To be fair, neither Breslow nor anyone associated with baseball ops outside of possibly Kennedy (at least that I'm aware of) has ever mentioned anything about 2024 being a year they'd try to contend (obviously Werner strongly implied it and I believe Kennedy may have, but I'm not certain, and don't know if he's considered baseball ops, but so as not to get 20 Sam Kennedy quotes, I'll just assume he is and he did).
Sure, it might be a "fire sale" but lets also not pretend we're talking about selling off the 1997 Marlins here.
This is a MLB roster that has finished not only in last place in their division (admittedly a beast) but considerably out of the playoff picture the past two years. Personally, I'm actually glad that it doesn't seem like Breslow is under the belief that the organization as presently constructed at the upper levels (which I'll call MLB, AAA and AA to include prospects that are right on the cusp) is good enough that it should be held on to.
It's also not "adding around the edges" away from being close to contending. It's missing arguably the biggest thing necessary to win a title (unless you're the 2015 Royals) in an ace starting pitcher, as well as something else I'd at least personally consider in the top 5 ingredients (SP3). They have an SP2 (Bello) and two middle of the line up bats (Devers and Casas) but the roster around those players isn't particularly good.
The MLB roster isn't good. AAA isn't either and has no pitching prospects (possibly excepting Fitts if one wants to call him AAA). AA has two players that we're all very excited about, but have COMBINED for less than 20 games at AA and one starting pitching prospect - that isn't seen inside the top 100 prospects in the game by any site we're aware of.
I made a joke about it earlier in the off-season but I think that saying "the only things you're missing about being a playoff contender are two top half of the rotation starting pitchers" likely means that you're team kind of stinks. I mean, in that mindset, roster to roster, the Royals are about as close to contending as the Red Sox. I was hoping they'd go out and acquire 2 of guys like Nola, Yamamoto, Montgomery, Gilbert, Cease, etc this off-season. If they can't do that, they might as well sell because without adding two top half of the rotation pieces to go along with Bello, the team is going nowhere.
If Breslow can't add those two kind of starters, literally, anyone outside of Bello, Casas, Devers, Grissom, Anthony, Mayer and Teel should probably be actively shopped (if one wants to add Crawford to this group fine, but I put him far behind those other 7 pieces). The 2024 team is not Jorge Soler (or Adam Duvall) and Mike Lorenzen away from being a real contender for even WC1 or WC2, and without adding two top half of the rotation starters, it wasn't going to be.
It absolutely stinks and sucks and stinks to be in this position, but when you don't bother doing anything to address long term starting pitching for 3 seasons other than signing some international signees (and the only thing you do in 4 seasons is trade for Nick Pivetta) you're going to be bad.