The Royals passed on the obvious deadline pivot, and now they’ve made 2027 the year that matters
The Kansas City Royals could have taken the easy road at the trade deadline. With the season sinking, the record ugly, and more than a few important players headed toward free agency over the next two offseasons, they had a clear chance to treat 2027 as a bridge year and aim bigger for 2028.
They didn’t.
Instead, Kansas City stayed quiet, and the message from the top was unmistakable: the Royals believe they can contend in 2027. That was the thrust of JJ Picollo’s post-deadline remarks, when he made clear the club does not see itself as a teardown project.
“When you go around the field, we’re not rebuilding a team… All that being said, as optimistic as we were going into this year, we hold the same optimism for next year. We believe we can compete. We believe this wasn’t a teardown for us.”
John Sherman backed that up Monday in his annual radio one-on-one after the deadline, saying he still supports Picollo and the front office and expects the organization to build a more competitive club next year.
“I mean, look, JJ has done a good job. I spent a couple hours with him today, as a matter of fact.
This is the time of year, particularly in a situation like this post-deadline, we’re going to try to play the best baseball that we can and win as many games as we can out here in this season. But it’s time to start thinking about ‘27 and what we need to do to get ready to put a better product on the field…
…And again, back to our division. You talked about Cleveland and others.
This thing’s tight. We had some bad breaks this year.
We didn’t execute well as well, but you know we would expect to be in the hunt next year. But look, we got a lot of work to do.
I’m not predicting anything. I think the proof will be in the pudding, and we’ve got a lot of work to do as soon as this thing’s over in October.”
Sherman also pointed to the payroll as evidence of the club’s intent.
We have our payroll that I think is probably at the highest sustained level as the Royals maybe ever have had, right? And it didn’t work out this year, and that’s frustrating.
But it doesn’t take away from what we want to accomplish here. We want to win.
We want to win now. We think that our division is still there for the taking.
Now, I can say that today, but we’re in last place. We’re 20 games below .500.
Those results are unacceptable. It doesn’t really matter why you lost those games, how you lost those games, the kind of setbacks, because those are the results that we’re going to have to live with, and it’s compelling that we kind of dig out of that and come back on behalf of our fans here.
That stance puts a giant spotlight on 2027. The Royals chose not to sacrifice that season in the name of a cleaner path to 2028. If they’re going to push forward now, then 2027 has to work.
That’s a risky bet, especially with the way this season has gone. The team’s bullpen has been a disaster, the offense sits 24th in the league, and the rotation leans heavily on Seth Lugo, Michael Wacha, and Noah Cameron.
Once that trio gets nudged off balance, everything starts to wobble. Injuries have made things even messier, with just about every major piece spending time on the injured list.
The standings and the gate numbers tell the same story. Kauffman Stadium has drawn over 2,500 fewer fans per game than last year, and the Royals are on track to finish with a record that will almost certainly land in the 90-loss range, not 100, but close enough to make the point.
Picollo’s track record is part of why Sherman is willing to stand by him. Compared with Dayton Moore, Picollo has at least moved the organization forward; he put together a playoff team in his second full season, while Moore didn’t deliver a winning record until his seventh. Still, Picollo also owns part of the decline after the World Series run a decade ago, so the trust here is far from automatic.
The reason this all matters is simple: the Royals now get judged on a very short timeline. If they win in 2027, the bet pays off and the front office gets to say it saw the right window. If they miss again, the consequences are enormous.
At that point, it becomes hard to imagine the Royals ever getting back to October with Bobby Witt still in the fold. Witt is effectively under contract through 2030, with a player option after that, and another lost season could drag the club into a transition year where his value as a trade chip starts to loom larger than his value on the field. If that losing keeps piling up, the possibility of him forcing his way out, a la Zack Greinke a decade and a half ago, starts to hang over everything.
That’s what makes 2027 such a dangerous promise. The Royals have said out loud that they want to win now, and they’ve left themselves no hiding place if they don’t.
If they’re right, the noise goes away fast. If they’re wrong, the fallout will be loud, and it won’t stop with the roster.
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