The Kansas City Royals made the playoffs and even won a series, taking the New York Yankees to four games in the ALDS. It was a phenomenal accomplishment, especially considering how bad the team was last year.
Unfortunately for the Royals, it does not get easier, and in fact the team has shifted difficulties to hard mode. Look: Royals historical incompetence aside, it is not very difficult to get to 81 or so wins even with a bad farm system; you just need to spend in free agency, play to your strengths, and minimize utilizing replacement-level talent. But every win above .500 is exponentially harder, because you suddenly need good players in addition to avoiding using bad ones.
Speaking of good players: Brady Singer is unquestionably a good player. While he might not ever be a clear ace like some wished, and while his warts are very obvious, you can rely on Singer to turn in a quality start more often than not. The Royals need more players like Singer, and to their credit they went out and got them last offseason. Most of Kansas City’s improvement boils down to Bobby Witt Jr. plus a rotation that went four-deep to give the offense a chance in nearly every single game. Not hard.
And while the two previous paragraphs may seem like the Royals should be trying to keep Singer or perhaps even extend them, I think that there’s an excellent chance that Singer is traded this year, and I think it’s the right move to do so.
Now, if you’ve heard this before, from me even, you would be correct. Last August, I wrote that the Royals couldn’t afford to trade Singer in the offseason. I am delighted to have been wrong, but my core arguments made sense at the time; I simply doubted that the Royals would be able to overhaul their pitching staff, and it seemed that Singer’s peak would not line up with Kansas City’s competitive window.
JJ Picollo and team managed to make me look a fool by not only overhauling the pitching staff in one offseason but also opening the window so that Singer contributed to, and pitched for, a Royals postseason team. However, the third point I made was relevant regardless, and it continues to be relevant: Singer is very valuable.
Finally, the Royals should trade Singer because he will have immense trade value. Singer is unambiguously a good starting pitcher despite what his ERA says right now. He will have higher upside, less risk of injury, and be significantly cheaper than free agent pitchers on the market. I don’t want to get into the details of a trade at this point, which is worth its own entire article. But suffice it to say that Singer would probably command at least one top 100 prospect and a total package of two to four significant pieces in a trade.
But why on earth would the Royals want to trade Singer, one of their good players? To be clear: I don’t want the Royals to trade Singer, not really. I like watching him and I would rather see him play as a Royal. I think that a lot of fans have unfairly expected him to be something he’s not. Singer is a good pitcher with a platoon split problem and some inconsistency holding him back from being a great pitcher. That is still incredibly valuable, and players like Singer make $10-$15 million a year in free agency.
Last year, Picollo mentioned something that was at once very clearly different from Dayton Moore’s philosophy and also very true: sometimes it hurts to give up what it takes to acquire good players.
“We were open-minded with some names that would hurt to trade,” Picollo said. “We let teams know that that’s something we would do. But we’re going to have to win the deal. Long term, we’re going to have to win the deal. We don’t need to trade certain guys that have three, four, five years of control. …
“Our approach will be the same in the offseason. Any deal with a player that’s talented and has a lot of control, we have to stick to what we think is the right return and get the most impact in return that we can.”
Why Singer specifically? It’s because, for the first time in a long time, the Royals’ starting pitching staff is in a place of strength. Independent of Singer, they’re bringing back Cole Ragans, Michael Wacha, Seth Lugo, and Alec Marsh. Kris Bubic, who has looked excellent in a post-Cal Eldred world, is gearing up for a full season. And that’s before the Royals bring in any other depth, and there are plenty of reasonably priced free agents to pick from this year.
Kansas City knows that, too, and it’s why The Athletic reported that the Royals might be interested in moving Marsh or Bubic for a bat.
However, it’s not going to be Marsh or Bubic who are going to move the needle on getting a really good hitter. That would be Singer, who has a longer history of being better than both of them. I especially like Bubic, but he’s not the guy with the most trade value in this scenario. That would be Singer. And if you can sign a pitcher for depth while trading from a position of strength to a position of weakness—maybe even tossing in a prospect to really get something going? Man, that’s tempting.