Call them what you will, but the Royals are a fun team to follow
Once upon a time, I charged the Kansas City Royals with the harshest of accusations for a professional sports team. Not that they weren’t good (they definitely were not good) or not trying, but that they were boring.
Well, that ain’t the case today.
With the trade deadline looming, the Royals are making deals and rumored to be in the mix to make more.
The team had already landed Hunter Harvey, but with injuries and ineffectiveness hitting the pitching staff, the Royals went out and landed another pitcher, this one a swing pitcher in Michael Lorenzen, a 10-year veteran most recently of the Texas Rangers but who’s also pitched for the Reds, Angels, Tigers and Phillies.
This season, Lorenzen’s started 18 games while he started 25 last year and 18 in 2022. Before that, he mostly pitched out of the bullpen. Where he pitches for the Royals will be something to watch, but he’s shown he can perform out of either role.
But hey!
The Royals made a trade! They bought!
They didn’t sell! This is the second time this month they’ve traded a prospect to bolster the pitching staff.
Watching your team buy is fun and exciting! Can you tell that I’m excited by my overuse of exclamation marks?!?!
During recent woeful years, the Royals bored me with their deadline activity. After the 2015 season, they hung on too long to players they should’ve traded while making head-scratching deals for players who ended up providing next to nothing.
Then, during those 100-loss seasons, it was only a matter of time before the Royals sold. If they could land a top prospect, someone to inject life into the franchise, well, that would be great. But that didn’t happen.
Until last year.
I took my family to one ballgame last year. It was my youngest son’s first ever baseball game. The Royals ended up walking-off in extra innings, but that was only after Aroldis Chapman allowed a runner to steal home in the top half of the inning.
The next day, the Royals traded Chapman to Texas for Cole Ragans.
At the time, that didn’t seem very exciting.
Not long after, though, Ragans proved me wrong and the Royals right—not that the Royals were after excitement, exactly, but wanted to make good on the Chapman investment by improving the team in the long-run.
The Rangers won the World Series despite Chapman, who’s now in Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, the southpaw Ragans fronts a very good starting rotation in Kansas City.
A starting rotation that just got better with Michael Lorenzen.
And who knows—the Royals may not yet be done.
I’d take Kevin Pillar, please and thank you.
The fact that the Royals could land another player or two in the midst of a winning season?
That’s not boring.
That’s exciting.
