Kansas City Royals missed opportunity to acquire Nolan Arenado
By Cullen Jekel
The Kansas City Royals should’ve tried landing Nolan Arenado earlier this month.
Three weeks ago, the Kansas City Royals (along with 27 other MLB franchises) idly stood by as the St. Louis Cardinals swooped in and acquired disgruntled superstar third baseman Nolan Arenado from the Colorado Rockies.
To acquire him, the Cardinals sent to the Rockies…not much.
Really, the deal came down to Colorado dumping the remaining years of Arenado’s contract. To do so, Colorado sent a chunk of change along with the Birds’ new cornerstone at the hot corner.
After the league finalized the deal, Rockies fans were, of course, miffed. But so were fans of every other team outside of St. Louis. Or, at least those fans should have been miffed. It seems that any number of franchises could’ve topped what the Cardinals gave up in terms of players, or taken on more of Arenado’s salary, or done both.
The Kansas City Royals fall into that first group.
As it stands, the St. Louis Cardinals got ahead while the rest of the league stood by the water cooler on Monday, February 1st, shaking their heads and muttering, “Dang, we missed out.”
Let’s break down how the Royals, led by general manager Dayton Moore, missed a heck of an opportunity to acquire a new face for the franchise merely months after Alex Gordon retired. I’ll get to the finances as well as the motivations for both the team and Arenado to make a deal between Colorado and Kansas City work, but first I’ll start with the compensation