I think the majority of us now realize its too late for this and would rather sell now than be buyers.

Hope so. Some head in the clouds, unrealistic type folk still hold onto some fantasy that after over a 100 games, a team is some how going to change its spots, but I agree that most see it for what it is. It was apparent in the spring that this was a .500 ball club and that's exactly what they are. To mortgage any piece of the potential future would be beyond idiotic, which is why I fully expect it to happen by tomorrow.

**** the wild card. We coming for YOU Detroit!

I think that's a matter of the window for a player acquisition helping enough rapidly shrinking.

I know I've beaten the Byrd drum pretty hard, but I've been doing it since early in the season, and the cost for a guy like that in prospects should NOT be incredibly high.

In 10 years. /Dayton

Dayton just needs another five to ten years, and we'll be able to compete for the second wild card slot.

Hey, we gave you a carousel and a whiffle ball park, what do you want from us, people?

or we could have just kept Santana around...

I love armchair GM. Sign Sanchez and Santana! Of course t takes two to tango. Did it ever occur to anyone most FA really don't want to play (or frankly live) here? We are poor and we're not a sexy city for a 30 year old male many of whom are Latino anyway. We ha to trade for Shields because a guy like him normally won't sign here.


People will whine about Shields all day (even though the Fangraphs article says he's been the 13th best pitcher in all of MLB since coming and has been "everything we hoped for"). But we all know the culprits of our failure and last nights game was great reminder of why Shields can't take us to the playoffs.

Yup. Free agents aren't coming here without being paid a little more or having family in teh area, etc.

The Shields trade was always a boom or bust move. I was incensed initially and gradually came around to being more OK with it IF the Royals made the playoffs during his tenure.

If KC doesn't make the playoffs with Shields, it's a losing proposition for the Royals. Just no way around it.

And they still can make the playoffs. And, they could do it without making any trades. I would rather nothing happen than give up a prospect with great potential.

As far as selling, for Shields, they'll get a comp pick. For Holland, Davis, etc, they might actually get more by trading them in the offseason, IE, the Grienke deal.

We can't do that, and there is not a GM in baseball who would make that move, given the history of the club, the fanbase, and the reality of what the Shields trade meant.

This is not video game or strat-o-matic baseball, this is the real thing, with a team that hasn't made the playoffs in almost 3 decades, and after you have already essentially gone all-in for this season 2 years ago.

A few people in this thread have basically said that we're out of it anyway, so we may as well get what we can, but they are just flat-out wrong. The odds are not good, but even the most pessimistic simulations still have it at about 10-15%. Trading Shields and Holland for some low-level prospects undeniably harms if not destroys what little playoff chances we have. Maintaining those small odds for this season is worth more to the team and the fans than what little we may be giving up by not trading them. I wouldn't add to the team, we pretty much need to win or lose with this team, there's no sense in burning some real high-level prospects to improve for this season. But, we just can't wave the white flag.

We weren't going to the playoffs with Shields or Myers. It's stunning to me that people can't see such an obv concept.

The only way the Royals can trade Shields is to get a return that helps the team this year or the Royals lose the PR battle with majority of the fan base.

Good point, to the extent that we may miss out by not trading Shields, some of that is mitigated by the pick we get after he declines the QO. So what we're missing out on by going for it with Shields is the marginal difference between that pick and whatever we would have gotten.