Locked in: Wacha and the Royals make a commitment to each other

The Royals and Michael Wacha will continue their partnership for at least another three seasons. Plus, a pair of Royals pick up Gold Glove Awards.

One of the largest items on General Manager JJ Picollo’s offseason to-do list was to re-solidify his starting rotation with the impending departure of Michael Wacha looming.

He can check that one off the list.

Wasting no time, the Royals and starter Wacha agreed to a contract that will see the right-hander remain in Kansas City for at least the next three seasons. Wacha, coming off arguably the best year of his career and who held a player option for 2025 that he was likely to decline, now solidifies the middle of the Royals rotation behind Cole Ragans and Seth Lugo.

It’s a move that will reverberate around the club and serve notice to the league. The surprising 2024 Royals are positioning themselves for contention in the next season and beyond.

Wacha’s career arc has been fascinating. From his debut as a 21-year-old in 2013 to 2017, he totaled 10.2 fWAR over those five seasons. In 2018, his season was short-circuited by an oblique strain about halfway through. Then from 2019 to 2021, he posted largely underwhelming numbers. That led him to Boston in 2022 on a one-year deal. After some success for the Red Sox where he posted a 1.5 fWAR over 23 starts he was off to San Diego. You would think that after that 2022 season, he would find some guaranteed money, but the contract he signed with the Padres was an odd one—a $4 million deal with a $3.5 million signing bonus for 2023 to go along with a pair of club options for the next couple of seasons.

Of course, you know how those options played out. The Padres, cutting costs ahead of 2024, declined the option on Wacha, despite him finishing with his best season since 2017.

Do you think San Diego regrets that move?

Wacha came to Kansas City, along with fellow starter Seth Lugo, and immediately cemented himself in the thick of the Royals’ rotation.

There are a couple of things that make Wacha a quality pitcher. For one, he features some exquisite control. He walked just 2.4 batters per nine which ranked 29th out of 58 qualified starters and was second among Royals starters to Lugo. Another is the fact he keeps the ball in the yard. During the rough seasons around the turn of the decade, Wacha fell victim to the home run far too frequently. He’s gotten that under control and as you would imagine, pitching half his games in Kauffman Stadium certainly helps.

Then, there’s his bread and butter: A lethal changeup.

Batters managed just a .169 batting average against the Wacha change in 2024 with a .312 slugging percentage. He generated a 34 percent whiff rate on the pitch. It’s long been his best pitch. It’s so good, it’s one of the best pitches in the league.

According to Baseball Savant, the Wacha change was worth 17 runs in 2024. That would make it the 16th-best pitch in the league and the best on the Royals. Yes, even better than the Lugo curve (worth nine runs) and the Cole Ragans four-seamer (worth 16 runs).

If you’re looking for a reason for this pitching renaissance these last couple of seasons from Wacha, look no further than how he’s altered the frequency he’s thrown the change.

The recipe has been fewer four-seamers and cutters and more sinkers and plenty of changeups. While velocity is the name of the game these days, if you have a pitch as good as that changeup, why not make that your primary offering? It’s made Wacha a multi-millionaire.

This is an endorsement of the pitching coaches, and the starters currently on the staff and the organization as a whole. The TV broadcast made a huge deal during the season about how the starters would convene something of a debrief immediately once one of them was pulled from the game. Wacha and Lugo seemed to be the elder statesmen of the group. Plus, it’s an acknowledgment from the Royals they’re committed to spending money to make sure they remain competitive.

This deal doesn’t happen unless both sides are in total harmony with each other. Wacha has been around. He’s worked with other pitching coaches and analytic departments in different organizations. If the Royals were deficient in any category, you can bet he would’ve jumped ship at the first opportunity. After all, that’s what his initial contract with Kansas City was all about. It was a chance for him to build value and then bolt for a bigger payday with perhaps a club a little better positioned for the postseason.

Then, a weird thing happened where the Royals completely revamped their staff and their coaches these last couple of seasons and suddenly, beyond all expectations, actually qualified for the playoffs. It all sounds so simple, yet as we are well aware in Kansas City, it can be so difficult.

Wacha’s signing is a statement from both sides that 2024 should be a one-year wonder type of situation.

Let’s dive into the numbers and how this deal came together.

Wacha signed as a free agent from San Diego last December. It was a one-year deal for $16 million with a player option for the same $16 million in 2025. After Wacha’s performance for the Royals last season, he clearly would’ve earned a longer guarantee on the open market at presumably the same amount of money or a little more. A lot of the free agent predictions have yet to come in, but NBC Sports speculated Wacha could make $44 million over two years as a free agent. Jim Bowden at The Athletic (I know, I know) predicted three years at $54 million.

Potentially complicating the open market for Wacha is that, had he opted out of the final year of his deal, the Royals could’ve hung a qualifying offer on the right-hander. I imagine that would’ve severely depressed the market for Wacha with the specter of losing a draft pick hanging over the signing. Wacha, of course, could’ve opted out at $16 million and then agreed to a one-year qualifying offer at $21.05 million. That’s a raise of $5 million, so who would walk away from that?

It’s all moot now as the deal has been signed.

The contract is a three-year deal valued at $51 million. It’s broken down like this:

2025: $18M
2026: $18M
2027: $14M
2028: $14M club option ($1M buyout)

There are also some unspecified bonuses. Wacha can earn $4 million in 2027 if he hits certain performance markers and then there are $4 million of potential performance bonuses if the club option is picked up in 2028. In short, in a best-case scenario for Wacha, he would earn $18 million a year over four years. That’s $72 million total.

It’s a bit early for projections which would allow us to evaluate the deal on the trusty spreadsheets, but Steamer has theirs on the FanGraphs pages. Under Steamer, Wacha is projected for a season where he has an 8.3 SO/9, a 2.6 BB/9 and a 4.13 ERA. Total that performance together and it works out to a 2.1 fWAR. On the surface, that makes the $18 million he’s due to earn look like a very fair deal. A rarity in free agency!

Using that initial Steamer projection and applying an aging curve to his performance, Wacha figures to post 4.5 fWAR over the life of the three-year deal. If the value of one fWAR is around $8.5 million, that figures to a total of $48.5 million in value from Wacha. Again, these are all projections, meaning conjecture, but that’s pretty much on the nose for the deal.

Basically, this vibes a fair deal. Personally, from the Royals’ perspective, I would’ve pushed for two years with an option for the third, but I think that in an open market (without a qualifying offer), Wacha gets three years easy. And the average annual value of $17 million feels about right. The Royals were always going to have to assume some risk—that’s how free agency works. The risk is in the third year. That’s why the contract is structured with the money front-loaded and the incentives baked in the last season.

I think this is a good deal for both sides.

We are a ways away before the Opening Day 2025 payroll takes shape, but the Royals have already committed a little above $73 million for six players. Their Opening Day payroll last year was around $115 million.

Do the Royals have money in the budget to go out and make some more noise on the free agent market?

Last season the Royals got 93 percent of their starts from their Opening Day rotation. And now, if they choose, they’re bringing all of those starters back. I added that little “if they choose” caveat because, with Wacha now back in the fold and with guys like Kyle Wright, Kris Bubic and Daniel Lynch IV lurking, there’s no guarantee that Brady Singer will be on this team when camps open in February. In fact, he’s currently number one with a bullet on the current list of Royals trade candidates.

It makes just too much sense for the Royals to look to swing a trade involving Singer. The Royals have plenty of depth, could still add more depth in either free agency or a trade and Singer’s value will never be higher. He just completed a season where he finished with a career-high in innings pitched (179.2, 20 more than his previous standard) while posting above-average (for him) strikeout and walk rates. He finished with a 3.71 ERA, and while he stumbled down the stretch, he still had the second-best season of his career.

Is Singer a front-line starter? You know the answer to that: Absolutely not. At best, he’s a mid-rotation option. But he is arbitration-eligible for another two years and stands to make around $8.8 million according to MLB Trade Rumors. That makes him attractive to just about any team in the league. If the Royals are serious about improving their lineup, they could—and probably should—look to deal Singer while his value rebounded and is currently elevated.

The wild card on the entire staff is Wright. He sat out all of 2024 recovering from shoulder surgery. It was that injury that caused him to miss most of 2023 after his breakout campaign of ‘22 where he posted a 3.19 ERA with 174 strikeouts in 180 innings. As tantalizing as Wright is, that 2022 season was his only full season in the majors. Yet once upon a time, he had that prospect juice, landing on Baseball America’s Top 100 list three times from 2018 to 2020. Given the severity of the injury, I’m just not sure that it’s wise to count on a high number of innings from the guy in the upcoming season. But if he’s ready to go from the jump, this rotation has some good depth.

Sunday was a busy day for the Royals as Lugo and Bobby Witt Jr. were honored for their defensive prowess with the awarding of the Rawlings Gold Glove.

It’s kind of wild how defensive metrics remain so divergent. Over at Baseball Info Solutions and the Fielding Bible, Witt was worth just two Defensive Runs Saved at shortstop. That ranked him 23rd among shortstops. I love data as much as the next guy but after being mesmerized by the GIF above, not to mention similar weekly defensive highlights, you cannot possibly think that Witt was the 23rd best defensive shortstop in the majors last year. He finished 10th in the Fielding Bible voting. Sure.

At Baseball Savant, Witt fares much better. He finished the season with 12 Fielding Runs which was the best in the AL and tied for second overall with Francisco Lindor. The leader was Dansby Swanson with 14 Fielding Runs. Witt ranked similarly with 16 Outs Above Average.

Watching Witt these last three seasons, the improvement with his glove is so obvious. He’s steady on the routine and has an insane ability to make the spectacular. I don’t think I saw anyone in either league play shortstop better than Witt last season.

Defense from a pitcher is a lot less obvious. As long as they’re getting those comebackers and not chucking the ball wide of first, they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Pitcher’s fielding practice (PFP) starts from the minute pitchers and catchers report. The Royals put an emphasis on defense across the board this season and look at where that got them. Lugo won the Gold Glove and Ragans finished either second or third in the voting. I’d say they’re doing something right.

Of course, we don’t like Defensive Runs Saved after how they did our Bobby dirty, but when looking at pitchers over there, the numbers support the work the Royals did. Royals pitchers finished the year with 21 DRS, the best in the majors by far. The second-place Orioles finished with 14 DRS from their pitchers. You know who else fields his position well? Wacha.

These are the first Gold Gloves for the organization since 2021. It’s a nice acknowledgment for a couple of individuals who played a major role in turning the fortunes of this team around.