Dayton Moore on the Royals’ path after the draft and heading into trade season

In completing this summer’s first-year player draft, the Royals have hurdled over what was arguably their biggest challenge of the 2018 season.

But there’s no time for general manager Dayton Moore and team executives to dwell on what the organization believes was a successful draft. There’s too much left, yet, for the team to accomplish.

Like restocking the depth they cleaned out of their organization when they won the World Series nearly three years ago.

And like maneuvering the trade deadline, another event in this 2018 campaign that will bring the Royals to a crossroads.

They can stand pat and play the next 100 games with the likes of Mike Moustakas and Kelvin Herrera, two of a few players contending teams might consider making a play on in the next seven weeks.

Or they can let their guard down a little ways and listen to all manner of proposals that could improve the farm system.

The Royals already have made such a move: They traded outfielder Jon Jay to the Arizona Diamondbacks on Wednesday, acquired a pair of minor-league pitchers and in the process became one of the first teams this season to strike a pre-deadline deal.

It’s reasonable to think that as they continue a slide into baseball’s cellar they’ll try to empty out the major-league coffers as a means to an end.

But Moore isn't approaching the trade deadline that way.

“We’re not gonna move players just to move players and just because everybody thinks we ought to clean house,” Moore told The Star. “We have to get value in return or it simply makes zero sense to do that.

"Winning a major-league game is very important. It affects the morale of your team, the morale of your organization and the morale of your fan base. That’s why it’s important to win major-league games. We may make two or three deals or we may make no deals the rest of the way. It just depends."

Here’s more from The Star’s post-draft phone interview with Moore.

On not wanting to wait any longer to trade Jay:

As soon as we feel comfortable with any deal, we do it. I don’t care if it’s right at the deadline.

We won’t make any deal unless we feel like it’s a fair deal for both clubs. In fact we have been known to make sure a team gets fair value back, make sure they get appropriate information and bend over backwards to make sure everyone feels comfortable.

That’s how every organization looks at it. Everyone wants to do good deals for each other. It’s the professional way to handle business.

And everybody has a different value on the player.

Arizona clearly wanted Jon Jay. And this wasn’t the first proposal, this wasn’t the second proposal or the third proposal. This was maybe the fourth. There was a lot of back and forth before we executed this deal.

On the Jay trade coinciding with Jorge Bonifacio's impending return from the restricted list:

It’s not like Jorge Bonifacio is a five-year or a 10-year vet. He hasn’t even had an at-bat this season yet. He’s gonna have ups and downs. So, no, we didn’t trade Jay anticipating Jorge coming back.

We traded Jon Jay primarily because we got a good proposal that made sense for our future, that added young quality pitching depth to our organization. … We felt like we needed to be aggressive there.

On the type of talent the Royals will focus on as the trade deadline approaches:

We’re always focused on pitching. Premium positions athletes — players that can play up the middle.

The pitching is always a big part of that, as you know. You need so much pitching in your system, so much quality pitching, to build a quality pitching staff.

On the draft accomplishing much of that:

We set out to get some quality pitching and we wanted to get some college guys that we felt still had some upside. We think they clearly do. We like our draft right now.

But there’s 30 teams in baseball that are telling their owner and their president that they just had a great draft. Nobody says they had a bad year.

This story was originally published June 7, 2018 at 9:05 PM with the headline "Dayton Moore on the Royals’ path after the draft and heading into trade season."