What are Kansas City and Oakland doing?

 Normally this blog is dedicated to the actions and future of the Cleveland Guardians and their players.

Still, today, I have to digress.  As I look over baseball and see what Oakland and Kansas City are doing it gives me awful flashbacks to what the Indians did when I was growing up.  The A's and Royals are currently connected not only in the origin of their franchises (Kansas City (before that Philadelphia for the A's)) but also from their recent fire sales that appear to be aimed more at clearing salary than in firing up a rebuild.

Nothing highlighted this better than the two recent trades the Royals made, trading Adelberto Mondesi and Michael Taylor and getting back three relief pitchers, two of them minor leaguers yet to pitch in the majors and a 3rd who was hurt all of 2022.  

To put this in perspective Jonathon Mayo wrote a recent article where he polled MLB executives about the strength of MLB farm systems.  He asked these execs to rate the best farm systems on a number of criteria:

• Best farm system
• Uses draft the best
• Uses international market the best
• Has the most underrated farm system
• Hoards its prospects the most
• Develops pitchers the best
• Develops hitters the best
• Best at developing sleeper prospects

The Royals finished tied for 5th in developing sleeper prospects.  The A's finished tied for 9th in developing hitters.  

That is it!  You would figure that a team like the A's that has had the multiyear fire sale it has had would have finished higher in SOME category.  The Royals, who routinely draft near the top of the draft would likely have had one of the stronger farm systems, right?

These results ring so true for the Indians of my youth through my 30s.  The way the Indians operated back then was a big contributor to them being a consistent also-ran for a long period of time.  I really worry that the A's and Royals are not doing these veterans-for-prospects trade well enough and, maybe, are not doing them well at all.

I don't like the return the A's got for Murphy.  Not sure of the quality of their return for their other veteran trades but given what they settled for from Atlanta (no players who were even in MLB's top 100, sort of a group of tier 2 and tier 3 prospects, quantity over quality) and their current farm system rank, I can't believe they did as well or better in those other trades, either.

I hope they have things figured out more than the surface evidence would indicate.   From my long-range perception, which does limit what I know about these deals, it appears to me that they have not jump-started their rebuild with these veteran-clearing trades,  Maybe I am completely wrong and the value they received will turn into important pieces for their future teams.  I really do, but I have lived through this same thing with the Indians so what Kansas City and Oakland are doing doesn't give me a good feeling.

Just for comparison, here is where the Guardians ranked in these categories:

• Best farm system - Tied for 5th
• Uses draft the best -Tied for 6th
• Uses international market the best - Tied for 4th
• Has the most underrated farm system - Tied for 9th
• Hoards its prospects the most - 1st (Tampa was 2nd, duh!)
• Develops pitchers the best - 1st
• Develops hitters the best - Tied for 9th
• Best at developing sleeper prospects - 4th

It is good to be a Guardians fan these days and it is better than that to be a prospect geek Guardians fan.

I wish the A's and Royals the best of luck in their rebuild for their fans' sake and for the health of baseball in those two cities.  If these teams had worked with the Guardians instead of (my impression) that KC did not want to trade within their division, or that the A's (or KC) only wanted to rob the Guardians in trades (Daniel Espino? Really?) they likely would have done better than settling for much less elsewhere.  Maybe, I am wrong about the quality of the Guardians' prospects.  Maybe I am wrong about what Oakland wanted from us for Murphy (What say you Andre Knott???).  

Not sure but, if you are an older Indians' fan and you see what is going on in KC and Oakland, it might very easily look to you like deja vu all over again.