In another trade, on Monday night the Royals shipped Brandon Moss and Ryan Buchter to the East Bay in exchange for Jesse Hahn and Heath Fillmyer. The Royals are also sending $3.25 million in cash to offset some of the $8.25 million due to Moss this year and for a buyout coming his way in 2019.

From the Royals perspective, it’s both a salary dump and the removal of a piece of the roster that doesn’t really fit. As noted in his player profile from earlier this month, Moss’s production has cratered and his platoon advantage has disappeared. He’d be a difficult player to roster if the Royals tore the entire franchise down to the foundation. The only upside remaining is to hope he can recover some of his value from his peak, but the trends are not encouraging.

So the Royals net roughly $4 million based off this trade. Hold that thought.

Buchter is a casualty in this move, but useful lefties out of the bullpen usually are. (See Alexander, Scott.) He held the most promise of the three pitchers from the Padres Gang of Three the Royals received last summer near the trade deadline. Plus, Buchter is cost controlled for four years which adds a little allure for the A’s. The Royals have always had decent success cobbling together a competent bullpen, but their desire to shed overpaid veterans has come at a price.

Maybe the pair of arms heading to Kansas City will provide some utility.

Hahn is a bit of a baseball nomad, landing on his fourth team in an eight year professional career. Originally drafted by Tampa in 2010, he didn’t make his debut until 2012 after undergoing Tommy John surgery. He’s been a starter for most of his career, but has never topped more than 116 innings in a season.

According to PitchF/X data, Hahn scrapped his four-seam fastball last year and went exclusively with the two-seamer. He also features a curve and slider that both get a healthy amount of ground balls. This collection of pitches make Hahn a reliable ground ball pitcher, although his sinker doesn’t feature a lot of sink and his ground ball numbers on the pitch actually declined last year. Overall in 2017, he induced a grounder 45 percent of the time, below his career average that clocks in at just under 50 percent.

Hahn is out of options, so he will be a guy to watch early in camp. He’s also at a little over two years of major league service time, which means he won’t be eligible for arbitration until after the upcoming season. If the baseball gods are smiling on Kansas City, they could get four years of production from Hahn. The Royals will look at him for a rotation spot, but the bet is, if he’s to compete long-term, it will be out of the bullpen.

Fillmyer was added to Oakland’s 40-man roster this winter after posting a 3.49 ERA with a 6.9 SO/9 and 3.1 BB/9 in 149 innings at Double-A Midland in the Texas League. Drafted back in 2014, he was a project, having transitioned from the infield to the mound only the year prior. He struggled a bit early in his pro career, but made some mid-season adjustments in 2015 and got himself on a prospect track.

He ranked number 18 on Oakland Clubhouse’s list of top 50 prospects:

Fillmyer has always had plenty of arm strength. His fastball sits in the low-90s but can touch 96 when he reaches back for something extra. He gets run on the pitch, although sometimes he has trouble commanding it. Fillmyer has two solid secondary pitches that he mixes well with his fastball to change speeds. One is a change-up that comes out of his hand looking like a fastball but arrives about five miles per hour slower and with late diving action. The other is a curveball that has swing-and-miss potential.

Fillmyer hasn’t yet consistently missed a lot of bats as a pro, but he is effective at inducing soft contact and generating a good number of groundballs. As he continues to refine his fastball command, his strike-out numbers should inch up. He is an excellent athlete and has proven to be good at receiving and implementing instruction. He is also often mentioned as having one of the top work ethics in the system.

If the command comes together, it’s not difficult to imagine Fillmyer as an option for the back of the rotation. Cue your “pitching is the currency of baseball” quotes.

I’m generally skeptical that one deal portends another. Transactions simply aren’t that simple. However, in this case all signs do point to an aggressive attempt to re-sign Eric Hosmer and for the first baseman to be the cornerstone of the franchise for years to come. For whatever reason, Dayton Moore and the Royals brain trust have decided Hosmer is absolutely the one player they cannot live without. So in building a 65-win team, they are moving tiny bits of salary around so they aren’t throwing good money after bad wins. Someone will have to explain what Alcides Escobar is doing on the roster at a $2.5 million base salary and $1.5 million in obtainable plate appearance incentives, but I digress.

The Royals are going to try to rebuild while being what one could call being semi-competitive. It sure sounds like this could be another 10-year plan.

Moss has struggled to reach those heights ever since he left Oakland in a trade following the 2014 season.

Last year for the Royals, Moss was the semi-regular designated hitter, starting 89 games in that spot. He also made five starts at first base, three in left field and one in right. He hit .207/.279/.428 in 401 plate appearances last summer and finished with a .240 TAv. Moss was worth -0.6 WARP.

Why was he so successful in Oakland, and why has he struggled so much since leaving?

The A’s leveraged Moss in a way other teams hadn’t up to that point: by using him almost exclusively against right-handed pitching. In his tenure in Oakland, Moss came to bat with the platoon advantage more than 80 percent of the time. Savvy usage. In those three seasons, he hit .256/.344/.524 against right-handers compared to .249/.323/.413 against lefties. As you can tell by the differential in slugging, it showed in his power, with 59 of his 64 doubles and 66 of his 76 home runs coming against righties.

In the three years since, that platoon advantage has largely disappeared. In his stops in Cleveland, St. Louis and now Kansas City, his numbers against southpaws have remained largely static, with a line of .245/.320/.402. That would be fine considering his track record, admirable even that he was able to largely maintain his production against same-siders. Unfortunately, the struggles against right-handers has been all too alarming. Over the last three years, Moss hit .211/.287/.452 against righties.

With such an issue over the last three seasons, it would be helpful to take a deeper dive. Here are his splits from 2015.

Going back to 2012, this was the first year Moss put up a worse than league average OPS+ against right-handed pitching. However, it was the second consecutive year he performed better than league average against lefties. When dealing with splits such as this, one year qualifies as a potential outlier. Two years is a trend. Does it continue in 2016? Let’s see.

It doesn’t. These 2016 splits looks closer to the Brandon Moss of his prime years around ages 28 and 29. Although any enthusiasm for his rebound was tempered by an abysmal second half where he hit .272/.310/.553 in August and followed that with a .099/.178/.209 in September.

He carried that performance with him to the west side of the state, opening his Royals career with a horrible start where he hit .150/.233/.313 in his first 90 plate appearances. Overall in 2017, the platoon advantage evaporated. His performance against right-handed pitching cratered.

For the Royals last summer, Moss’s contact rate was 67 percent, the lowest of his career. As you would expect from a hitter with some thunder in the bat, Moss is something of a pull hitter. However, last year when he made contact, he pulled the ball 53 percent of the time, which was the highest rate of his career. He didn’t make a lot of soft contact, which is good, but he hit more ground balls (33 percent of contact) at a higher rate than at any time since 2012, which is bad. Now, Moss isn’t channeling his inner Eric Hosmer and putting the ball on the ground at an alarming rate, so that’s not entirely the issue. But his abysmal 2016 can be chalked up to a confluence of some poor traits. Add every thing together and the real culprit was  his batting average on balls in play.

Simplistic? Sure. But what if I told you his declining BABIP is a trend five years in the making where he’s lost over 100 points?

BABIP has become something of a crutch to the amateur sabermetrician to describe luck, or the absence thereof. It can tell part of the story, but it’s rarely the story. Here, in the case of Moss, I’m not so sure.

The rule of BABIP is it should remain relatively constant throughout a hitter’s career. Certainly, there will be fluctuations. It’s rare to see a player consistently lose points off his BABIP for nearly six consecutive seasons. He’s hitting the ball as hard as he has throughout his career. His batted ball profile (while more ground ball heavy last year than in the past) hasn’t changed that much. Something else is happening here besides an extreme pull rate and a (slightly) elevated ground ball rate.

Pending on what happens with Hosmer in free agency (oh god, oh god, oh god) the Royals look like they’re planning on opening the 2018 season with Moss getting the lion’s share of reps at first. That’s subject to change, of course.

As a group, Royals fans seem to overvalue defense at first base. (Hosmer is not as poor as the metrics would lead you to believe, nor is he as good as his reputation would suggest.) Moss, however, is a potential nightmare at that position. He played just 61 innings at first last year and was worth 0 defensive runs saved according to The Fielding Bible. Fine. Neither good nor bad. He played more first base in St. Louis the year prior (397 innings) as was worth -3 fielding runs saved. The year where Moss played the most innings at first was in 2013 when he was on the bag for just over 800 innings. Are you sure you want to know the results? Maybe cover one eye. That year he was worth an abysmal -12 defensive runs saved.

There’s a reason teams have moved him around the field. It’s not because he’s versatile. It’s because they’re trying to find the place where he causes the minimal amount of damage.

After making $8.25 million in his final year of arbitration eligibility in St. Louis in 2016, Moss signed a back-loaded deal with the Royals. He earned $3.75 million last summer and posted a -0.6 WARP, the first year he finished in the red since he was a part time player in 2011. For the upcoming year, the salary increases to $7.25 million.

Moss is good for a strikeout three out of every ten at bats and a hit twice out of every ten. He’ll club somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 to 25 home runs and will play below average defense. It’s possible he could get back into positive WARP territory, but a 1.0 WARP feels like his upside. Given his contract, that’s around what the Royals are paying him. Moss used to be a decent platoon option on a team full of average to above average regulars. He would have done well on the 2015 Royals. However, it’s a stretch to even classify him as a platoon option these days. And with the 2018 Royals devoid of the star power and the move the line style of baseball of the past, he’s miscast, no matter the role he plays on this team.

Given how awful his 2017 season was, he’s a good bet for a bounceback offensively. As in, he could get a little closer to league average overall, but the bet here is he’s still below average with the bat. Slight improvement is better than no improvement. Yet as the glory days of Oakland grow further in the rearview mirror, expectations for any kind of a big bounce and the production that would go with it should be tempered.

No, what I’m here today to talk about is the 10 hardest hit balls off the bat of the Royals all season. Because that’s more fun. Hitting the ball hard is awesome. But first some other fun stats! All these stats are from Statcast.

Royals players hit the ball 100 MPH or harder a total of 949 times during the 2017 season. That’s an average of about six times per game. Eric Hosmer led the way with 146 of those, almost one a game. Lorenzo Cain, Mike Moustakas and Salvador Perez were the other three Royals to do it 100 or more times. Christian Colon hit the ball over 100 MPH once. That’s about right. Of the 949 balls hit that hard, 98 went foul while 310 were recorded outs. That means the Royals hit .636 on balls hit 100 MPH or harder.

Let’s get to the good stuff now.

10. Mike Moustakas – 112.7 MPH

This one is boring. It was a foul ball against the Blue Jays on an 89 MPH cut fastball. Good for Moose, hitting the ball hard

9. Eric Hosmer – 112.8 MPH

Now the good stuff. Hosmer singled in a run on April 12 against Liam Hendriks of the A’s. The Royals lost that game 8-3, which you might remember as the game where Mondesi launched a massive home run in the bottom of the ninth inning that made everyone believe he was about to turn a corner and get going. He was demoted a few days later. Still, Hosmer’s opposite field single (there’s a shock, right?) was one of the hardest hit balls the Royals had all year.

8. Brandon Moss – 112.8 MPH

Moss had a big day against the Twins on July 1^st, gathering five hits in a double header. This hit was a double off Buddy Boshers that came directly after a rare Jorge Soler home run. Moss would come around to score on an Alcides Escobar double. As a side note, Escobar only hit 35 balls at 100 MPH or harder all season. He played every game. Wow.

7. Eric Hosmer – 112.9 MPH

On April 26^th, Hosmer lined out to the opposite field against Jose Quintana in a game the Royals ended up losing 5-2. That was in the middle of their terrible nine-game losing streak when nothing was going right. It was also right around the time Hosmer woke up from his slumber in the first few weeks of the season. At the time, we probably groaned at him making another out. I’d say he had a pretty good year anyway.

6. Mike Moustakas – 112.9 MPH

Moose singled against Michael Pineda in a game where Jason Vargas was bad, which was a rarity early in the season. The Royals lost, but Moose pulled a hard hit single to the right side. The Royals lost 11-4, so I guess a hard hit ball was sort of a highlight. He would single again later in the game and even drove in a run, but he didn’t hit the ball that hard, so we don’t care.

5. Eric Hosmer – 114 MPH

Hosmer hit a ball 114 MPH on the ground in a loss to the Tigers. He was thrown out at first. If you’re keeping track, this is his third time in the top 10 and his second out. Stay tuned.

4. Jorge Soler – 114.2 MPH

Soler had just come off the disabled list and the Royals were playing the Orioles on Mother’s Day. The offense was still struggling, and he was now a part of those struggles. Thankfully, Richard Bleier hung a sinker that he absolutely obliterated to dead center, clearing all three walls. I’m pretty sure Joey Rickard had some burns on his skin from that ball passing over him on the way out. The hope was that Soler was getting going on that swing. The reality is that hit accounted for 50 percent of his 2017 home run total. But hey, keeping him in the minors as long as they did means they have four years of control over him still.

3. Jorge Soler – 114.4 MPH

This was the precursor to that home run. He grounded out to Manny Machado the day before the home run and it led me to believe that he was about to get going. I even told people it was coming. Then he hit that home run the next day and I was vindicated. Only I wasn’t. But hey, I had a moment in the sun.

2. Eric Homser – 114.6 MPH

Of course Hosmer gets one of the top two spots on this list. He hit the ball hard consistently. This one wasn’t on the ground. It was a line drive against the Rays on May 8^th when the Royals were working their way out of their funk. It advanced Lorenzo Cain to third in the seventh inning of a game the Royals had basically put away. They won 7-3. It was magical.

1. Eric Hosmer – 118 MPH

We should have known how this season would go. In the second game of the year, with the Royals down 9-1 after inexplicably using Nate Karns in relief, Hosmer stepped to the plate against Justin Haley and he hit a ball about as hard as you can hit it. He hit it the other way, which I know will shock everyone. What ensued was Eduardo Escobar picked the ball up off the dirt and threw it to first base before Hosmer could get there. Yes, that’s right. The hardest hit ball of the year for the Royals was a groundout to shortstop.

So that’s that. From 10-1, the hardest hit balls of the year off the bats of some Royals. They went 5 for 9 on them with a foul ball. They went 4-6 in the games they were hit. I don’t have any commentary to add to that. I just thought it was interesting. I hope you did too.

After dropping three of four to the hotter-than-the-sun Cleveland Indians, the Royals find themselves five games back in the hunt for the final Wild Card. They have 13 games remaining.

On the surface, that doesn’t seem insurmountable. Besides, these Royals are known for having a card or two hidden up their sleeve. They’ve surprised the baseball world enough the last few seasons, there’s no one left to register any kind of disbelief should they find the energy to summon one final charge to glory. One more great escape.

If only it were that simple.

The number to fixate on isn’t the games back in the standings. Rather, at this point it’s the elimination number. The Royals elimination number currently stands at nine, meaning the Royals can afford no more than a combination of nine losses of their own along with wins by the Twins. The math is the math. If the Royals lose four games the rest of the way, but the Twins win five, the Royals are toast. That doesn’t even take into consideration the other teams still jockeying for position.

It’s complicated, but what is certain is the tightrope thins a bit at this point.

With two full weeks remaining, the Royals could find themselves eliminated by the close of baseball business Friday.

The dynamics of the Wild Card race (or if you prefer, the race for the second Wild Card because that’s what we’re actually discussing) has been most bizarre. With a number of teams grouped within striking distance for weeks, it looked like it would come down to the wire. Those of us who root for chaos in their playoff races dared to dream there could be a two or three team tie for the final spot, throwing the October schedule into some kind of manic frenzy. The Royals haven’t controlled their own destiny for some time but have been lurking for most of the second half of the season within reasonable striking distance, giving them a decent chance.

That doesn’t seem likely anymore. Especially after the wild card carnage of the last week.

While five teams have either 74 or 73 wins (including the Royals), all five have stumbled while the Twins have flipped over to cruise control. They don’t seem as intent on running away with the playoff spot as they are just not screwing up everything.

Here’s how the last week played out among the alleged contenders:

Impressive. You would think with the Twins winning a respectable four out of six games this week there would be at least one out of the six teams giving chase that could hang with them. You would think wrong.

All of the teams listed above have serious flaws that would, in a normal season, preclude them from participating beyond the end of the regular season. It’s almost as if this motley bunch is aware of this and are reticent about actually competing. Does anyone here really want to win the second Wild Card?

There’s still a chance the Twins turn into a baseball pumpkin and one of the teams awash in mediocrity catches a modest amount of fire to turn this in to some sort of race.

This may seem harsh, but the reality is one of the flaws plaguing the Royals is a lack of general good health. The team said on Saturday that they would give their walking wounded (Mike Moustakas and Salvador Perez, along with Lorenzo Cain) the day off on Sunday so with the team traveling on Monday, they would have the benefit of a full 48 hours of rest. Then, they would turn them loose for the final two weeks of the season. Moustakas himself admitted he could use “three or four or five days” to help his ailing knee.

Was anyone really surprised when Ned Yost summoned Moustakas for a pinch hit attempt in the eighth inning?

It’s the 2017 Royals in a nutshell. They know they shouldn’t do something. They announce their intentions. The intentions make a ton of sense. Yet, in the end, they just can’t help themselves. Here you have Moustakas, who is playing on a bum knee. He’s literally limping to the finish line. Over his last 22 games (prior to Sunday) he’s hit .194/.275/.264. He hit his 35th home run on August 15. He’s hit one since. That record he looked to obliterate? He may not even own it outright by the time the season is over.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, but who thought Moustakas on a bad knee was a better option than Cheslor Cuthbert who has two fully functional lower limbs? Besides Yost.

This isn’t a Willis Reed moment. Moustakas swinging meekly at a pair of curves – one off the plate away and another in the upper middle part of the zone – isn’t going to inspire a comeback. Especially if that moment comes with two down in the eighth, extinguishing the Royals best, final opportunity for a run.

Squint and you can see the good news. Danny Duffy returned from the disabled list and an unsavory off the field moment to pitch five strong innings, striking out eight. Joakim Soria tossed a scoreless eighth. Brandon Moss is coming through in important situations.

Still, it’s not enough to overcome the AL Central champions.

The season isn’t over yet, but last rites were administered in Cleveland. The real possibility is this team will be officially eliminated from October consideration by the time they return to The K for their final six games of the season. Another season of promise cut prematurely short.

Four Cleveland homers were more than enough—especially with Corey Kluber on the mound—to topple the Royals and leave little and less doubt about which Midwestern squad is tops in the American League.

(It’s not the Royals, FYI.)

Things went to pot right out of the gate for Ian Kennedy and the Royals; when Jason Kipnis smacks a dinger as the games second batter, and Jay Bruce follows it up with a two-run blast three batters later, things are not going that great for you.

It’s probable that, other than Tim Brown from Shawnee, no Royals fan enjoyed what transpired Friday night. It’s possible Mr. Brown would’ve given back a little of that $25,000 had the Royals been able to avoid sucking for most of the evening.

Sonic Slam winner Tim Brown on celebrating Cam Gallagher’s late-night grand slam quietly: “We were jumping up and down and whispering.” pic.twitter.com/CgBg7K4cqo

— FOX Sports KC (@FSKansasCity) August 19, 2017

So Cleveland had three runs before the Royals got to bat. A decided disadvantage, even without factoring in Kennedy, his towering ERA and inability to keep the ball in the yard—after giving up two big flies in less than three innings in this outing, he’s now tied for 15^th with 24 home runs allowed this season.

That makes 88 home runs allowed in the last three seasons by Kennedy, second only to James Shields during that span. And where Shields has allowed only 18 homers in 2017, Kennedy seems destined to give up 30 in three straight seasons.

Jamie Moyer, the all-time leader in homers allowed, never did that.

Fergie Jenkins, who led baseball in homers allowed seven times, never did that.

In fact, as far as an hour’s worth of cursory research shows, only a select few of the most prolific dinger-giver-uppers—Robin Roberts, Denny McLain, Pedro Ramos and as far as I can tell, most recently the late, lamented Jose Lima—have ever done that. Pretty exclusive club. I’m rooting for it; infamy always beats irrelevance.

Anyway, back to Friday. The Royals lone run in a 10-1 drubbing came off one of the season’s more improbable homers—Brandon Moss taking Corey Kluber deep. It was Moss’ 16^th jack and good for him. He’s graduated from awful to merely bad. Well done.

The rest of the game reads like Royals schadenfreude.

• With the bases loaded in the third, Yan Gomes singles to drive in two and drive Kennedy from the game.
• In the sixth, Francisco Lindor singles to score Carlos Santana.
• Bruce crushes another homer in the seventh.
• Edwin Encarnacion, who scored on Bruce’s second homer, gets in on the act in the ninth.

And the Royals? Their next (last?) best chance was killed by, of all people, Mike Moustakas in the fifth. With runners on second and third following Moustakas’ double, Moss grounded out to first. Carlos Santana, thinking quickly, threw behind Moustakas, who had doddered off second base and was easily tagged out by Lindor.

Rally snuffed. And, effectively, so was the game. I’d bring up the sixth inning, which featured singles by Eric Hosmer and Melky Cabrera, but then Cleveland brought in Andrew Miller in his first appearance off the disabled list and Andrew Miller did Andrew Miller things. You know how that goes.

Well hey, at least things get easier Saturday. That’s when Jason Vargas, of the 7.08 July-August ERA, takes on Trevor Bauer, who is 4-0 with a 2.41 ERA in his last five starts. Should be a real festival.

With the eight (or nine) man bullpen being the norm, it can still be difficult to navigate the staff around 18 guaranteed innings in one day. Factor in stretches where days off are far in the horizon, and it’s damned essential for teams to get depth from at least one starter when playing two.

On Sunday, the way it would have been drawn up on the white board it figured to be Danny Duffy giving the Royals length in the first game while hoping for a decent enough outing from Jake Junis in the nightcap.

About those best laid plans…

Duffy was roughed up in game one. After seven runs in the first two innings, he thankfully was able to apply a tourniquet to gut it out through a little over three more frames.  That put the bullpen in play a little earlier than expected. Or hoped. Peter Moylan, Scott Alexander and Brandon Maurer held the Mariners at bay. A Nelson Cruz home run in the seventh was the only blemish on the bullpen in game one.

On the flip side, you have the Mariners, staked to a seven run lead and a starter who couldn’t get out of the fifth. They used seven pitchers in relief, with a seventh inning carousel that saw three relievers to record three outs. Modern baseball, man.

The Royals battled gamely, but the Cruz home run was the difference in defeat. They had their chances, and the Mariners, certainly in the late innings, had the look of a team disinterested in actually winning, but the 27th out was recorded before the eighth run.

With a deep bullpen and adequate cover for Duffy in the first game, it wouldn’t be accurate to say the pressure was on Junis in game two. At least not any more than any other major league start. With no days off in the schedule between now and August 17, Junis, who was recalled as the 26th man on the doubleheader roster, was pressed into starting duty. He had had a bit of a bumpy ride as a starter in the bigs so far, with a 6.00 ERA and 40 hits in 33 innings. Nine of those hits left the yard which is an unhealthy 2.5 HR/9. The majority of those starts came in June, where the Royals were still pulling themselves back into a pennant race. The stakes were higher on Sunday.

Junis shoved.

It was a brilliant outing where he required just 94 pitches to get through eight innings. Junis allowed just four hits (no home runs!), and struck out seven. By holding the Mariners in check, he was able to secure the four game series split with Seattle. That meant in a day where Cleveland lost and Tampa won, the Royals were largely able to maintain the status quo in the races. It also meant that Seattle would leave Kansas City exactly the same number of games back in the Wild Card standings (1.5) as when they arrived.

The Wild Card race seems to be getting interesting again. Just a week after the trade deadline where it looked like the Orioles and the Angels were sinking, they have found a little momentum and have tightened the standings. Stating the obvious here, wins are critical at this juncture. If anything, it matters being the team the others are chasing. Let them trip over each other and themselves trying to make up ground. Claim the high road and try to keep your balance.

Still, at this moment, Tampa and Seattle look worthy challengers. At Baseball Prospectus, the Royals playoff odds have cooled, down to 32 percent, a loss of 10 percentage points from a week ago. The Mariners have made modest gains and are at 23 percent while the team to beat looks to be the Rays, who, despite going 5-5 over the last 10 games, have surged in the playoff odds report and are now the favorites for the second Wild Card at 40 percent. While the aforementioned Orioles and Angels are hot at the moment, PECOTA isn’t buying their chances. Both are below 10 percent.

The odds of course, are the odds. They are based on computer simulation and, like team record projections published in March, don’t mean anything. It’s simply one benchmark in a season that looks a long way from being sorted.

A key man in deciding how the next two months play out will be Salvador Perez. The Royals hemmed and hawed on Saturday, declining to place their catcher on the disabled list, but it had the feeling of the inevitable. Out with a strained intercostal muscle, Perez is down for a minimum of 10 days and worst-case scenario has him out until early September.

Perez is enjoying his finest season since 2013. You know. From before the Royals were good. His .510 slugging percentage is a career high and his on base percentage has rebounded and is finally above .300 at .308. That gives him an above league average TAv at .274 and a 1.5 WARP. His loss hurts. There’s no getting around it. Take a productive bat out of the middle of any contender’s lineup and they’re going to miss it. When it’s a catcher… Sigh.

For now, the Royals will rely on a tandem of Drew Butera and Cameron Gallagher. Both are acceptable backup options under normal conditions. Starting on the regular? Let’s just say neither can replace the production of Perez.

The bottom third of the order again resembles the black hole we saw in April. Which causes a rethink on my part as to how to allocate playing time amongst the outfield and designated hitter quartet of options. Offense is now more of a priority with Perez out, which means it would behoove the Royals to figure out a way to get Jorge Bonifacio and Melky Cabrera most of the at bats.  Let Brandon Moss and Alex Gordon fight over the remainder of the available at bats. The longer Perez remains sidelined, the more critical it is that Ned Yost gets his lineup correct.

The pennant races can’t be won in August. But it sure feels like it can be lost.

• I loved the trade to bring Melky Cabrera back to the Royals. I thought it was an inspired move to pick someone up who could help to fill in at either designated hitter or outfield to give guys a day off and to maybe get some of the weak bats out of the lineup. Instead, Cabrera has played for Jorge Bonifacio. By doing that, the net gain on the trade was basically zero. Neither Cabrera or Bonifacio are especially good defensively, but both have been at least somewhat valuable hitters this season. The issue in the lineup wasn’t Bonifacio. The issue in the lineup was and is mostly Alex Gordon, but also Brandon Moss. Now, I completely understand that you don’t want to take Gordon’s defense out because it’s stellar. I also completely understand that Moss is able to carry a team when he gets hot. But if Cabrera continues to get his regular playing time in place of Bonifacio, the trade will have been mostly a waste. With 55 games to go, my ideal playing time scenario would be for Gordon to play 30 games, Moss 35-40 and Cabrera and Bonifacio get about 50 each. You’re still getting everyone playing time, but the guys who are hurting the offense the most just don’t get as much. I think it’s a scenario that makes sense. We’ll see if they employ it.
• With the Indians injury issues, I think 90 or 91 wins takes home the Central, which is a 35-20 finish for the Royals. They’ve done that once this season, but with their streaky nature, basically anything is possible. I think they only need 86 or 87 wins to take home one of the Wild Card spots though, which is just a 31-24 finish. That’s a 91-win pace for an entire season, which is less wins than they’ve been on pace for since May 1, so that’s something that seems very doable for them. With about half their games left against teams who are at least decent, it’s not going to be an easy road for them to make the postseason, but they have their road map in place. Win about 63 percent of your home games and 55 percent of your road games and that gets it done. It’s not easy, but making the playoffs is inherently not easy. That’s what happens when you dig such a deep hole so early in the season. It takes a long time to dig completely out.
• I expect the Royals to scour the waiver wire over the next couple weeks trying to continue to add to their team. I know they were working up to the deadline to try to add some additional starting pitching, so don’t be too surprised if that’s where they turn. Remember, if a player is put on waivers, a few things can happen. If the player is claimed, he can either be let go to the claiming team for nothing, while that team has to absorb the whole salary, or he can be traded to that team for a player either not on the 40-man roster or another player who has cleared waivers, or he can be pulled back and then cannot be traded for the rest of the season. If he clears waivers, he can be dealt to anyone…or no one. Anyway, I think they could continue to work on a Marco Estrada deal as I expect him to clear waivers. They could also look to Scott Feldman if he comes off the DL (please no), Ivan Nova or maybe even R.A. Dickey. My guess is they don’t really see a need for a position player, though a utility guy like Jed Lowrie or even Sean Rodriguez might be able to work during this time period. You’re not likely to get a star in August, but you can get a guy who can fit nicely on a roster to help round it out. I won’t be surprised if they do nothing, but I imagine they’ll keep on looking for help.
• This is a continual talking point in Kansas City, but the bullpen seems to have a lot of people awfully concerned. And I get it. Kelvin Herrera has been shaky at times. Joakim Soria has seven blown saves and recently gave up the winning run in the ninth inning against Baltimore. The rallying cry has been mostly that Soria shouldn’t pitch the eighth inning. And if there was someone demonstrably better, I’d be all about that, but my question is if not Soria, then who? You could go with Mike Minor, who gave up a run last night and has given up runs in three of his last four games and give of his last night. You could go with Brandon Maurer, who has electric stuff but got lit up the other night and has a 5.86 ERA. Or maybe it’s Scott Alexander who randomly suffers from a complete inability to find the strike zone. Peter Moylan has been great, but he’s better served as someone who isn’t pigeon holed into a role because he can be used when needed throughout the game. I didn’t mention Neftali Feliz, but the guy the Brewers DFAed earlier this year who has struck out just 10 batters in 15 innings doesn’t seem ideal either. The point here is not that the Royals bullpen is doomed. I think quite the opposite. It’s very deep and filled with quality pitchers. While Soria isn’t an ideal option, he’s one of many options with plenty of good points but also with flaws. Heading into play yesterday, the Royals had the eighth best bullpen ERA in baseball and the seventh best bullpen DRA. This is a good unit. It just doesn’t have the dominant forces it once did. The Royals have some issues, but the bullpen as a whole really isn’t one of them.

It’s a sort of homecoming for Cabrera, who hit .305/.339/.470 for the Royals in 2011. He was an important part of a strong offensive team that summer, and was part of the quartet that raked over 40 doubles.

Just for fun, here is the batting order from March 31, 2011, the day Cabrera made his Royals debut.

Aviles – 3B
Cabrera – CF
Gordon – LF
Butler – DH
Ka’aihue – 1B
Francoeur – RF
Escobar – SS
Treanor – C
Getz – 2B

A bit of a different cast in those days, no? Of course, 2011 was the season most of what we now know as the core made their debut. Eric Hosmer was up in May. Mike Moustakas arrived in June. Lorenzo Cain was a September call-up.

Less than a week after addressing their pitching needs, the Royals needed a bat to reinforce the lineup. The switch-hitting Cabrera is hitting .295/.336/.436 with a .266 TAv which is in the neighborhood of his career output. He turns 33 next month and has moved past the prime of his career, but it’s a graceful offensive decline. You knew based on his history with the Royals and the proclivities of manager Ned Yost, he would probably hit second in the order, behind Whit Merrifield. That was confirmed in Yost’s postgame comments about the trade.

As Yost also said in the aftermath of the Royals series victory in Boston, Cabrera will be spending the majority of his time in right field. That displaces rookie Jorge Bonifacio, who is having a fine offensive campaign, hitting .263/.332/.454 with a .269 TAv. That raised some eyebrows.

On the surface, it would seem Alex Gordon would be the natural choice for the bench. His .201/.294/.296 and .226 TAv has been a drag on the offense. However, this is the Royals. Defense matters, and they are a team that is love with their defense – and with good reason. Gordon, despite the struggles at the dish, still provides value with his glove. His 5.7 FRAA ranks fifth among all left fielders this season. That’s enough to push his WARP (barely) into positive territory at 0.3.

Outfield defense is important to the Royals because of the makeup of their rotation. Ian Kennedy (48 percent) and Jason Vargas (43 percent) are in the top ten among starting pitchers in fly ball rate. Jason Hammel (42 percent) ranks 13th. No other team has two pitchers in the top 13 in fly ball rate. The Royals have three. And with the acreage at The K, it’s important for the Royals to have a stout outfield defense.

Cabrera carries a -5.3 FRAA in left field this season. Bonifacio has likewise struggled and has posted a -5.1 FRAA in right. With such a fly ball heavy rotation, to put man each of the corner outfield positions with below average defenders is putting a ton of weight on the glove of Lorenzo Cain. Cain is a guy the Royals need to be giving some regular rest to keep him healthy down the stretch, not adding to his responsibilities in the outfield.

Bonifacio has been a revelation for these Royals, so it’s difficult to imagine he would be pushed to the bench on a semi-permanent basis. The smart money says he’s part of a pseudo DH platoon with Brandon Moss where Bonifacio gets the majority of the plate appearances. Bonifacio, in his small sample size, has fared better against right-handers this year and has been split-neutral in the power department. Moss slugs almost 55 points higher against right-handed pitching in his career so he’ll get some of those starts. Bonifacio can spell Cabrera every once in a while in right, and can maybe give Gordon the night off in left when the Royals have someone like Trevor Cahill and his 26 percent fly ball rate on the mound.

(A Bonifacio-Cabrera corner tandem wouldn’t work with Duffy and his 41 percent fly ball rate. You could maybe get away with it as most of the balls hit in the air against Duffy go to center field, but as the leader of the staff, he should merit the best defense possible. Besides, he gets plenty of action in shallow left that it could be a dangerous defensive alignment.)

The move still represents enough of an upgrade that it’s a good one for this team. The challenge will be to share the playing time among Cabrera, Moss, Gordon and Bonifacio, but these things seem to have a way of working themselves out in the long run. Besides, a little depth in August and September is never a bad thing.

Cabrera is owed around $5 million for the rest of the year before he returns to the free agent market. The Royals will pay about half of that amount. After seeing what the Tigers got in return for JD Martinez where the Diamondbacks picked up all the remaining salary, the Royals desire to lessen the impact to payroll meant a prospect with a perhaps little higher upside was shipped to the White Sox. Clint Scoles had the write-up on what it means to lose last year’s top draft pick AJ Puckett.

For the rest of the fallout, Terrance Gore loses his spot on the 25-man for Cabrera. That is obviously the correct move. It’s difficult to justify Gore on a 25-man roster. Having a pinch running specialist on a three man bench seems misguided. He’s a weapon for sure, just one that makes a little more sense when the rosters expand in September. We will see him again in about a month.

• Sometimes a team will have a player come to the big leagues and be a complete surprise. We seem to see it with the Cardinals an awful lot. I feel like most people’s immediate reaction is “why can’t we have something like that?” I assume the “we” describes the Royals and not their personal life because that’d be weird. The answer is that the Royals do, and his name is Whit Merrifield. After a perfectly acceptable solid debut season last year, Merrifield has continued to improve. He’s hitting .294/.336/.489 and playing a solid second base for the Royals while pacing the offense at the top of the order. A big concern last year was that he was putting up his numbers because of an inflated BABIP of .361. This year, it’s .311. And if you say you saw it coming, you’re a liar. The 90^th percentile PECOTA projection for Merrifield was .296/.344/.428. He’s not hitting the ball that hard, but he’s avoiding soft contact, and he’s spraying the ball all over the field. I don’t know how long he can keep this up, but there’s a big benefit to a guy not making it until he’s Merrifield’s age and it’s that the Royals have the chance to have the kind of production he’s providing at roughly the league minimum during his prime seasons. So when you wonder why the Royals never have anyone who just jumps out and surprises, the answer is that they do.
• I think the Royals still need to target a bat. A lot has been discussed about Brandon Moss and his hot stretch in July when he’s hit .293/.379/.534, and it’s been great to watch. He’s been exactly what the Royals were hoping they’d be getting when they signed him a few months ago. The problem is that he’s been that for all of 66 plate appearances. A great sign is that he’s worked six walks in his last six games, so he’s clearly seeing the ball well, but I think the Royals really need some insurance for if he goes into the tank again. This offense isn’t built on a monster middle of the order, so they need depth. Yes, the Eric Hosmer/Salvador Perez/Mike Moustakas trio has been fantastic this year with a combined .295/.335/.530 average and 65 homers and 182 RBIs. That’s been great, but when the offense is clicking, it’s because they’re getting production from top to bottom, and I think there’s still too much risk that the bottom part of that equation goes in the tank and kills rallies. It’s not like Alex Gordon and Alcides Escobar are good bets to become offensive forces. Some options are the same as when I wrote about trade options a couple weeks ago, but Seth Smith, Steve Pearce, Melky Cabrera, Jay Bruce, Curtis Granderson, Howie Kendrick and Tommy Pham all make varying degrees of sense to help out this offense down the stretch.
• After the trade with the Padres to acquire Trevor Cahill, Ryan Buchter and Brandon Maurer, I think it was a fair assumption to think the Royals were done with big moves. They had set out to get a starter and a couple relievers and did so with one move. I still think that along with a bat they could use a fourth outfielder to give Lorenzo Cain some days off down the stretch, but we’ll see if that actually happens. What’s interesting is the talk after the deal that the Royals are still checking out some available starting pitching. One name that has popped up recently and gained a ton of steam Thursday was Francisco Liriano, and I implore the Royals to run the other way. He’s having a rough season, giving up a ton of hits, walking a ton and not striking out enough to make up for it. His 5.99 ERA is in line with his 5.61 DRA and he’s making more than $13 million this year, which means he still has nearly $5 million owed to him. I just don’t see the point after they’ve picked up Cahill. If they feel the need to get another starter, I totally get it, but they need to be looking at guys like Lance Lynn, Jhoulys Chacin or a longer-term type like Dan Straily. It’s not that Lynn or Chacin are great or that Straily or even a Sonny Gray are attainable, but I don’t see the value in giving up anything, and that includes money, for a guy like Liriano. I’m just thankful there haven’t been any Mike Pelfrey rumors.
• Here’s some fun with runs scored for Royals fans. Remember back in April when they went 7-16 and scored 63 runs? Oh, you’d just gotten past that memory? Sorry. Well, it happened. They averaged 2.7 runs per game and were pacing to be one of the worst offenses of all time. Anyway, those 63 runs in April were pretty bad. To put how far the Royals have come into perspective, they’ve scored 63 runs in their eight game winning streak. Yes, they’d have to be shut out in each of the next 15 games in order to have a 23-game stretch as futile as their April, and even then, they’d still have a better record. Since May 1, the Royals have scored 374 runs and averaged 4.86 runs per game. The AL average this season is about 4.7 runs per game, so that description pretty much fits what I expected from this offense this season. They’ve hit .267/.318/.445 in that time with 103 homers. Their 19.6 percent strikeout rate is higher than the Royals teams that couldn’t be struck out, but it’s still pretty darn good. Their walk rate is still pretty horrible. Basically, when I predicted an 86-76 season, the team we’ve seen since getting out of that brutally bad April has been what I thought we’d see. Granted, their 46-31 record would have them on pace for 97 wins, but I still feel good about my prediction to start the year. To look at some projections. If they keep up their current 53-47 pace, they’d finish 86-76. If they keep up their pace since May 1, they’d finish 90-72. If they keep up their pace since starting 10-20, they’d finish 91-71. And if they keep up their pace since last week, they’d finish 115-47.

• Mike Minor is going to be an interesting piece of the Royals offseason as he has a $10 million mutual option that is a pretty safe bet to be declined by at least one side. That $10 million is a little too steep to pay for one season of a reliever, but it’s also a perfectly reasonable price to pay for one season of a starting pitcher. Of course, the fact that the Royals are actually in the race makes it unlikely that the Royals will be giving Minor a few starts at the end of the season. So what do they do? He’s been such a good part of this bullpen that you’d hate to lose him for next season, but you also have Scott Alexander, Travis Wood, Richard Lovelady, Matt Strahm and others as lefty possibilities in the 2018 bullpen. My guess is the Royals let him walk and he finds a three-year deal for more money than he should probably get from some other team, but it’s honestly a little difficult to imagine the bullpen working without him because of how good he’s been this year. Considering where he was last season, this is a surprising conundrum to have, but not a bad one at all.
• The Royals absolutely need another starter. Contending teams can’t have Travis Wood pitching every fifth day, that’s for certain. But I think if they can find the right fit, the rotation has a chance to look really good. I know Vargas has struggled in his last couple starts, but I don’t worry too much about him. Where people do seem to worry is about Ian Kennedy and Jason Hammel. And look, I get it. Both of them have gone through stretches of multiple starts where they’ve looked more like DFA candidates than starting pitchers on a playoff team, but both have been really good lately. In Kennedy’s last six starts, he’s allowed eight home runs, which hurts the almighty FIP. But he’s also averaged a little more than six innings per start with a 2.68 ERA and just 26 hits over 37 innings. Hammel’s stretch goes back to the start of June. He’s lowered his season ERA from 6.18 to 4.81 by posting a 3.56 ERA in his last nine starts, averaging a touch over six innings per start. Neither pitcher is a world beater and Hammel certainly has an ability to go up in flames quickly, but they’ve both been really solid over the last few turns of the rotation.
• Danny Duffy’s start yesterday didn’t turn out great. I honestly think the heat just finally got to him after a phenomenal beginning to the game. If you saw him in the dugout after he was pulled, he looked like he was dripping about a gallon of sweat. Anyway, the point is that I’m willing to give him a bit of a pass for his dropoff in the fifth and sixth inning and focus on some serious pitch efficiency before that. Even with the last couple rough inning last night, Duffy is averaging 13.7 pitches per inning since coming off the disabled list. That’s the kind of efficiency you want to see. The one thing to keep an eye on is that Duffy got just five swinging strikes last night, which could very well have been by design. I mentioned the heat. If you’re in Kansas City, you know how hot it was. He very well could have been pushing for weak contact rather than swings and misses (though I hate that style for the most part). He had 11 swinging strikes in his first start back, then 13 in his second and then nine in his third. So there’s not a ton of reason to worry, but it’s worth keeping an eye on in Duffy’s next start.
• Brandon Moss is hitting a less than robust .205/.273/.410 this season, so it might be a little weird for me to say that he might be the key to the Royals making the playoffs in 2017, but they need another bat in that lineup and Moss has the ability to put up some monster numbers for weeks on end. Arbitrary endpoints and such, but he hit .337/.406/.737 over a 25-game stretch last season with eight homers and 18 RBIs. The guy is going to strike out, but when he gets on one of his hot streaks, you can absolutely accept that because he’s going to hit the ball hard when he makes contact. And all of a sudden, you look up and Moss has hit .333/.368/.611 in 38 plate appearances with four doubles, two homers and seven RBIs. It’s a very small sample and we’ve seen him get hot before in a small stretch, but if Moss is able to get on track this season, the Royals offense has a chance to take on a very different look and feel with hitters up and down the lineup who have the ability to do damage. We have 10 more days before the trade deadline and nine games for Moss to show the Royals they don’t need to make a move to get a bat that they can either slot in the DH spot or move some guys around to help the DH spot.