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Royals trade rumors: Scouting Padres for corner OF, middle IF?

The heart of all good rumors is obviousness. The Royals need help and the Padres have a surplus.

By Justin Bopp
Denis Poroy

The Kansas City Royals were scouting at Petco during Saturday's game between the Padres and the Dodgers, according to Bill Center of U-T San Diego. Center suggests they were scouting corner outfielders and middle infielders while other teams on hand were observing Edinson Volquez.

The logic follows. The Royals, sitting at 34-38 one month away from the deadline, look like a club that is one or two decent hitters away from being a legitimate threat for a Wild Card. Their biggest need is clearly in right field, where they've juggled Jeff Francouer well past his due date (several years ago by my count). But they also need help at second base, as do most teams.

Enter Padres. Center describes potential options for the Royals:

The Padres could have a surplus at the middle infield and corner outfield positions when the likes of second baseman Jedd Gyorko (as soon as Tuesday), shortstop Everth Cabrera (July 2) and first baseman Yonder Alonso (around July 1) start returning from the disabled list.

Here's a look at potential options:

Year Age Tm Lg G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS
Gyorko 2013 24 SDP NL 60 255 232 36 66 17 0 8 1 0 20 54 0.284 0.341 0.461 0.802
E. Cabrera 2013 26 SDP NL 69 317 275 37 84 11 4 4 31 7 32 52 0.305 0.382 0.418 0.8
Alonso 2013 26 SDP NL 54 212 190 22 54 7 0 6 3 0 15 30 0.284 0.335 0.416 0.751
Guzman 2013 29 SDP NL 56 131 119 16 28 7 0 3 1 0 10 32 0.235 0.300 0.370 0.67
Quentin 2013 30 SDP NL 51 191 160 26 41 12 0 7 0 0 22 32 0.256 0.361 0.463 0.824
Amarista 2013 24 SDP NL 69 157 147 21 37 9 1 4 0 0 8 30 0.252 0.29 0.408 0.698

Gyorko and Alonso would make any Royals fan jump out of his or her chair, considering those lines are better than anything the Royals have on hand. Just look at those homers and consider both would be at or above the Royals' team leader (Gordon, 6)! (!!!!!). The red flag in the top three is clearly Cabrera. His 2013 line looks nice at first glance, but that's a huge jump from his career .254/.334/.346.

None of those are likely traded by the Padres, though. More likely one of the lesser three in the chart above -- Jesus Guzman, Carlos Quentin, Alexi Amarista -- are movable, not that any of those terrible lines are too much for GM Dayton Moore to overcome. Sorry, Royals fans.

Edit: original article reflected a complete misread of the U-T San Diego article. Corrections to include likely trade candidates added. Thanks to reader kirk.kern for his gracious tip. -jbopp

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