KC finds an ace

Dalton Vitt

Now is the right time to strike, and Dayton Moore slammed the hammer Sunday with the (surprisingly cheap) acquisition of a true ace in Johnny Cueto.

After spending eight seasons racking up more than 150 innings seven different times, Cueto makes the jump from hitters’ haven Great American Ball Park to a flyball wasteland in Kauffman Stadium. Over the course of the last five seasons, Cueto has lobbed 808 innings with a 2.51 ERA and 7.7 strikeouts-per-nine.

He’s undoubtedly an ace, evidenced by a second-place Cy Young finish last year and a fourth-place Cy mark in 2012. The best part? Dayton Moore landed the 29-year-old for dimes on the dollar.

Flipping last year’s first-round pick Brandon Finnegan, a formerly coveted prospect in John Lamb and a project lefty in Cody Reed is about as cheap as a rental ace can get.

Losing Finnegan means sacrificing one of the great moments in franchise history after the stocky southpaw helped propel KC to the 2014 World Series. But in trade talks, nostalgia doesn’t bring back much of a return.

Think about it this way: the Royals turned their first-round pick last June into a vital postseason piece and at least two months of a Cy Young contender, all in the span of about 13 months. Because of the allure of landing the “next big thing,” we tend to overvalue youngsters, especially pitchers. Kansas City sold Finnegan at the peak of his value, and now has an actual ace — not a potential one — to show for it.

Lamb is a 25-year-old bounceback, late-blooming prospect whose 2011 Tommy John surgery set him back after he won the Paul Splittorff Award as the Royals’ Minor League Pitcher of the Year. Shortly after, MLB.com named him KC’s fifth-best prospect. Once upon a time, he was considered a better young lefty than Danny Duffy. His 2.67 ERA and 9-1 record this season for Class-AAA Omaha are signs he’s surging back to what scouts believed he could be, but Kansas City has a handful of other pitching prospects in the tank.

Reed has posted a 2.53 ERA in 96 innings at two different levels this season, spending 10 starts with Class-A Wilmington before jumping to Class-AA Northwest Arkansas for five additional starts. But in 2013 and 2014 coming out of Northwest Mississippi Community College, the 6-5 left-hander posted ERAs of 6.07 and 5.46, respectively. He’s basically an unknown that KC leveraged for a major piece.

None of this is to say that the Royals stole Cueto. Finnegan, at the very least, projects as a nice back-end-of-the-bullpen specialist; Lamb could continue his development to be Cincinnati’s No. 3; and Reed might wind up filling out his frame while becoming Lamb’s electric rotation-mate a few years down the road.

The key to Kansas City getting Cueto at a value price was the use of “could” and “might.” There’s no guarantee with any of the three pieces Moore sent, which makes it a surprise that the Reds settled for anything less than one of Raul Mondesi, Jr., Sean Manaea or Kyle Zimmer.

Instead, Moore evaded playing any of his three best cards en route to boosting his rotation without having to go all-in.

In a way, Kansas City has Houston and Oakland to thank. The first leaf that fell in this trade season was the A’s sending Scott Kazmir to the Astros, while Houston gave up just a pair of marginal prospects rather than selling the farm and giving rise to a seller’s market.

While the Reds could’ve stood firm and demanded Mondesi or Manaea, the clock was ticking on them to flip Cueto before Friday’s deadline passes. Cueto — along with his wonderful hair — will be a free agent this winter, and it was up to Cincy to either leverage him into a handful of prospects or let him walk after the season to be compensated by one measly draft pick.

Kansas City swooped in on the opportunity, gobbling up one of the biggest fish available at this year’s deadline without mortgaging any of its prime real estate.

Time has yet to tell what will come of Cueto’s handful of months as a Royal, but as of now, Moore is 3-for-3 on blockbuster trades in his tenure as GM. The swap of Greinke a half-decade ago brought in slick shortstop Alcides Escobar and sneaky MVP candidate Lorenzo Cain. Turning Wil Myers, Mike Montgomery and Jake Odorizzi into James Shields and Wade Davis punched a ticket to the first postseason in 29 years. Now he turns three question-mark lefties into a rental of one of the 15 best starters in the game.

Of course, this isn’t a Hall of Fame introduction for Moore. That book has yet to be written, and this chapter has just begun. But it is a major moment in the story of this franchise, the first time in its history that KC became a big spender at the deadline instead of a yard sale for the rest of baseball.

It’ll be enticing to see what kind of magic Cueto conjures in his two or more months as a Royal, and for that, we don’t have long to wait.