While not making it their intent this year, the Royals once again have a handful of players they may be interested in flipping this summer. Doing so could fetch some helpful minor leaguers, while clearing the way for younger Royals to gain valuable experience. It’s exactly what happened last season, and it’s the only thing that could salvage this wretched campaign.

The players in the clubhouse know it’s coming. It’s a harsh reality, but one they accept. It affects them professionally – who wouldn’t want to be traded from a cellar-dweller to a playoff contender mid season? But it also affects them professionally – should they move their families for what could be only a couple of months?

“It really doesn’t affect your daily approach to things at all,” said Terrance Gore, who was acquired late in the 2018 campaign by the playoff-bound Chicago Cubs from the Royals. “It more affects your family more than anything. You may have to pack up and leave at any point and time on short notice. But as a player it really doesn’t affect you. You just go out there and play the game the way you’ve been playing.

“If it happens, it happens. Sometimes it’s a good thing. Sometimes it’s a bad thing. But leaving the Royals, because I’ve been with the Royals so long, it’s definitely a bad thing, because I’ll always be a Royal no matter where I go. But if it happens to you, it’s just something you have to live with.”

Major League Baseball set a hard deadline for trades this year – July 31 is the cutoff. So deals may start happening a little earlier than in years past.

Players like Gore understand that deft trades at mid-season can change history. When the Royals won the 2015 World Series, it was in large part due to the trade-deadline acquisitions of Ben Zobrist and Johnny Cueto. And last year, the Royals were on the selling end, shipping Moustakas at the deadline to the Milwaukee Brewers for Jorge Lopez and Brett Phillips.

“Every player does look at it as an opportunity,” Gore said of being traded to a contending team. “It’s a chance to contribute to something special.

“We look at it as a business. Sometimes giving away one player you can get two players in return that will make the team better in the long run. I’m always a Royal, and anything that will help the organization in the long run, I’m cool with it.”

A few one-year flippables on the team might have some value on the trade market. First and foremost is Jake Diekman. While the bullpen has been pretty awful as a whole, the 32-year-old lefty has been tough, with a WHIP barely above 1.00 and more than 13 strikeouts per nine innings. The Royals signed him to a one-year deal knowing he could very well be trade bait.

Sadly neither Wily Peralta nor Brad Boxberger – other relievers on one-year deals – won’t attract similar trade interest.

Homer Bailey’s hot and cold performances might not attract a great haul, but some team in need of a starter might give him a try.

Two one-year position players might bring some prospects, if just the right trade partners can be found.

Martin Maldonado holds tremendous value for any contending team who finds itself in need of a catcher down the stretch. Maldonado is a whiz defensively and has shown he can quickly bond with a pitching staff. He won’t be a difference maker with the bat, but he could save a season for a team in need of a rock behind the plate.

Outfielder Billy Hamilton has failed to provide much offense, but the rest of the league knows what he can do: play great defense and steal bases. A team that could use a late-game pinch runner and defensive replacement could get some real good out of the 28-year-old speed demon. Trading Hamilton would also open a spot for prospect Bubba Starling to finally make his long-awaited debut.

The Royals should do anything and everything necessary to trade all of the players mentioned above. None of them fit the organization’s future plans, and will just be taking up space if they are on the roster after July 31.

And none of them hold any sentimental value to the organization. That cannot be said, however, for Alex Gordon, whose contract runs out after this year as well. Would the Royals actually consider trading the local product, the pillar of the franchise and fixture in the community?

Other teams have traded cornerstone stars at the deadline – Justin Verlander, David Price and Yoenis Cespedes are just a few from recent years. But for a beleaguered club to trade a guy who’s labored faithfully for 13 years is hard to envision.

Other difficult deals to swing could involve guys with more than one year left on their contracts. It was reported (although General Manager Dayton Moore denied it) that the Royals are open to trading nearly everyone on their current roster.

If a deal can be found for Ian Kennedy, the Royals shouldn’t hesitate. He shows some potential as a reliever, but he won’t be with Kansas City past next year, and his contract is an albatross.

Whit Merrifield would probably bring the most in return, and the Royals might be open to dealing him, despite having three very affordable years left on his contract. If Jorge Soler continues to crush home runs, he might also have value on the trade market. And Danny Duffy might be attractive to some team.

Those three players should only be traded for a haul in return, as they each hold value for the ongoing rebuild. But if enough is offered in return, none should be considered untouchable. Gordon might fall in a different category, and it would understandable if the Royals choose to keep him.

Otherwise, let the wheeling and dealing begin!

After breaking out of a dreaded 10-game skid with a sweep of Cleveland last weekend, manager Ned Yost declared that the Royals “are a better team than the 10-game-losing streak showed.”

Some statistics back up that statement. On April 11, following the last of the 10 losses, the Royals’ 4.5 runs per game was just below the American League average. They were also in the middle of the pack in slugging and in on-base-plus-slugging percentage (OPS). And on that date, their six quality starts from pitchers was in the upper half of the league.

So, if the offense and starting pitching was average to above, what was the problem during that stretch? One word: bullpen.

The Royals had blown four of six save opportunities, and seemed to have no answer for how to close out a game they should win.

While a myriad of problems led to the 58-104 disaster of 2018, the bullpen was the leading culprit. Losing with youngsters in the everyday lineup and in the starting rotation was bad enough. But when the team had a chance to win, blown opportunities by the bullpen were particularly galling.

The Royals thought they had purged the worst of last year’s relievers. They cut ties with Blaine Boyer, Justin Grimm, Brandon Maurer and Burch Smith – guys who combined to allow 181 hits and 141 runs over 143.2 innings.

They added two veterans in Brad Boxberger – a former closer in Arizona – and Jake Diekman, a tandem that couldn’t possibly be as bad as the quartet they’d just banished. Could they?

Turns out, in the early going, they could.

Boxberger, in particular, has been dreadful. He’s surrendered more than a run per inning, and his pitching has led directly to a loss three times already in this short season. After Boxberger blew a lead on Monday at Chicago, Yost essentially stopped using him, turning to other options.

With a few more wins under their belts, things in the bullpen don’t seem quite as dire as they did a week ago. Despite the rough start, Diekman and Boxberger will probably remain a factor. They continue to take the same attitude as they took to begin the season.

“The most important thing to being successful is seeing every day as a new day,” said Boxberger, who, with 77 career saves, has seen his share of success. “No matter what happened the day before, you might be called upon again the next day, so you have to be able to put that out of your mind and believe you can succeed the next day.”

Diekman said that, on top of trying to pitch effectively, he and Boxberger will try to provide a veteran presence as Yost relies more and more on youngsters like Richard Lovelady and Scott Barlow.

“We have a lot of pitchers with very, very good arms,” Diekman said. “They might not be the most experienced down there, but they have the ability to have success up here. So if (Brad or I) can give them any knowledge or ease the growing pains, then we’re happy to do it.”

Yost tends to believe in veterans to know how to turn things around. A week ago he seemed to be more frustrated with the poor showing by those young members of the pen.

“We have some very young pitchers who need to understand how good they are when they step on the mound, and get on the attack,” he said after the sweep of Cleveland last Sunday. “They’ve got to trust their stuff and attack.”

The Royals opened the season with high hopes that oft-injured Kyle Zimmer was ready to play a role in the pen. But having so little in-game experience, Zimmer might not have been ready for the jump to the majors. He struggled with his command and was sent to the minors to figure things out.

Another guy who dropped the ball was Tim Hill, a key lefty last year. He was also sent down, as was the more experienced Kevin McCarthy.

Next to disappoint was Lovelady, whose promotion had been much anticipated due to his success in the minors. Other youngsters like Jake Newberry and Glen Sparkman have had spotty results as well.

But the season is still young. With the emergence of converted started Ian Kennedy as a reliable option in late innings, and expected improvement from Wily Peralta, there is still time for the pen to go from a weakness to a strength. Those two veterans, plus Barlow and Lovelady, combined to hold the fort in recent wins.

“We’ve got a really special group of guys,” said Barlow, who saw limited action in 2018 and is starting to see his role expand. “Everybody gets along really well and with everybody helping each other, I think down the road, as the days and weeks go by, we can really feed off each other and do something special.

“It’s a lot of just building off each other. We’re starting to get into a better routine, taking care of our business. We’re definitely asking the older guys for help when we need it. And as each guy pitches well, we’re feeding off of each other.”

Baseball seasons are not a sprint. They are most definitely a marathon.

Particularly for bad teams, which the 2019 Royals will most likely be, this means that what fans are talking about at the start of the season is probably not what they’ll be talking about at the end.

That being understood, here are the Royals’ Top 5 Stories for 2019:

1) Emphasis on speed: Baseball may be a marathon, but that didn’t stop the Royals from packing their roster with sprinters. Over the past couple of decades, major league baseball has deemphasized speed, making feast-or-famine power hitters the top commodity.

The Royals, however, have chosen to zig where others zag. Embracing the true concept of “moneyball” – seizing upon undervalued commodities to create mismatches – the Royals have stocked their lineup with guys who cover a lot of ground defensively and create havoc on the basepaths. The Royals won a championship in 2015 by emphasizing defense and relief pitching. But now speed is the name of their game.

To stolen base king Whit Merrifield and blazingly fast Adalberto Mondesi, the Royals have added one of the game’s top speedsters in Billy Hamilton. As if that wasn’t enough, they are retaining the services of a “designated runner” in Terrence Gore, probably the fastest of the group.

The Royals are basically running an experiment on the rest of the league: can you do what others aren’t doing so well that it creates a mismatch? Time will tell. But if the Royals wind up losers, it won’t be because they didn’t try something creative.

2) Salvy’s absence: How much will Salvador Perez, out for the year with an arm injury, be missed? So much of what Perez brings to the team can’t be quantified. So it will be difficult to tell. But he will certainly be missed by adoring fans who love his smile, his comedy and his Salvy Splashes.

In terms of defense, the acquisition of Martin Maldonado will greatly soften the blow. Recently acquired to fill in for Perez, Maldonado has an elite arm and the other defensive skills to go with it. Whether he can immediately step in and manage the pitching staff is questionable. But Perez will be with the team for much of the year, which will help.

3) Rebuilding the bullpen: The Royals bullpen can’t be any worse than it was last season. Four guys – Blaine Boyer, Justin Grimm, Brandon Maurer and Burch Smith – combined to allow 181 hits and 141 runs over 143.2 innings. All four are gone, and the Royals are banking that a couple of newly-acquired veterans will be a tremendous upgrade.

The Royals plan to employ a “closer by committee” approach. Returner Wily Peralta was a perfect in 14 save opportunities last season. He’s joined by Brad Boxberger, who saved 32 games in Arizona last season, and 41 games back in 2015. Also new to the pen will be veteran lefty Jake Diekman.

4) The potential of Mondesi: If you watched the opening day win over Chicago, you saw his rare combination of speed and power. The 23-year-old lashed two triples to open the campaign.

In less than half a season last year, Mondesi cracked 14 homers and stole 32 bases. If he can just get on base at a high enough rate, he will be the Royals’ next superstar.

5) The resurgence of Kyle Zimmer and Bubba Starling: Remember those two names? In 2011 and 2012, the Royals selected Starling, then Zimmer, with their first picks in the amateur draft. They paid them each a lot of money, and placed upon them the hope for their future.

Injury upon injury produced perpetual setbacks for the two prospects. Starling couldn’t hit. Zimmer disappeared completely. And with a gaping hole in their farm system, the Royals couldn’t help but regret the two picks. The book appeared to be all but closed on Starling and Zimmer.

This spring, however, Zimmer performed a Lazarus-like comeback, shocking the Royals in spring camp, then dominating in every live exhibition. Now the guy who when healthy has reputedly the best “stuff” in the Royals organization, is a surprise addition to the big league club. We’ll see if he’s still healthy and effective come September, but for now, his resurgence is a great story.

Starling, meanwhile, finally appeared healthy and able to hit this spring. He’ll start the season at Triple-A, but he might eventually join Zimmer in Kansas City as another successful reclamation project. Getting something out of these two onetime prospects would provide quite a lift to the Royals’ rebuild.