The Orioles lineup is almost entirely guys they drafted or signed out of Latin America. Their starters are almost all guys that they acquired through trades with other teams or off the scrap heap. Oh yeah and also Ryan O'Hearn having a career year.

Not to mention guys like Jackson Holliday tearing up the minors.

They are what the Royals wish they could be.

The Royals would have likely gotten a decent haul bad they traded Barlow 2 weeks ago but they Royaled yet again and waited to long..

So lets add him to the list of..
Merrifield
Davis
Moustakas
Kelvin Herrera
Etc etc etc

Of guys they waited to long to move and got a pile of shit in return.

Soler was a shit return? :rolleyes:

He was good for 1 year then they waited to long and got nothing for him also..

Running trend here...

Moose trade was Jorge Lopez and Brett Phillips. That was a good return. Royals misused them. Not bad for a pure rental signing.

Herrera is a reliever those are generally junk trades league wide

They had an aggressive trade with the Nats worked out in 2016 and Davis got dinged at just the right time to blow it up.

I don’t think there was ever a great trade window for Moustakas or Herrera (unless we’re talking about completely blowing up a team coming off a WS win or skipping “one last try” before 2017).

The type of return they got for Merrifield is the type of trade they were getting offered 2 and 3 years before. Seriously.

They’ve been in talks on Barlow. I don’t think they’re sitting on their thumbs.

There’s plenty to ding the team for. I don’t think trade situations with any of the guys mentioned is really it.

Found where Mecca got it from
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Royals got nothing for Whit Merrifield. They got nothing for Kelvin Herrera. They got nothing for Wade Davis. They got nothing for Mike Moustakas. And now they may be about to get nothing for Scott Barlow. This organization is so completely inept it’s embarrassing.</p>&mdash; Royals Farm Report (@RoyalsFarm) <a href="https://twitter.com/RoyalsFarm/status/1683209734810218496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 23, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Nothing burger

I get it and I always say it in these threads but the trade market has been generally dead for a long time unless you're trading Mookie Betts. Merrifield they could have gotten more out of, but the rest of those guys I don't know what you're expecting really. Moustakas literally had to come crawling back here because no one wanted to sign him in the first place. The big market teams like the Dodgers and Yankees hang on to many of their big prospects as much as the small market teams anymore and it jacked the trade market up.

You aren't getting a top 100 guy for Herrera or Moose, etc. Actually they basically did get a top 100 guy for Moose in Brett Phillips. I think he was off the list by that point but it hadn't been THAT long since he was a top 100 guy which was an amazing return really.

Jorge Soler was definitely a major piece for Wade, especially since he was coming off of an arm injury. The dude literally now shares our franchise record for home runs. To pull off a trade like that in 2017 has to be looked at as a success even if it didn't result in us being above .500

The thing of it is, they made a big push in 2021 to be sneakily competitive with Soler being a big part of that equation, especially after we showed real life in the shortened 2020 season. Unfortunately for the org, Matheny's red-assed "chase every win" grind it out mantra was never going to work over 162 games and we got bad Soler to start the year.

I'm sure if there was a decent trade on the table for Barlow, then they would have taken it.

You know what is super discouraging?

So we are bare in the upper minors, but holy shit our lower minors are even more bare. A and advanced A are literal trash when it comes to bats. Dayton literally destroyed this team and the farm system. I don't even know what we could possibly do to make it even average.

Witt is 23
Garcia is 23
Pratto is 24
Melendez is 24
Waters is 24

All of those guys should be on trade block.

And everyone of them play and we have one of the worst offenses in the league, so what's your point?