First of all, it hasn’t been any fun turning on the TV the past two years and not seeing the Royals in the playoffs. Though it was only a two year run, watching the Royals in an unforgettable Wild Card game and 6 playoff series turned a ton of people into playoff baseball watchers.

That’s gone now. But you can’t turn on the TV and not see one of our boys on the screen. The number of former Royals littering playoff rosters is astounding.

2014 or 2015 Royals in the 2018 playoffs:

Brewers: Lorenzo Cain, Mike Moustakas, Erik Kratz

Rockies: Wade Davis, Drew Butera

Cubs: Ben Zobrist, Terrance Gore

Dodgers: Scott Alexander, Ryan Madson

Braves: Lane Adams

Athletics: Liam Hendricks

Royals from other seasons in the 2018 playoffs:

Brewers: Joakim Soria, Jeremy Jeffress, Manny Pina

Cubs: Jesse Chavez

Athletics: Trevor Cahill, Ryan Buchter

Indians: Melky Cabrera

Braves: Lucas Duda, Peter Moylan

Did you think you were losing your mind when you saw Wade Davis throwing to Drew Butera? Last time you saw that in a playoff game, the Royals mobbed the field to celebrate winning it all.

No, you’re not having a flashback. You really are seeing 11 players you got used to in Royal blue during 2014 and 2015 playing in the playoffs this year…in different uniforms.

It will most certainly evoke some bittersweet sentiment. The good thing about this situation is that those Royals teams are being referenced plenty during this year’s broadcasts.

Eight more former Royals, most notably Joakim Soria, are going to be in the thick of things this year.

Two guys who won’t, however, are two of KC’s former top prospects. Mike Montgomery, who figured prominently in the Cubs’ 2016 series championship, didn’t get on the field before the Cubs were knocked out in the Wild Card round. And Sean Manaea, ace of the Oakland pitching staff, was felled by injury earlier in the year. Think the A’s didn’t miss Manaea when they had to start another former Royal Liam Hendricks in the most important game of the season?

Watching Cain bound out of the dugout to chase down Moustakas after his game-winning hit Thursday night certainly looked familiar.

You can either watch the 2018 playoffs and be constantly reminded of what recently was in KC. Or you can chose to not watch and avoid the rush of memories. But you can take it as a bit of confirmation just how good those Royals clubs were. Every other team currently in the playoffs seemed to notice.

The Royals just drafted a passel of pitchers, including using their first five picks on college arms, to stock their empty farm system. None of the current top seven Royals prospects are pitchers, but they just took a few who might crack that upper echelon.

Immediately thereafter, the Royals added even more pitching prospects by trading rent-a-player Jon Jay.

But why was there such a dearth of arms in their system in the first place?

The problem was created in the summer of 2015 when the Royals traded five minor league pitchers to acquire Ben Zobrist and Johnny Cueto for the World Series run. None of the 800,000 who jammed downtown Kansas City for the parade complained about the price paid to acquire Zobrist and Cueto.

Dayton Moore calls pitching “the currency of baseball,” and he spent it with conviction to gain the crown.

Now, with a flag flying over Kauffman Stadium and no pitching talent in their farm system, it’s time to evaluate the cost.

On July 26, 2015, the Royals traded reliever Brandon Finnegan plus minor league pitchers John Lamb and Cody Reed to Cincinnati for Cueto, the starter they needed to get over the hump.

Then just two days later, to acquire Zobrist, the Royals dealt Sean Manaea, their prized pitching prospect, and Aaron Brooks, a reliever who had seen some time in the Kansas City bullpen.

The price seemed appropriate, but losing Finnegan and Manaea was a bitter pill to swallow. It only grew more distasteful as Manaea became the ace of the Oakland staff.

So when Manaea tossed a no-hitter on April 21 of this year, Royals fans couldn’t help but reflect on which could have been. Considering the failure of Danny Duffy and Ian Kennedy this season, and the struggle of Eric Skoglund to adjust to the big leagues, Manaea would look awfully nice fronting that group.

Manaea said Royals fans shouldn’t view it that way.

“It worked out for both sides. I’m really happy for where I am right now, and really happy for how it worked out for the Royals,” said the 26-year-old lefthander who is scheduled to face the Royals on Sunday. “It was awesome when they won the World Series. I couldn’t have asked for anything better for them. They did a really good job putting it together at the end (of 2015).”

Manaea said he wasn’t excited at the time to be traded away from the team that drafted him in 2013, but knows that it made sense.

“It was weird at the time, but ever since I got (to Oakland), everybody’s been really cool and I kind of eased into being a part of this team. So I was really fortunate that the Royals gave me a chance, and I understand that (being traded) is just a baseball-type of thing.”

Much as the Royals might wish they had Manaea in their rotation today, they didn’t lose much in dealing the other four pitchers.

Three years after the Cueto trade, the Reds aren’t benefitting at all from it. When the Reds come to Kansas City on Tuesday, they’ll bring none of the three former Royals with them.

Finnegan looked like a stud in his stint with the Royals, and trading the 22-year-old probably stung more than the loss of Manaea at the time. But after a solid 2016 in Cincinnati, Finnegan hasn’t accomplished much. He’s currently laboring in the minors, as are Lamb and Reed.

Brooks, meanwhile, hasn’t pitched in Oakland, or anywhere in the majors, since 2015. He was traded that winter and hasn’t resurfaced from the minors.

So the cost of the championship was essentially just Manaea. Unfortunately for Kansas City, however, other pitching prospects have failed to pan out, or have succumbed to injuries, leaving the Royals’ farm system nearly devoid of pitching prospects.

Now one of the worst teams in baseball, the shoe is on the other foot for the Royals. They are in a rebuilding process, with plenty of pieces to trade in Kelvin Herrera, Mike Moustakas, Lucas Duda and Jason Hamel, all of whose contracts are up after this season. The Royals might even decide to make others such as Whit Merrifield and Duffy available if the price is right.

Will any of these trade pieces bring a return like Oakland got in Manaea? One can only hope.

With hardly any of the fanfare of the annual NFL and NBA drafts, the major league baseball draft, which will begin Monday, will have a long lasting affect on the fortunes of the Royals, a franchise desperate for an infusion of new talent.

Not only will a lot of young amateurs become rich men tomorrow, but the futures of franchises will be largely determined by the selections made. The baseball draft is much more of a crapshoot than are the drafts of the other major sports. A surprisingly small percentage of the young players drafted will ever reach the major leagues, much less make a significant impact on the franchises that invested millions of dollars in them.

With a farm system widely viewed as the worst in baseball, the Royals need to build upon the work they did in the draft a year ago. Fans have their hopes pinned on a crop of 2017 draftees who are currently honing their skills at the A-ball level. The Royals selected high school first baseman Nick Pratto in the first round, then added a couple of other highly thought-of prospects. Based on rankings from this spring, the Royals added their second, third and fourth best prospects in the most recent draft.

They have an excellent opportunity in 2018 to stockpile even more talent. Thanks to compensatory picks awarded for the loss of free agents, the Royals possess four of the top 40 picks in this draft.

It won’t be for several years, however, before we know if the Royals drafted well or not.

Even taking into account slow development, generally you expect a high round draft pick taken out of college to reach the majors in 2 to 3 years, and one from the high school ranks pick to reach within about 5 years. In each case, that puts the player arriving at the big league level at about 23 years of age.

Using this criteria, high school players drafted between 2008 and 2013, and college players drafted between 2010 and 2015 should make up at least a portion of the Royals roster. Some advance a little quicker, some develop a little slower.

With this in mind, the Royals current problems can be blamed in large part upon unproductive drafting in the first round the past several years.

Considering that baseball drafting is very hit and miss, the Royals were considerably effective with their top picks in the 2000s, which led directly to their success in 2014 and 2015. Zach Greinke (drafted in 2002 and flipped for key pieces in 2010), Billy Butler (2004), Alex Gordon (2005), Luke Hochevar (2006), Mike Moustakas (2007) and Eric Hosmer (2008) were all taken while the Royals drafted in enviably high positions each year, due to their dreadful performance at the big league level.

Sadly, time marches on, and the Royals needed to continue their run of success in the first round of the draft to backfill as those players aged and their big league contracts ran out. For a variety of reasons, that hasn’t happened.

Imagine if, in the five years following the drafting of Hosmer in 2008, the Royals had used first round draft picks on two front-line starting pitchers, a legitimate shortstop, third baseman and centerfielder. Those players would all be relatively new to the big leagues and under club control for the next several years. With pieces like that in place, the current rebuild would be more like a reload.

Unfortunately the players described above are not to be found in Kansas City.

In 2009, the Royals drafted Washburn Rural’s own Aaron Crow, a college pitcher who contributed to the Royals rebuild, but was derailed by injuries. In 2010, they took college shortstop Christian Colon, who was with the Royals during their World Series runs, but contributed little and is now unwanted by any team.

Then the really bad luck started. In 2011, the Royals felt compelled to draft Bubba Starling a local stud with limited baseball exposure. In 2012, they selected a coveted college pitcher named Kyle Zimmer. Injuries and poor performance have knocked these two completely off course, and it’s doubtful either will ever produce anything.

In 2013, the Royals drafted Hunter Dozier, who may still contribute something to the big league club, but certainly hasn’t set any worlds on fire.

If you want to make yourself ill, take a few minutes to look over the list of players drafted shortly AFTER the Royals made those selections. You’ll find names like Mike Trout, Chris Sale, Francisco Lindor and George Springer.

The Royals did do one thing for which they deserve credit: they drafted a couple of pitchers in 2013 and 2014 that they traded for key pieces in their World Series run. Pitchers being the commodity that they are, the Royals wisely dealt Sean Manaea and Brandon Finnegan to ensure a championship.

The bad luck continued in 2015 when the Royals used two first round picks on high school pitchers who have thus far been huge disappointments. In 2016, the Royals did not have a first round selection, having forfeited it to sign free agent Ian Kennedy.

So it’s easy to see why the top picks from 2017, and those who will be drafted this week, are so crucial to the Royals rebuild.

Now obviously, just as not all first round picks are sure-fire stars, first rounders aren’t the only ones who make it to the majors. Fortunately, the current Royals include some diamonds plucked from the rough, namely Danny Duffy and Eric Skoglund (3^rd round), Jason Adam (5^th round), Whit Merrifield (9^th round), Kevin McCarthy (16^th round), Jakob Junis (29^th round) and Tim Hill (32^nd round). The Royals need to continue to scour solid big leaguers from the lower rounds. But it’s in the first round they must turn the tide.

The Royals will make some young men very wealthy Monday. Will those draft picks restore the fortunes of the Royals in turn? Kansas City is the only team with four picks in the first round. Draft history shows that not all four of those picks will reach the major leagues, much less turn into stars. But the addition of several quality prospects, combined with the solid class taken in 2017, could go a long ways toward shaping a brighter future for the franchise.