The Mets and Royals have spent the last 20 years acting like old trade partners who stopped returning each other’s calls.
That’s what makes this stretch so strange. These are two clubs that have crossed paths plenty over the years, from future stars to forgotten names.
New York and Kansas City have swapped players with real impact before, and they’ve also exchanged pieces that never quite worked out the way anybody hoped. Kevin McReynolds for Vince Coleman is one of the cleaner examples of that kind of deal.
But if you’re looking for a true midseason trade between the Mets and Royals, you have to go all the way back 20 years.
The last direct in-season deal between the two teams came in 2006, when the Mets sent infielder Jeff Keppinger to Kansas City for Ruben Gotay. It was a small move, not the kind that changed a pennant race, even though New York was in the thick of a run to Game 7 of the NLCS.
Gotay didn’t appear in the majors for the Mets in 2006, but he came back in 2007 and put together a solid stretch at the plate, hitting .295/.351/.421 in 211 trips. He was only 24 at the time and looked like he might be building something.
New York moved on anyway, and he ended up claimed by the Atlanta Braves before the 2008 season. He hit .235 in 88 games there and never played another major league game.
Keppinger’s path turned out very differently. He got a brief look with the Royals in 2006 and hit .267 over 22 games.
Kansas City then traded him the next offseason for a player who never reached the majors, while Keppinger went on to break through with the Cincinnati Reds, batting .332/.400/.877 in 241 plate appearances. He stayed in the big leagues through the 2013 season and finished with a career line of .282/.329/.384.
There have been a couple of later transactions involving both clubs, but not the kind of straight-up midseason swap that counts here. In February 2021, the Mets, Royals and Boston Red Sox were part of a larger multi-player deal that brought Khalil Lee to New York and sent Josh Winckowski and Freddy Valdez to Boston. In December 2017, the Mets dealt Burch Smith to Kansas City for a player to be named later or cash.
And in 2025, the Mets sent Diego Castillo to the Royals for cash, though that comes with an asterisk.
Still, if you’re being strict about it, the 2006 Keppinger-Gotay trade is the last direct trade the Mets and Royals have made with each other. For two teams that once did plenty of business together, that’s a long silence.
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