Inertia

Hot stove? More like a deep freeze when it comes to the Royals and player transactions this offseason. Plus, a look at the most impactful Rule 5 draft in franchise history.

It’s difficult to keep up with the pace the Royals have set this offseason. It’s been hectic from the moment the World Series ended and has yet to abate. The OPEN sign is glowing, the transactions are coming fast and furious and the depth chart is in need of constant updating.*

*Sadly, the entire opening graf is 100 percent sarcasm.

Has anyone dialed the main switchboard at Kauffman Stadium? (Do they still have switchboards? I may have just aged myself.) Are the lights on in the front office? Is anything happening? Is anyone home???

This is borderline hysterical, but let’s check the transaction logs for the last couple of months. I’m leaving out end-of-the-season procedural moves and minor-league signings. These are just the moves that impacted the 40-man roster.

October

• 10/26 - Arizona Diamondbacks claimed RHP Tyler Zuber off waivers from Kansas City Royals.

• 10/26 - Seattle Mariners claimed RHP Luke Weaver off waivers from Kansas City Royals.

November

• 11/06 - RHP Zack Greinke elected free agency.

• 11/09 - Seattle Mariners claimed LHP Gabe Speier off waivers from Kansas City Royals.

• 11/10 - Kansas City Royals designated C Sebastian Rivero for assignment. Kansas City Royals selected the contract of 2B Samad Taylor and LHP Richard Lovelady from Omaha Storm Chasers.

• 11/15 - Kansas City Royals designated RHP Nathan Webb, OF Brent Rooker and LHP Jake Brentz for assignment

• 11/15 - Kansas City Royals selected the contract of RHP Alec Marsh and C Freddy Fermin from Omaha Storm Chasers and OF Diego Hernandez from Northwest Arkansas Naturals.

• 11/16 - Kansas City Royals released C Sebastian Rivero.

• 11/17 - Oakland Athletics claimed OF Brent Rooker off waivers from Kansas City Royals.

• 11/18 - RHP Nathan Webb and LHP Jake Brentz elected free agency.

December

• -Crickets-

Reader, this is pathetic.

I am well aware I’ve been championing the hiring of Matt Quatraro as the manager and Brian Sweeney as the pitching coach. These are important moves that push the organization in the right direction. But, you know, the front office could be doing some other things at the same time. The Winter Meetings have come and gone. The Royals have not made a single move in the month of December. I have never seen inertia at this level in the offseason. Unless the owners locked out the players again and only told the Royals.

Somehow, this is the modus operandi for just about the entire AL Central.

Here are the major transactions of the Royals’ division rivals since the start of the offseason. I’m defining “major” as the new acquisition having a spot on the FanGraphs depth chart at Roster Resource on the projected 26-man roster.

Chicago
Signed Mike Clevenger to a one-year deal.

Cleveland
Signed Josh Bell to a two-year deal.

Detroit
Signed Mathew Boyd to a one-year deal.

Minnesota
Traded for Kyle Farmer. Desperately hoping Carlos Correa returns their messages.

My napkin math says the teams in the AL Central have combined to spend a whopping $55 million in the free agent market to this point. That’s not even Steve Cohen’s tax bill. While the Royals aren’t doing anything to improve their roster, the rest of the Central is pretty much in a similar state.

Again (and again and again) it’s absolutely shameful the Royals have failed to compete in this division on a regular basis. Yeah, 2014 and 2015 were great fun and the team needed to retool before and after that run, but still…the scales of competitiveness are fairly balanced among the five teams in the Central. And as we saw last October, flawed regular season teams can catch fire in the playoffs and go on some runs. I’d have to imagine any postseason revenue would more than help offset any kind of adventurous spending to, you know, improve the ballclub.

I know you want to evaluate and project and all that, but goodness…it would probably behoove yourselves to do something constructive to push those scales in your favor.

In the old days when everyone had blogs (the pre-newsletter era), I had something up at Royals Authority that broke out what I called the Royals Family Tree. If you’re a transaction geek like myself, it was a way to trace the lineage of the active roster. While I bemoaned the latest buzzword of “transactional” floating around the Royals these days, the aversion of the old general manager to make any kind of impactful deals means the Royals Family Tree has largely withered. That’s kind of a shame.

According to Roster Resource, the current Royals’ 40-man roster features 27 homegrown players and four free-agent signings. That leaves nine players acquired via trade. Hell, several of those guys such as Brad Keller were “purchased.”

The roots of the Royals Family Tree no longer run deep.

On the occasion of last week’s Rule 5 draft, I ran a poll on Twitter:

Craig Brown @CraigBrown_KC

Was thinking…Who was the most impactful Rule 5 pick in #Royals history?

I grabbed a few Rule 5 guys from Royals’ history and here’s how the voting finished.

I’m going to have to say a couple of things on this…First, I’d never run a poll like that with an unsurprising runaway favorite if that was the correct answer. Second, the question is a bit nuanced. I wasn’t asking for the best individual or most valuable to the Royals. If I had, then almost 91 percent of the respondents would’ve been correct. However, I was looking for the most impactful.

That means the 1.4 percent of those who answered Billy Brewer should pat themselves on the back.

I ran through this on a Twitter thread, but since this post is about the Royals and their lack of transactions so far this offseason, I’ll lay it back out here.

Brewer was selected by the Royals from the Montral Expos in the 1992 Rule 5 draft. A left-handed reliever, he played for four different teams in parts of seven seasons in the majors. He posted -0.5 fWAR for the Royals in 123 innings from 1993 to 1995.

After the 1995 season, he was flipped to the Los Angeles Dodgers straight up for Jose Offerman. Offerman played for three seasons for the Royals and hit .306/.385/.419 in 1,825 plate appearances. This matters because Offerman is the career franchise leader in both batting average (George Brett is second at .305) and in OBP (Kevin Seitzer is second at .380) I mean, seriously. That kind of annoys me.

Anyway, after three really productive seasons in Kansas City, Offerman left as a free agent. Free agent compensation was a lot different in those days where players were classified and signing teams surrendered draft picks based on those classifications. (One of my favorite stories about this old compensation scheme was how the San Francisco Giants signed Michael Tucker not because he was good, but because they would forfeit their first round pick and didn’t want to spend money on the draft.) Offerman signed with the Red Sox and because he was classified as “Type A,” the Royals got Boston’s first round selection.

The Royals used that pick on Mike MacDougal. MacDougal was the Royals closer in 2003 (and an All-Star!) and ultimately saved 50 games for the Royals. He was valued at 2.8 fWAR in parts of six seasons with the Royals.

Former General Manager Dayton Moore was hired in June of 2006. Back then, he was a bit more transactional than he was at the end of his tenure. Maybe it was because he was about unloading players valued by the previous front office. Dunno. But in July of ‘06, MacDougal was shipped to the Chicago White Sox for a pair of minor league pitchers, Tyler Lumsden and Dan Cortes.

Lumsden was in the organization for a couple of years and was out of professional baseball by 2011. Cortes, on the other hand, was part of a package Moore shipped to Seattle to finally land his guy…Yuniesky Betancourt.

My god. Remember the rumors the Royals offered Billy Butler straight up for Betancourt? I would really love to hear what Moore was thinking he was getting in Betancourt, because whatever it was, he was the only one thinking that. At Royals Authority, we had a tag cloud on the sidebar. If I remember correctly Betancourt was the largest name in that cloud. For all the wrong reasons.

It was after the 2010 season that Zack Greinke decided he had seen enough losing in Kansas City and it was time to move on. The Royals needed to swing a trade. They found a partner in Milwaukee where they sent Greinke and Betancourt in exchange for Alcides Escobar, Lorenzo Cain, Jeremy Jeffress and Jake Odorizzi. Going through old leaderboards while writing this, I was struck by the similarities of Escobar and Betancourt’s 2010 seasons.

Betancourt - .259/.288/.405, 0.6 fWAR
Escobar - .235/.288/.326, 0.4 fWAR

The advantage Escobar had was on defense. He was simply (as we would all immediately see) much better with the glove than Betancourt. I wonder if including Betancourt was just a way to shed just a little more payroll and open up a spot for a much younger player. Hey…it worked!

Of course, Cain and Escobar were two up-the-middle building blocks on those pennant winning ballclubs a few years later. Jeffress became a good reliever, but it was really once he returned to Milwaukee a few years down the road. Odorizzi pitched in just two games for the Royals in 2012. It was after that season that he was packaged along with Wil Myers, Mike Montgomery and Patrick Leonard for James Shields, Wade Davis and Elliot Johnson. Shields played a massive role in overhauling the rotation and the clubhouse in 2013 and 2014. Davis, as you are well aware, crashed out as a starter but became one of the elite relievers in the league.

The Royals don’t win anything without that quartet of players (Cain, Escobar, Shields and Davis). And it all started with Billy Brewer and the Rule 5 draft all the way back in 1992.

Amazing.

At this point, the branch of the tree thins out. Escobar left as a free agent. So did Shields. Davis was traded to the Cubs for Jorge Soler, who provided some offensive fireworks (and a franchise single season home run record, now shared with Salvador Perez.) Soler was traded to the Braves (where he won World Series MVP honors in 2021) for reliever Kasey Kalich.

There is a little hope that this branch of the Royals Family Tree can still grow…

When Cain returned to Milwaukee as a free agent after the 2017 season, the Royals were awarded a supplemental first round draft pick. They used that selection on Jackson Kowar. Kowar, of course, has struggled in his brief exposure to the big leagues, and even stumbled upon his returns to Triple-A. Hopefully, he can set himself right with the new coaching staff and keep this branch growing.

I’ve been dismissive of some minor transactions for being…well, minor. But sometimes, one of those throwaway acquisitions can sprout into something more meaningful. It may take some time, and a little bit of luck, but sometimes the results blow your mind. Billy Brewer got the Royals to the World Series in back to back years. Flags—and a successful Rule 5 draft—fly forever.

Please…make some moves!