Kansas City Royals Getting Inquiries About Prominent Reliever
The Kansas City Royals are out to a dreadful start this season. They are currently 11-27 and in last place in the American League Central. Outside of the Oakland A's, they have the fewest wins in all of baseball.
As a result, the Royals could be one of the few early sellers on the trade market, and they may be able to corner the market on selling.
Since baseball implemented the extra wild-card team in 2022, more teams will be in the race longer. As a result, teams will wait longer before selling. Some teams likely won't even sell at all because they think that they have a chance of making a run in the second half of the season.
Also, the other really bad teams: The A's and Nationals -- don't have many players to sell or like the current youth that they are playing with and don't want to.
Enter the Royals, who have some valuable veteran pieces like catcher Salvador Perez and reliever Aroldis Chapman -- the latter is already receiving trade interest, per Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic.
Chapman is of to an excellent start in Kansas City, where he signed this offseason. He's 1-2 but has a 2.84 ERA and has struck out 20 batters in just 12.2 innings.
The longtime Reds, Cubs and Yankees closer has a lifetime 2.48 ERA and 316 saves. He made his major league debut in 2010 with the Reds, spent part of 2016 with both the Yankees and Cubs and then signed with the Yankees in the off-season of 2017, where he stayed until this offseason.
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