The year was 2017; the month was January. In the quiet of baseball’s winter, a month away from Spring Training, the Kansas City Royals were preparing for an inevitable dismantling of the team that returned championship baseball to town — core players Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Lorenzo Cain, Danny Duffy and Alcides Escobar figured to be lost to free agency after the 2017 season. There was no reason to believe the notoriously frugal Royals would deviate from their norm of letting expensive free agents go.
Everyone knew it was coming, this last realistic chance for the Royals to contend for a postseason berth before entering a painful rebuild necessitated by free agency and the financial limitations of small market baseball, a lethal combination for a franchise renowned for its stingy approach to expensive players.