Kansas City Royals are further away from contending than we thought
By John McCarty
The Kansas City Royals need to blow up the roster and reset their goals for competing, as it does not appear to be happening anytime soon.
If this shortened season should teach us anything, it’s simply how far away the Kansas City Royals are from truly competing. While three of the teams in the American League Central sit atop the top 10 teams in the league based on record, the Royals are currently only better than four teams, putting them as 26th in the league.
The White Sox have a lot of young, controllable talent. The Indians are seemingly always competitive. The Tigers began their rebuild before the Royals and have traded pieces away to strengthen their rebuild. The Twins lost 100 games just a few years ago and since then have been at or near the top of the division every year.
Perhaps, as we sit here today, we need to accept the fact it appears highly unlikely the Royals will be competing for much of anything anytime soon, and perhaps the organization needs to look more long-term with their goals.
Jorge Soler and Salvador Perez headline bats scheduled to be free agents after the 2021 season.
Currently, the Royals have one of the worst offenses in baseball. They’re going into an offseason where they’ve had three straight bad seasons, so what do the Royals do with pending free agents Jorge Soler and Salvador Perez?
Both have made news and headlines in their years with the Royals. Perez obviously had his Wild Card heroics and ‘Salvy Splash’ while Soler holds the franchise record for home runs. Can the organization really justify bringing both back in 2021, risking losing them for basically nothing? I can’t fathom the idea, but the Royals have shown not only can they, but they will face those issues and don’t appear bothered by misappropriating resources and misuse of assets.
The farm system, while having solid pitching prospects, is basically devoid of anything promising when it comes to hitting, save for Bobby Witt Jr, who has spent how many months total in the minors? Not many.
Losing those bats in the lineup, or even one of them, would be a major issue for a team already struggling to score runs. If you can’t score runs, well, it’s really hard to win games. If you are not winning games, it begs the question, what is the point?
It should be noted, three of the teams with fewer runs scored than the Royals have played significantly fewer games due to COVID-19, being the St. Louis Cardinals, Milwaukee Brewers, and Miami Marlins, which really shows how bad this Royals offense has been.