Royals Buying Or Selling? Writer Predicts KC's Strategy After Recent Surprises

The Kansas City Royals were a tough trade deadline team to project all along, but their moves so far were still fairly major surprises.

Trading for rental outfielder Randal Grichuk was intriguing, considering the Royals are still below .500. But extending starting pitcher Seth Lugo made all the sense in the world; it's more surprising that Lugo agreed to a new contract without testing the market first.

Now that the Royals have made one acquisition and taken their biggest trade chip off the market, is it reasonable to call them "buyers" between now and Thursday's deadline? Or could there still be some subtractions?

On Monday, Mike Axisa of CBS Sports listed the Royals as "somewhere in the middle" on the spectrum of buyers and sellers in a trade deadline preview. And Axisa also attempted to predict the Royals' strategy the rest of the way.

"The math is not in their favor -- Kansas City is four games behind the third wild-card spot with four teams ahead of them -- though they did just trade for rental outfielder Randal Grichuk this past weekend," wrote Axisa.

Starter Seth Lugo agreed to a new extension over the weekend, taking him off the market. The Grichuk trade indicates the Royals are a soft buyer. Surely they would like to dig up a long-term outfield piece, and doing that would require some level of selling."

Grichuk is mostly expected to be used against left-handed pitchers, so the Royals still have at-bats to dole out against righties for a new outfield acquisition, or potentially full-time at-bats if it's a player who projects to start in Kansas City for the long haul.

The question, though, is who the Royals would trade if it's not going to be Lugo. You won't get nearly as much for Michael Lorenzen, and the rest of the important pitchers on the staff are all under contract for 2026.

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