Duenez was obviously a strange addition to the 40-man as the idea that any team would take a 20-year-old firstbaseman in the Rule 5 draft and find a way to keep him on its roster for a year is fairly laughable. That decision leaves the Royals stuck. They’ve burned through two option years with Duenez at AA, but he did just enough this season to start next year at AAA. If O’Hearn crashes next year, the plan has to be to hope that Duenez has shown enough in Omaha to get the call because they’ve put themselves in a potential use him or lose him situation. Another team might take him now and hope they can unlock some more power to go with his contact skills.

This would seem to leave Schwindel out of the team’s plans. Everyone probably should have known that already when they signed Duda or at least when O’Hearn was called up instead of him.