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We are now more than halfway through the season, the draft is this weekend, and the All-Star Break is next week. Three weeks after that will be the 2026 MLB Trade Deadline on August 3. The Royals made some noises about wanting to see if they could find a way to compete ahead of the All-Star Break,
but they basically needed to win 20 in a row to get there, and that hasn’t happened. The question isn’t whether the Royals will be selling, but how hard they will sell.
And so, naturally, I thought to pose that question to you all. How hard should the Royals sell? Here are a couple of lists of players to help you decide how to answer the poll below.
Players on expiring contracts:
- Lane Thomas
- Starling Marte
- Matt Strahm
- Kris Bubic
- Jonathan India
- John Schreiber
- Carlos Estévez
Players who might be considered valuable (but replaceable) veterans with contracts that do not expire at the end of the season
- Michael Wacha
- Seth Lugo
- Lucas Erceg
- Alex Lange
- Daniel Lynch IV
- Kyle Isbel
- Vinnie Pasquantino
- Nick Mears
- Michael Massey
- Salvador Perez
Now, obviously, not everyone on those two lists can or should be traded. Carlos Estévez and India aren’t going anywhere because they’re not going to be healthy. Bubic would likely have to pitch a few games in order to get dealt. Isbel and Pasquantino would need to play in MLB games, too, I’d think.
But in the same way I wrote at the beginning of the year that the Royals had a real opportunity to succeed by having more major league talent on their roster than normal, they’ve now got a bunch of guys who have some trade value on their roster. None of them are top-tier deadline targets, but they’re all guys that someone – and probably multiple someones – will want. And, yeah, it turns out I was damning the Royals with faint praise in my preseason remarks about their newfound depth. They had more depth than normal, but in any season where they don’t have unusually good injury luck, they need more.
So, how many of these guys do you think the Royals need to trade in order to feel good about this year’s trade deadline?
If you’re looking for some additional reading, Brian Henry did a great piece on J.J. Picollo’s history of trades earlier this week, and it was a good reminder that, hey, if the guy can get two MLB starting pitchers for a backup catcher, maybe these trade chips can turn into some useful guys, too. Picollo’s record of deadline trades certainly looks incredible compared to Dayton Moore’s.
