Royals Rundown: A Kansas City Royals Podcast · Kansas City Royals Baseball

The Framber Valdez signing has the Royals sweating and other news tidbits with Max Rieper

·1 hr 18 min·5 clips

The Tigers' $115 million deal for Framber Valdez just pushed the Royals out of first place in the division projections.

Valdez lands with the Tigers, and suddenly the Royals conversation has a little more sweat on it. Jeremy opens in the loose Royals Review style: Jacob is out again, Max is back after a pinch-hit appearance, and the Adam Frazier joke gets its moment. The mood is casual, but the roster math is not. The question sits there right away. Did Detroit sign Valdez because Tarek Skubal might leave, or because the Tigers want both of them? Jeremy treats it as Tigers news that still lands close to Kansas City, because Detroit is part of the Royals' problem. Skubal winning arbitration makes it feel less theoretical. If Valdez is joining Skubal instead of replacing him, the road gets meaner. Then Max pulls the thread back through Royals history. He starts with David Cohn leaving Kansas City for Ed Hearn, a deal that still hurts even with the context included. Cohn was local and promising, but Max does not sell him as a sure thing. The Royals had pitching after a World Series, and Hearn made sense at the time. Then injuries wrecked Hearn's career, while Cohn became one of the best pitchers of his era. The later Cohn trade stings in a different way: Kansas City got him back, then moved him to the Blue Jays for pennies on the dollar after the strike and the death of the Coffmans. Jeremy brings a newer bruise with the Padres trade involving Travis Wood, Astori Ruiz, and Matt Strom for Cahill, Maurer, and Buchter. He liked it then, which only makes the disaster funnier in the worst way. The three-team Jermaine Dye deal for Nathie Perez gets named too. The episode winds down with a Jason Pargan book recommendation, a nudge toward Royals Review for news and daily fun questions, and the usual Go Royals.

As heard by us

A Tigers deal opens into a bruising Royals trade-history conversation.

This Royals Rundown starts with a Tigers deal for Fran Bervaldez and Tarek Skubal's arbitration win, then uses Jeremy and Max's setup to ask what it might mean for the Royals. It lands best when it turns current news into franchise memory without sounding canned.

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Why you'd press play

If the Tigers' Valdez deal has you thinking about Royals scars, start here.

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