Royals Add Bullpen Depth in Trade With Diamondbacks

The Kansas City Royals are off to a slow start through the first 14 games of the 2022 MLB season at just 5-9. Kansas City sits in fifth place in the AL Central and his hoping to turn things around to keep pace with teams like the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Guardians, who entered the year with similar projections.

Kansas City addressed one area of need over the weekend by adding an arm to their bullpen, acquiring Matt Peacock from the Arizona Diamondbacks via trade.

Royals Trade News

Matt Peacock Royals

Peacock joins the Royals after being designated for assignment by the Diamondbacks on Thursday and Kansas City only had to send cash considerations to pull off the deal.

The 28-year-old righty is a former 23rd-round draft pick back in 2017 and owns 37 games of MLB experience. He's a versatile arm with eight starts under his belt, as well as 14 games finished and offers the Royals some potential long-relief help.

Peacock joins Triple-A Omaha to start, but has an opportunity to earn some big league innings dependent on his performance. The former Diamondback owns a 4.96 ERA and 1.73 strikeout-to-walk ratio in his MLB career, and is known as a ground ball specialist thanks to his sharp sinker.

Royals GM J.J. Picollo commented on the trade, saying "It’s a player we’ve been tracking.Somebody with the sink and the changeup that he’s got that’s reliable, a strike-thrower and just a good guy to put in the middle of a game," via The Kansas City Star.

Adam Taylor McKillop is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Adam Taylor also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username atmckillop. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in their articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.