At this point, any relevant conversation about the Royals has to do with the trade deadline. They'll almost-surely be one of the bigger sellers in the coming weeks, with close to a half-dozen possible players making up a group of likely candidates to be moved by the August 2nd deadline. So which teams might JJ Picollo and company target when the time comes? Speaking to 610's Cody and Gold on Thursday, Royals Insider Josh Vernier broke it all down.
"I would say the Angels," he said. "I would say the Seattle Mariners. The Mariners haven't been to the postseason since, what, Ichiro's rookie season? Take advantage of them. Of course, the New York and LA teams, you can always be aggressive with them because it's World Series-or-bust. Same thing can be said for Houston, for St. Louis. Milwaukee right now is floundering, they're starting to come back to the pack in the NL Central. There are plenty of teams that I know would pick up the call. And I know plenty of teams can use Scott Barlow, Josh Staumont, Whit Merrifield, Hunter Dozier, Michael A. Taylor as a fourth outfielder ... The Royals have assets, assets that I think they need to be more willing to move this year than they really have since they moved Wil Myers back in 2013. That's the kind of aggressiveness you'd like to see."
You can listen to the entire interview in the embedded player below: