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Kansas City Royals: Rebuild is over and it’s time to win

By Leigh Oleszczak

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI - SEPTEMBER 27: Adalberto Mondesi #27 of the Kansas City Royals celebrates his home run with Maikel Franco #7 in the fourth inning against the Detroit Tigers at Kauffman Stadium on September 27, 2020 in Kansas City, Missouri. (Photo by Ed Zurga/Getty Images)
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI - SEPTEMBER 27: Adalberto Mondesi #27 of the Kansas City Royals celebrates his home run with Maikel Franco #7 in the fourth inning against the Detroit Tigers at Kauffman Stadium on September 27, 2020 in Kansas City, Missouri. (Photo by Ed Zurga/Getty Images) /
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The Kansas City Royals are apparently finished rebuilding and are ready to start contending.

The final question in Jeffrey Flanagan’s mailbag was the one that perked up a lot of ears in the Kansas City Royals fandom. Flanagan published the mailbag on MLB.com on Sunday and the final question was surrounding what the Royals’ rebuilding timeline looked like. Here was Flanagan’s answer:

"The rebuild is over. The Royals want to win now."

Oh really? This seems rather interesting, as the team had back-to-back 100 loss seasons in 2018 and 2019. While they didn’t fare too poorly in 2020, the season was narrowed down to just 60 games, so it’s hard to truly get a feel for where this team was at compared to where they were in 2019.

On the one hand, pitching wise this team does look set. Their bullpen was tremendous this past season and we saw stars emerge in Josh Staumont and Scott Barlow. The rotation has the potential to be one of the most lethal in the league and we saw glimpses of that this year with rookies Brady Singer and Kris Bubic making their debuts and pitching throughout the shortened season.

Throw in that Brad Keller showed he could be the ace this team needs and that prospects such as Jackson Kowar and Daniel Lynch will be ready for their call-ups in 2021 and the rotation truly could be something special. I didn’t even mention No. 4 overall pick Asa Lacy, who has the makings of a star.

If the Kansas City Royals are serious about contending this year, it’s doubtful they trade away their key players.

Trading Whit Merrifield, Salvador Perez, and Jorge Soler this offseason would have been a smart move for the Royals, but if Dayton Moore thinks they could make it to the postseason in 2021, he won’t do that. The Royals might have good pitching, but they could still use some young bats and trading any variation of these three players is the best way to do that.

Three AL Central teams made the expanded postseason this year, so the Royals are going to have their work cut out for them in 2021. Maybe Moore sees this season looking similar to how 2012 and 2013 did where they start to show legitimate glimpses of being a playoff contender.

The comments definitely raised some eye brows, but if Moore thinks the team is ready to compete, then it’ll be interesting to see if they make some big moves this season to improve their team.

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