’t disappointing by any means.
The Royals decided to hold onto stars Whit Merrifield and Jorge Soler as well as potential pitchers on the trade block in Danny Duffy, Greg Holland, Ian Kennedy, and even names like Scott Barlow and Josh Staumont.
Out of all of these names, Holland and Kennedy are the only ones hitting free agency after this season.
After the #Royals dealt Trevor Rosenthal, teams talking with them expected them to also move Ian Kennedy & Greg Holland.
— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) August 31, 2020
But Kennedy just strained a calf so that cooled his market.
And other clubs say KC has been adamant it won't move Holland unless they get a legit prospect.
By standing pat, Dayton Moore has faith in the Kansas City Royals this season.
Whether or not the team is able to realistically stay “in it” for the last month of the season remains to be seen, but Moore didn’t feel it was worth the risk to trade off some of the bigger names like Merrifield and Soler.
Holland has had a nice season and would have been someone it’d have made sense to trade, but as Jayson Stark noted in the tweet above, it sounds like the asking price was too high.
Kennedy has not had a good season, but even if he had been pitching well, he just landed on the injured list, so there went any chance of him getting traded. The Royals missed their chance when it came to trading Kennedy, as he was at his highest value this time last year, but the team decided to hold onto him. At least that contract is off the books in a few months.
This season is such a strange one that it’s hard to blame Dayton Moore for not going too crazy before the deadline. Trading Rosenthal was a no brainer and the Royals received a 24-year-old outfielder in return while also receiving a player to be named later as well. Not to mention they landed Fox from the Rays, who gives them a speedy shortstop for their rebuild.
The Royals might not have gotten a huge haul in this year’s deadline, but that’s okay. They made a few moves and got a few prospects who can hopefully help them out in the coming years.