They're especially complicated for small market teams like the Kansas City Royals. In this sport, when you're a bad team, the teams competing for the postseason smell blood in the water and attack. It's a process of unloading veteran players with expiring contracts and gauging trade interest in your team's players. For teams like the Royals, prospects are vital to overall success because of their monetary constraints in paying players. There's an amount of luck that is baked into a baseball season, but you have to be early in identifying when guys' productive years may be coming to a close.