Light up the hot stove

The offseason is here.

The countdown is on: Just 105 days until pitchers and catchers report.

I took the opportunity of the Royals losing in the playoffs to unplug for a bit and recharge. Did some travelling. Drank some wine. Got a massage. Had a mud bath. Watched some soccer. Read. Voted. Things one does when decompressing.

I watched some of the World Series, but not all of it. Count me among those less than thrilled with the matchup we had this year, but damn if I didn’t enjoy the soul-crushing defeat the Yankees suffered at the hands of the Dodgers. That’s a loss that should sting for quite some time. Good.

But now that the Dodgers have been crowned the champions and awarded the piece of metal from the commissioner, it’s time to get back in the swing of things. It’s hot stove season, baby.

The surest sign the winter is here came courtesy of the MLB Transaction Bot on Bluesky:

Robbie Grossman is in that group, as is Josh Taylor.

This isn’t really much of anything but it’s fascinating to me how a roster evolves over the season. Technically, the Royals have eight players off their roster as free agents, but five of them joined either at the trade deadline or just ahead of the rosters freezing for the postseason. Will Smith wasn’t effective when he was healthy and finished the year on the IL. Taylor, acquired for Adalberto Mondesi, was on the 60-day IL for the third consecutive season after going down with biceps soreness in Spring Training. Only Garrett Hampson was with this team every single day. I’m pretty certain I know how you feel about that.

Maybe if you squint, you can see a reunion with a couple of these guys. Michael Lorenzen could slot into the rotation. He will be 33 next year and pitched to a 1.57 ERA once joining the Royals. Beware the small sample though as that was just 28.2 innings where he had an outrageous 89 percent strand rate. In Kansas City, he really amped up the use of his sweeper, exclusively deploying it against right-handed batters.

Could Tommy Pham be a candidate to return? Here’s what Anne Rogers had to say:

The Royals also liked the competitive fire Pham added to their clubhouse, and as they try to take a bigger step in their contention window next year, his personality and leadership could be a boon throughout a long season.

As I’ve immersed myself in the sabermetric pool, I have evolved enough as an analyst to realize the personalities who comprise the clubhouse certainly have an impact. I didn’t really think Pham was a true fit on this team with the vibes they gave off during the first five months of the season and the “Boys are playin’ some ball” ethos. The 2024 Royals could be a joyful bunch. I would not describe Pham as “joyful.”

I did enjoy some of his live blog takes at The Athletic during the end of the World Series.

TA: You have any take on the Mookie Betts/Yankees fan interaction? What would you do in that spot?

Pham: Buddy touching me would be a problem. Keep your hands to yourself.

To say it would be “a problem” is probably understating the situation. As I texted a friend, if Pham had been in Betts’ position, we’d still be sorting out bodies in the Bronx.

My favorite moment of the postseason didn’t happen on the field. It was just before Game Three of the World Series when Salvador Perez was introduced as the 2024 recipient of the Roberto Clemente Award. This is just such a tremendous honor and I can’t think of anyone more deserving than Perez.

Just in case you haven’t seen some of the work Perez does off the field, I’m going to pull directly from the Royals press release, because it’s worth knowing:

• Each winter in Venezuela, Perez and his family distribute bags of food and kitchen supplies to upwards of 2,000 homes in the neediest parts of his hometown of Valencia. He knocks on doors and often goes to the pharmacy for those who need medicine. Over the last decade, he has directly impacted over 10,000 families who have received much-needed relief.

• Perez has paid for dozens of surgeries for kids with cleft lips, annually gives more than 1,000 toys to children’s hospitals, and supports police officers with car repairs, computers, office renovations, and more.

• Perez regularly travels to Colombia to assist the Carlos Fortuna Foundation in helping adults be the best parents they can be. During the COVID-19 shutdown, Colombia set strict travel guidelines. Determined, Perez crossed the border on foot, at significant personal risk, to be there for the families who counted on him.

• In the U.S., Perez has partnered with organizations fighting against ALS, most notably Sarah’s Soldiers, raising money and awareness to find a cure. He also works with Braden’s Hope for Childhood Cancer, which has come to count on Salvy’s generous spirit for dozens of events, often providing once-in-a-lifetime experiences for terminally ill kids.

In addition, Perez owns a youth league in Valencia, where at the beginning of each season, the kids are given bags with spikes, running shoes, jerseys, gloves, and financial support for their families. He also made a $1 million foundational donation to the Kansas City Urban Youth Academy, one of MLB’s 11 youth academies. And this past summer he hosted over one hundred kids from Kansas City’s urban core for a baseball clinic and inspirational conversation about education and health. He provided funding for each kid to go home with a backpack filled with school supplies for the upcoming year.

Wow. Did we know he crossed the Columbia/Venezuela border on foot during the Covid lockdowns? That one was news to me. My god.

Perez credits his mother for instilling this desire to give back and help the less fortunate.

I also thought it was cool that his fellow Venezuelan ballplayer, Carlos Carrasco, who won the award back in 2019, paid his own way to be in New York for the award presentation. That tells you something.

Salvador Perez, man…we’re lucky to have him in Kansas City.

If it’s free agent season, it’s also option season. Word came late Thursday that Hunter Renfroe and Chris Stratton both exercised their player options for 2025.

Renfroe’s production in 2024 resembled a bell curve. He struggled to get going out of the gate, warmed up a bit in May and then absolutely caught fire in June before going on the IL with a broken toe. He was producing in July when he returned but then cratered in the final two months of the season. Add it all together and you have a year where he posted -0.1 fWAR, his worst production in a full season in his career. Yeah, not a surprise he exercised that option. He will play next year for a shade over $7.5 million (he gets a $70,000 bump because he reached 400 PAs last summer) instead of taking a $1 million buyout and hitting the open market. That’s just a smart business decision.

Stratton threw 58.1 innings of relief for the Royals and was largely ineffective. He finished with a 6.8 SO/9 and a 5.1 BB/9 with a 5.55 ERA and 4.62 FIP. He was worth -0.2 fWAR which, like Renfroe, represented the worst season of his big league career. He will make $4.5 million next year as opposed to taking a $500,000 buyout. Yeah…neither of these moves from the players could be classified as a surprise.

The remaining player option belongs to Michael Wacha. He can either accept and play for the Royals at $16 million in 2025 (the same salary he had this year) or can take an undisclosed buyout (at least it’s not at Cot’s) and hit the open market. Or the Royals and Wacha can use this time to hash out a new deal.

These options are usually cut and dried and easy to predict. With Wacha, I’m not so certain. I do believe he will opt out, because his next contract should be for two or three years and when the guaranteed money is on the table, you take that. Still, there’s a sliver of a chance that he negotiates a new deal with the Royals and stays in Kansas City. Wacha has until November 4 to make the decision on his option.

On the mutual option front, the Royals turned down their half on Adam Frazier who will now hit the free agent market. This, too, would not be classified as a surprise as Frazier hit just .202/.282/.294 for the Royals. Those three numbers were the worst of his career across the board. Frazier’s 20.1 percent strikeout rate was the worst of his career by five percentage points. That’s gotta be concerning. He finished with a -0.6 fWAR which, like Renfroe and Stratton, was the worst season of his major league career.

There were a lot of “worst”s in that previous paragraph. Just be thankful the option was mutual. Frazier will get a $2.5 million buyout.

I realized that I don’t define the seasons meteorologically or astronomically, but rather from a baseball perspective. When camps open in Arizona and Florida, it’s spring. When the season starts, it’s summer. Fall is the postseason. And winter is when there is no baseball.

I can’t be the only one, right?