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.

On Sunday, July 23, the Royals rallied against the White Sox. Down 4-3 in the eighth, Whit Merrifield homered to leadoff the inning and tie the game. In the next frame, Brandon Moss laced a double down the right field, scoring Lorenzo Cain from second to walk the Royals off to victory.

The win pushed the Royals to three games above .500. They were 1.5 games behind the Indians in the Central and were tied with the Rays for the second wild card spot, just a single game behind the Yankees. After stumbling out of the gate in April, the Royals were in the thick of the race as the trade deadline approached.

The next day the Royals announced their intent as buyers, making a trade with the San Diego Padres. General Manager Dayton Moore engineered a deal to send Matt Strahm, Travis Wood, Esteury Ruiz and cash to the Padres in exchange for three pitchers: Trevor Cahill, Ryan Buchter and Brandon Maurer.

It was a trade that made sense at the time. Lacking the killer bullpen that propelled them to the playoffs in 2014 and 2015, the team was looking to add relief arms with upside to the mix. They were also looking for some stability for the back end of the rotation. So the team added a rental starter with a pair of relievers with some team control beyond 2017. It wasn’t a sexy trade like the ones that brought Ben Zobrist and Johnny Cueto to Kansas City a couple of years earlier, but it seemed like a solid deal. One that helped shore up a couple of trouble spots on the pitching staff.

It couldn’t have gone much worse.

In Cahill, the Royals were taking on a pitcher who was working with a career best 12.6 percent whiff rate and a robust 10.6 SO/9. Although he had missed time earlier in the year with shoulder issues he had put up an impressive 1.1 WARP in 11 starts in San Diego. Extrapolated to a full season, that WARP would have been the second best of Cahill’s career.

Things completely imploded for Cahill upon his arrival. In his first three starts for the Royals he pitched a total of 11 innings, surrendering 18 hits, nine walks and 10 runs. The team shut him down after an abysmal start on August 9 with shoulder impingement.

By the time he returned in early September, the Royals playoff hopes were on life support and Cahill was exiled to the bullpen. He made seven more appearances, throwing 12 innings, allowing 11 runs and walking 12.

His limited numbers with the Royals were beyond awful. He finished with an 8.22 ERA, an 8.2 BB/9 and a 5.9 SO/9. Somehow, he landed on a positive WARP. Barely. It finished at 0.1.

The data from PITCHf/x suggests Cahill altered his release point just enough in Kansas City that his sinker flattened out and lost it’s drop. The results were devastating. He couldn’t buy a swing and miss on the sinker and batters punished it to the tune of a .636 slugging percentage against in August and a massive .783 SLG in September. Brutal.

Likewise, Maurer was a straight up nightmare working out of the bullpen. After navigating through three scoreless outings in his introduction to Kansas City at the end of July, he imploded in August and September. Over his final 17 innings covering 23 appearances, Maurer posted a 9.35 ERA with 10 walks and 17 striekouts.

Maurer was at his worst in high leverage situations. As defined by Baseball Reference, hitters teed off on Maurer to the tune of .476/.522/.762 in 23 high leverage plate appearances. That was 139 percent worse than the league average pitcher and the second worst performance in such situations on the Royals. Only Neftali Feliz was worse.

While he was still generating strikeouts, (a 9.4 SO/9 after the trade) his control abandoned him. With the Padres, Maurer had a 1.8 BB/9. That jumped to 5.0 BB/9 once he arrived in Kansas City. He posted a 6.48 DRA with the Royals and was worth -0.3 WARP.

Of the three, only Buchter had success. Searching for a workable solution in the bullpen pecking order, Ned Yost called on Buchter with great frequency over the season’s final two months. It’s understandable he lost a little heat off his fastball in August and September. His swing and miss rate on his four-seamer dropped from around 25 percent with the Padres to close to 20 percent in Kansas City. Still, he was able to find positive results on the back of a .173 BABIP. And yet, it didn’t seem like it was enough to earn the trust of Yost. He pitched in a couple of tie games early in his tenure, but was used mostly in blowouts in the first month and a half of his time with the team. It was only in mid September that he was consistently trusted to hold leads in close games.

While Buchter saw his walk rate drop after the trade (from 4.2 BB/9 to 2.7 BB/9) his strikeout rate saw a bizarre decrease. It went from 11.0 SO/9 with San Diego to just 6.0 SO/9 with the Royals. Despite limiting opposing batters to an impressive .216 TAv, Buchter saw his DRA jump to 4.76 after the trade. He posted just 0.1 WARP for the Royals.

The three players in the trade combined for a -0.1 WARP. None of the three contributed in ways the Royals likely imagined when they pulled the trigger on this deal. Cahill will hit free agency. Buchter and Maurer are slated to return to the Royals and may yet make something out of this deal. Maybe a new (as yet unnamed) pitching coach can unlock what appears to be some definite potential for both to emerge as decent options out of the bullpen. But as the team looks poised for another era of rebuilding, their successes will come too late to really matter.

• If the Royals do go into 2018 with expectations to compete, the bullpen is going to need to be a major focus for them, which is going to be a difficult task given what they already have committed to the payroll for next season. I think we all feel good about Scott Alexander in the bullpen next year and for all the disappointment of the Padres trade, Ryan Buchter has actually been pretty good for the Royals as well. Kelvin Herrera looked as good as he’s looked all year on Tuesday night, and a bounceback season from him would be helpful. Then you add in Joakim Soria’s solid season (I know there will be arguments on that given the blown saves, but he’s been better than you probably realize) and that’s not a terrible base to work with. Still, I think they need at least one more impact arm. Mike Minor would be perfect if money was no object, but I fear he’ll be looking for a deal like Brett Cecil got last season from the Cardinals and the Royals really don’t need to be spending $30 million plus on a reliever. The odds are that if they don’t spend big, which as a reminder, they shouldn’t, they’ll need to find a surprise either in the minor league system or a free agent. Whatever it is they do, the bullpen will need to be addressed.
• After the free agents leave, assuming they mostly do, this is going to be an organization filled with role players at the top. Having role players is not a bad thing at all. Great teams need role players, but they need stars as well. As much fun as it’s been to watch Whit Merrifield this year, if he’s your best player, you’re probably a bad team. If he’s a supporting player to your other three best, you have a chance to be pretty good. Right now, looking at the 2018 roster, there isn’t a star in the bunch, other than maybe Danny Duffy on the pitching staff, but even he hasn’t shown he can be a true star yet. The key for the Royals both next year and in the near future is Raul Mondesi, and I really wish he’d have gotten more at bats down the stretch. Hitting .305/.340/.539 in Triple-A with 41 extra base hits in just 357 plate appearances has made me hopeful again that he can be that top line player the Royals need so badly. He has looked much more comfortable in this stint in the big leagues, but he’s also played sparingly and had just eight at bats, so I don’t think that tells us much. I just know that if the Royals want to get back to the promised land relatively quickly, they need Mondesi to step up and soon. And realistically, they need someone else to step up as well. I see a few options, but I don’t have a ton of confidence in any of them. Hunter Dozier and Jorge Soler could be those guys if they take huge steps forward, but it might be a couple years while the guys in the lower levels progress through the system before we see someone else who could help support the role players.
• There is a bit of a problem with the Royals needing Mondesi and it’s that I’m terrified of what might happen with Alcides Escobar. Heading into action on Thursday night, he’d hit .333/.353/.512 in his last 56 games, spanning 171 plate appearances. That’s 54 hits with 20 extra base hits. The encouraging thing about it is that he’s only struck out in 10.5 percent of those plate appearances, so the extra contact will help a little bit, but he hasn’t exactly been tearing the cover off the ball with plenty of soft contact in that time. I have about the biggest worry I can that the Royals will look at this stretch and see Escobar as a player who just had a tough start to the season and will re-sign him to a one or two year deal. He was never truly as bad as he was during his horrifically slow start, but at the same time, he is not nearly as good as he’s been lately. If the Royals want Mondesi to develop into a star, he needs to be the shortstop. I have no doubt he could handle second or even center field as some have mentioned, but he needs to play shortstop, so the Royals better not re-sign Escobar or else I’ll write a strongly worded article about it, and ain’t nobody wanting that.
• This season hasn’t gone as we all hoped from the start, but there have been plenty of ups to go along with the downs that we would all like to forget. It’s been a season of wondering how the Royals would handle the core offensive players leaving, and now we’re about to find out. But through it all, you’ve been right there with us, so I just wanted to take this brief opportunity to thank you for going through this ride with us at BP Kansas City. We’ll do it again next year with a whole different cast and crew to get mad at for things out of our control.

• The Royals were committed to giving Alex Gordon some time on the bench to “reboot” as Ned Yost puts it. Of course, he started Thursday, so it’s hard to say they’re actually committed to it, but let’s pretend like it was just that they wanted to get him in there against a guy he’d had success against in the past. I’ll say this first: It’s 100 percent the right move. I’ll say this second: It blows. I know there are plenty who have never been a fan of Gordon, a stance I will never understand, but it’s out there. But for me, I’ve always loved Gordon and was thrilled when they gave him the largest contract in team history. Now, it looks like a disaster. The question is what they can do next. The answer nobody wants to hear is that they can hope that this season can be put behind him and he can be a productive player again in 2018 and 2019 because he’s not going anywhere, not right now anyway. Is there a way they can help him to get back to being a productive hitter? I can’t give you an answer for certain, but my method would be to find someone to work with him this winter. We know he’s a hard worker and will put in the time. Spend whatever it takes on that person who can bring out the productive Alex Gordon, even if it’s just a portion of what he once was. The defense is still outstanding, so if he can get to being a .240/.330/.390 hitter, he still probably gives you some No, it’s not what the contract pays him, but he’d at least be a valuable piece of the team. But yeah, it’s mostly just the closing your eyes and hoping, which is a miserable position to be in.
• I don’t know how much longer Salvador Perez is going to be out, and I don’t think the Royals really know either, even if they are trying to speculate a return date. They at least need to be looking around the league for an upgrade from Drew Butera/Cam Gallagher in case this either lasts longer, or recurs and he has to sit down again after he returns. The timing of this all is such a mess because if he went on the disabled list a week earlier, they could have easily acquired Jonathan Lucroy from the Rangers, who went for a PTBNL from the Rockies (and admittedly hasn’t been much to write home about anyway). But it was after the trade deadline, so now it’s time to hit the waiver wire. It’s hard to speculate who has cleared, who got claimed and pulled back and all that, but I would say guys to look at would be Kurt Suzuki, Nick Hundley, AJ Ellis or maybe Cameron Rupp. You’re not going to find any great names on this list, but all have their positive attributes that I think can exceed those of what the Royals currently have on their roster. It’s not the easiest thing for a deal to come together after August starts, but it’s also more than possible.
• When the Royals made their trade with the Padres, I really liked it because I thought Trevor Cahill would be a solid starter in the middle of the rotation while Ryan Buchter would provide a really good left-handed arm to pair with Scott Alexander and Mike Minor. I also liked acquiring the potential of Brandon Maurer and wondered if there might be a mechanical adjustment that could be made to help him actually pitch as well as it looks like he should. So far, my thoughts on the trade aren’t holding up very well. Cahill hasn’t looked comfortable yet and is sporting an 8.18 ERA in three starts, spanning just 11 innings. He’s also walked three more than he’s struck out. Basically he’s been early season Travis Wood, which the Royals already had. And now he’s hurt and on the disabled list, so that’s just great. Buchter has looked okay enough at times, so I’m willing to chalk his issues up to small sample, but Maurer looks absolutely out of control. His fastball appears to be straight as an arrow and he is making every right-handed hitter look like a better version of Mike Trout. It’s bad. I have no suggestion. Maybe he could try throwing his changeup to right-handed batters? They’re hitting .857 with a 1.714 SLG on his fastball as a Royal, and no, that’s not a typo, though the sample is small. He hasn’t gotten a single swing and miss on a fastball from a righty out of 40 thrown with the Royals and only has 13 out of 221 this whole season. Lefties are struggling to make good contact on his fastball, and maybe it’s because the changeup gives them enough reason to worry. I honestly don’t know, but anything is worth a try at this point. I guess the good thing is that we won’t hear many cries for Maurer to take over the eighth inning from Joakim Soria.
• Obviously the recent struggles have made things much more difficult for the Royals. Not only have they lost a ton of games lately, but that’s allowed other teams to get into what looked like it might only be a two or three team race for that final playoff spot. But like I said at the top, there is still good news to be had. With 48 games still remaining, including more than 20 percent of them against the Indians, the Royals have a chance to make up ground. One thing about this team is that we know they are capable of going on a run. A few weeks ago, they were down in the bottom of the ninth after blowing a lead and on their way to their eighth loss in nine games when they made a crazy comeback to win that game and then the next eight after that. Of course, then they started this stretch. Basically, they’re going to need to find a way to pull their collective heads out of their you-know-whats and get going. They head to Chicago and Oakland to face two teams that have thrown in the towel on this season. If they don’t go at least 3-3, I’ll personally throw in the towel on the Royals. Even if they go 3-3, I’m going to be skeptical, but at least they’ll be treading water before starting a tough stretch.

If you’re interested in the financial aspect of it, the Royals will add about $1.6 million to their 2017 payroll number by paying the salaries of all three new acquisitions along with Cahill’s $250,000 assignment bonus. He also has $250,000 incentives for starting 15, 20 and 25 games. It’s unlikely he reaches 25 starts at this point, but he could get to 20, which would earn him and cost the Royals an additional $500,000.

Let’s get back to the trade and look at the new Royals.

Cahill has made 11 starts this season, going 4-3 with a 3.69 ERA over 61 innings. He’s struck out 10.6 per nine and walked 3.5. He allows less hits than innings pitched and his 2.75 DRA indicates there might be more to what he’s done this season than the raw numbers show. In front of the Royals defense, he should be able to put up even better numbers. And, as I noted in my preview of starting pitchers the Royals might acquire, he can shift to the bullpen in the postseason relatively seamlessly as a late inning arm. Cahill was signed to a $1.75 million deal with incentives this season, so he’s not owed much in terms of base salary. Health is an issue with Cahill, but if he’s healthy, he’s a very good pickup.

Brandon Maurer has had a rough season, but he’s been serving as the Padres closer. He’s struck out nearly a batter per inning with excellent control but a 5.72 ERA. Like Cahill, his DRA is much better at 4.24, but unlike Cahill, it doesn’t change his performance from good to potentially great. He has a big-time fastball that averages 97 MPH plus to go along with a slider and changeup. If he can put it together, he has a chance to be an elite late inning weapon. In his career, that hasn’t happened, but the stuff is outstanding. Maurer is earning $1.9 million through arbitration and has two more years of team control.

Ryan Buchter is a lefty who is nearly impossible to hit (5.5 hits per nine the last two seasons) who gets a ton of strikeouts and walks more than you’d like. The home run has bit him a bit this season, but that wasn’t an issue last year. He throws his fastball a lot at about 93 and it really moves and it’s really good. He has a 3.05 ERA this season but a DRA that says that might be a bit misleading. The issue with Buchter isn’t the quality of his pitches, it’s where they go. If he has it under control, he might be the best pitcher in the deal, though he’s already 30, so the success could be fleeting. The best part about Buchter is that he isn’t even arbitration eligible yet and won’t be another season after this one, so the Royals have him through the 2021 season.

Now let’s take a look at what they gave up.

To me, the biggest name they’re trading is Matt Strahm. The lefty burst onto the scene with the Royals last season and was a key part of their August push back into the playoff ace. As we all know, he struggled this season early before finding his groove and then struggling again in his shot in the starting rotation before a knee injury ended his season. I love Strahm, so it hurts to have to give him up, but a lefty who can strike out batters like Strahm can and could potentially be a big league starter is tough to give up.

Travis Wood has been mostly terrible for the Royals this season, but he had come around in the bullpen prior to his entrance into the rotation over the last few weeks, but even if the Royals are still paying him, it’s good to be able to get away from his lackluster performance. I personally think Wood have been useful next season after getting away from the nightmare that was 2017, but I’m definitely not broken up about losing him.

While Strahm is the biggest name, Ruiz might be the one that hurts the most when it’s all said and done. He’s still in rookie ball, but as an 18-year old, he’s hitting .419/.440/.779 in Arizona in 91 plate appearances. He has speed, pop and the ability to play the middle infield for now. I’ll let Clint evaluate the Ruiz portion of this deal further, but his inclusion is the only part of this deal that makes me stop and think for a minute, but at the same time, an 18-year old in rookie ball isn’t something you should avoid dealing in a trade to make you better today.

My Analysis

I think the Royals did well here, but I don’t think this is a slam dunk win or anything. The goal is to make the playoffs in 2017 and the Royals improved their pitching staff in both the rotation and bullpen with one big move. I love Cahill if he can stay healthy, and I believe Dave Eiland can help to unleash the great stuff Maurer has. Add Buchter from the left side to go along with Scott Alexander and Mike Minor and the Royals bullpen is now deep and incredibly balanced with some serious power arms.

The Royals are in a bit of a tough position now because I think they could still use another bat to be considered favorites to make the postseason, but I’m not sure where they put that bat with Brandon Moss now hitting. This trade, though, makes them legitimately formidable in the playoff race and, I think, gives them a leg up in the Wild Card race at least and might be able to get them over the hump in the AL Central as well.