Iron Whit

So...Mike Moustakas has left the Royals. There are only a few pieces left from the 2015 Championship team left. And the top performer on the Royals right now...is Whit Merrifield. A guy who came up the year after they won the championship. A guy who has nothing to do with the past regime...and might be a good person to build the next generation of Royals teams...

Heck, this is perfect for the Royals. In the next few years, the Royals are going to need to figure out what to do with the larger contracts, like Salvador Perez, Alex Gordon, Danny Duffy and Alcides Escobar. The general progression seems to indicate that the 2015 team may need to be shed in order to succeed further in the next few years, because there's too much of a dissonance between the older players, even with newer contracts, and the younger ones that are trying to move the team forward. The Royals can't seem to decide which part of the team they want to emphasize more at this point, and that's what's dooming them.

So having Whit Merrifield, who, while 29, is still one of the younger, more consistent options of this Kansas City team, is definitely a step up from where they could be, as Merrifield could lead the team to another postseason run if the Royals call up younger players to compliment him. However, it's a question of how long the Royals will take before they have a workable roster that can chase the division that concerns me. Because...take out those four contracts, and you have a mess of a team with only a few outliers that can play well. I also don't know how long it will take for the farm system to rebound from its exhaustion during the 2014-15 seasons.

There are a ton of questions right now in terms of the Royals, but at least the 2018 ones have answers: they're probably not gonna make it to the postseason, or out of fifth. They just need to ride the season out and hope things get better.

Coming Tonight: One of the most consistent catchers of this era.