Soto has been smoking hot.

I need to tell myself no one knows if these guys will be good, the internet is full of morons who act like they know who these guys will be in 5 years.

KC is trying to make this a great year in DC.

Fall from Grace in rapid motion. No soup 4 U

Hope we get decent returns for Moose and Whit

What will Lucas Dud return?

One thing that hasn't been talked about much, but this trade deadline will be interesting to watch because so many teams are tanking.

The last couple years, the 2 wild cards has kept a bunch of teams in the race. This year there are so many teams who never had a chance. There looks like 5 teams who are already the playoff teams in the AL, unless you think the Tigers or Twins can catch Cleveland.

The National League looks a little more competitive, the NL West is wide open, but we still don't have a feel if the Braves or Phillies will make any big moves or just ride their prospects. This doesn't really feel like a normal year.

That's just how it goes in KC. If we're buyers, it's a seller's market. If we're sellers, it's a buyer's market. If we have a top pick, nobody is worth the pick or they go right before we pick.

*** Official 2018 Royals Repository ***
 

I’m still not nuts about this deal. Thoughts after gleaning some more and checking with a few guys:

I think the Royals are higher on both Gutierrez and Perkins than the current consensus on those players.

I get why they love Perkins. He’s very fast and an excellent defender. The bat will determine if he’s a 4th OF type or a legit starter. He does have a nice walk rate... so if he can continue to develop he hit tool, there’s a high ceiling there.

Best case for Perkins would be something like Dyson ... except without the platoon split. If he could provide that defense and 90 percent of the baserunning with the offensive profile Dyson has against RHP, that’s a star, and I think that’s what they’re banking on.

Gutierrez is also a Royals player. He’s a plus defender at 3B (and I have to wonder how he’d hold up at 2B, where his offensive profile would play up quite a bit). He can run. Good contact profile. Lots of tools.

Ultimately, the Royals kind of returned to their tools-driven focus. We’ll see if it works.

The lotto ticket pitcher is, like Elvis Luciano, pretty interesting. 17 and bumping up to 95, with room for more? Interesting.

I’d still rather have Kieboom or Antunes and think they might have been able to make that work straight up, but that’s me.

If it's our pick in the draft, they'll go to commercial.

I see the Braves as possible trade partners for Moose, and they have a pretty good farm. I don't think we would get the return we would like to get, but still; they could use an upgrade at third.

Anyone think Whit will get a better haul at least on paper then Herrera did? Even if it's 1 player, I feel like he has more value then moose right now

Yep, a lot of people seem to completely forget that. The Royals weren't sellers last year, they were buyers. And it was the correct strategy.

Trey Hillman was even worse. He destroyed Gil Meche's career because he wanted to prove that pitch counts don't matter.

Will be interesting to see if his last outing was just a bad day.

@Matt_Winkelman: Looking at it a bit deeper, I get why the Royals moved Herrera now, especially only getting maybe 75 cents on the dollar. Velocity and results have trended down each month