Royals’ window still very much open
Phil Cobb
Don’t look now, but the Kansas City Royals have climbed their way back into relevancy.
As of Monday, they still shared the worst record in the American League, but they were just 4.5 games behind the unlikely Central Division-leading Minnesota Twins.
After the worst April in the history of everything, the Royals have somehow thawed out their offense, and after a three-game sweep of the Eastern Division contending Baltimore Orioles, have pulled themselves to within striking distance.
Jorge Soler even hit a home run — a very long and loud home run.
April stunk.
It stunk real bad.
But if it would have been June instead, it wouldn’t have smelled nearly as much.
It’s easy to hide a bad stretch of games in the middle of the season.
Every team does it every year.
It’s much more difficult to sweep it under the rug at the beginning of the season.
As of a thrilling come-from-behind, 9-8 victory over the Orange Birds on Sunday, the Blue Crew is 9-5 for the month of May.
If they continue that pace they could find themselves at or near .500 heading into June.
That could make for some very interesting conversations about whether Kansas City will be buyers or sellers come the July 31 trade deadline.
General Manager Dayton Moore will earn every cent of however much money he makes between now and then.
Keep in mind that all of this is simply speculation on my part.
But to understand what will guide DM the GM through the difficult task of determining whether to sell off his team’s most valuable parts, you must think like a baseball executive.
You hear so much about the “window of opportunity.”
And I don’t think you need to know any more than that to guess what Moore will do.
Guys who are in baseball their entire lives will give everything to create a window of opportunity to win a championship — championships — and they will do anything within their means to keep that window open.
Believe it or not, the Royals’ window is still very much open.
And, if I remember right, it took a very long time to get that sucker open in the first place.
This year’s All-Star break begins on July 10.
If Kansas City is over. 500, especially if they are within a couple games of the division, at that time, there’s no way this team is selling.
As a matter of fact, they might be buying from what should be a smorgasbord of available talent.
Why?
Why wouldn’t they trade all their pending free agents right now and stock pile talent in their minor league system?
Because, at the end of the year, Moore and the rest of the Royals brass want to be able to look back and say, “We did the absolute most we could during our window of opportunity.”
If they sell prior to being mathematically eliminated, they will second guess themselves the rest of their lives.
This is great for the sports talk radio guys.
They must be loving this season with all the pending free agents and potential trades.
They can get on the air and say things like, “The Royals have to play .600 ball the rest of the way if they want a shot at the playoffs.”
No they don’t.
All they have to do is have a better record than the other teams in their division.
And maybe not even that.
Trust me, they will deal with next year … next year.
Even if it means starting completely over in 2018 after losing every single one of their free agents and getting nothing back in return, I think they are willing to make that sacrifice in the quest for another world title.
And rightfully so.
