Building a better bullpen

The addition of Carlos Estévez solidifies the Royals relief corps.

The Royals dove back into the free agent pool this week, signing right-handed reliever Carlos Estévez, late of the Philadelphia Phillies, to a two-year deal with a team option for the third.

Estévez was a closer in Anaheim for the Angels for a season and a half, racking up 51 saves. He continued as the ninth-inning man for the Phillies after a mid-season trade last year, adding another six to his tally as part of a bullpen that had a few more moving parts. Thus, he arrives in Kansas City as a Proven Closer™ and figures to give Lucas Erceg some competition in the back of the pen.

With the deal reported for $22 million ($10 million for both 2025 and 2026 with a $2 million buyout on the option year in 2027. Should the Royals exercise their option, the contract would be for three years and $33 million), it’s an aggressive late winter move from the Royals as they look to solidify a bullpen that evolved from weakness to strength as the 2024 season played out.

Before his time in SoCal and Philly, Estévez toiled for parts of six seasons for the Colorado Rockies. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Estévez became a different—meaning improved—pitcher after he escaped the altitude of Coors Field after the 2022 season.

Estévez himself would seem to agree:

Estévez, 30, believes that not pitching in a high-altitude environment has also helped his stuff become more consistent, while also helping the movement of his pitches. His four-seam fastball velocity is slightly down from last year, but it’s been more effective because it has more ride.

“Even with the fastball, it’s different,” Estévez said. “Like the metrics, it’s hard to get those consistently at Coors Field because it changes so much with the weather and altitude. But I think I’m getting three more inches of rise on my fastball, which is a lot. You’re missing [far more] bats now. And my slider is biting harder and has more movement. So, I think that’s been a big difference.”

Estévez pitched to a 4.59 ERA in his 302 career innings as a Rockie. (His ERA in 158.1 innings in Colorado was an unsightly 5.57.) That mark improved to 3.90 in his full season with the Angels in 2023. It was even better in what was the best season of his career: A 2.45 ERA in 55 frames split between the Angels and Phillies. His whiffs per nine was a career low at 8.2 SO/9, but his overall strikeout rate of 23.6 percent was right in line with his career rate of 24.2 percent. However, the real story behind Estévez’s success in ’24 was an amazing walk rate of two per nine. That was a minuscule 5.7 percent walk rate.

It won’t surprise you to learn that Estévez is correct when talking about the movement of his four-seamer and his slider away from Coors. According to Statcast, he has more glove-side run with his slider with quite a bit less vertical drop on his heater. So while he’s lost a tick off his fastball the last couple of seasons, the lack of drop—or the perceived rise of the pitch—has made it a tantalizing, yet often unhittable offering.

Opposing hitters Estévez whiffed on 28 percent of the fastballs the righty offered at the top of the zone. When they put it in play, they hit a collective .136. Impressive. And easy to understand why.

That pitch just explodes, doesn’t it? Or I should say, it seems to explode. An 0-2 offering that looks like it’s coming right down the chute that finishes elevated in the zone…it’s an absolute beast of a pitch.

The Estévez slider is a bit more uneven for me when it comes to the successes he’s had with that offering. Some years, it profiles as dominant. Others…not so much. I’d posit that it has more to do with the general location of the pitch rather than metrics such as spin and horizontal break. Last season, Estévez painted the corners consistently with his slider (or looked like he was going to be painting the corners), making that pitch, along with his four-seamer, an absolute weapon.

I think those two GIFs served back-to-back can illustrate why Estévez, when he’s on, can be so difficult to hit. A fastball that looks to rise in the upper half of the zone paired with a slider that comes close to gyro movement down low. Try adjusting to that, dear hitter. It’s a double dose of filth.

Estévez also features a changeup that has quite a bit of arm-side fade. He throws it exclusively to lefties and generally can paint the corner with the offering. It comes in at the same velocity as his slider and is thrown from the same arm slot, but the movement is completely opposite. Batters hit just .143 against the pitch last year.

The question that must be asked is, was the 2024 season an outlier for Estévez? Can he, at 32 years old, replicate the successes of last year?

Some of it looks sustainable to me. In the last two seasons, Estévez has been generally working ahead in the count, offering a first-pitch strike roughly 65 percent of the time. That’s the highest rate of his career. Likewise, he’s also improved his swinging strike rate to above 12 percent. That’s served to help him slice his walk rate.

The flip side is his Statcast numbers like Barrel Rate and Hard-Hit Rate. Those two metrics, along with his average exit velocity, are all in the bottom 20th percentile among pitchers. So he allows some loud contact but danced around damage last year with a 6.8 percent HR/FB rate and a .229 BABIP. Yes, pitching half his games at Kauffman will help keep that HR/FB rate low, but the corner outfield defense as currently constructed isn’t so hot. Kyle Isbel can’t cover everything hit out there.

It’s certainly possible Estévez only has one good season left in the tank. It’s the gamble that’s made when plucking a late-inning reliever off the free-agent market. Regression can come and it can come swiftly. Yet the velocity is there on the four-seamer and the movement is there on both the fastball and the slider. The slider can be an elite pitch when it’s on and playing properly off the heater. The change is a nice offering against lefties.

I think this signing is worth the risk in the short term.

Let’s get to the housekeeping portion. As noted, Estévez signed for two seasons at a reported $22 million with a club option for 2027 at $13 million. There is a $2 million buyout if the Royals choose not to exercise that option. This signing pushes the Royals north of the $120 million mark when it comes to their estimated Opening Day payroll, a current boost of more than $5 million from last season. It’s a modest bump at this point for a team that qualified for the postseason and I continue to think there’s more room for Picollo to operate. Another reason I believe this is because on the list of needs as the club heads toward the start of camp in Surprise is that an upgrade of the outfield (take your pick among the three spots) is number one, two and three on my list. Yes, the bullpen can use the help they will expect Estévez to bring. It’s a pen with some quality depth. But they really, really need to get a bat.

There’s also the matter of the roster. As I write, the Estévez signing is not yet official but once it is, the Royals will have to move a player off the 40-man roster. I’ll stick my neck out and speculate that it’s Nick Pratto who will get the axe. The tea leaves aren’t that muddled when it comes to how the Royals see the first baseman. Pratto doesn’t have any options left in 2025 and once the Royals were without Vinnie Pasquantino their response was not to recall Pratto from Omaha but to purchase a 40-year-old player who hadn’t sniffed a plate appearance in the majors up to that point in the season.

So how will the Royals bullpen look when Opening Day mercifully rolls around? Is Estévez the closer? What about Lucas Erceg?

If I had to offer a guess, it would be that Estévez is the closer right out of the gate. The Royals don’t make that kind of commitment, and with Estévez’s recent track record as a Proven Closer™, he doesn’t sign that deal unless he’s coming to Kansas City to lock down wins in the ninth inning. That dislodges Erceg from the role he performed so well in at the end of last season, but I bet Matt Quatraro deploys him as his fireman, coming in at various spots in the later innings to face the most dangerous bats. He can also rotate into that ninth inning spot should Estévez need a breather.

As for the rest of the bullpen, don’t sleep on the fact that Picollo has completely overhauled this group from this point last season. Remember last year when the talk was about how the Royals were swimming against the velocity tide by employing a bunch of relievers who didn’t throw all that fast? That’s…uhhhh…different now.

Will Smith, Chris Stratton, Nick Anderson, John Schreiber, Matt Sauer, James McArthur, Angel Zerpa and Jordan Lyles made up the bullpen on Opening Day last year. Of that bunch, only Zerpa and Sauer threw harder than 95 mph on average.

Fast forward to the new-look pen that will be unveiled this year. Estévez, Erceg, Carlos Hernández and Hunter Harvey all average 97 mph or greater on their fastball. Zerpa will be back in the mix, as will Schreiber. Then you have Daniel Lynch IV as a long man. And what about Sam Long? Let’s not forget about Kyle Wright. Hell, Kris Bubic could end up back in the bullpen. Stratton is still around, but I’m bearish on his chances.

The point is that this is a deep group of arms. The Royals and Picollo have amassed both quantity and quality. It’s a group that Quatraro can lean on as the Royals begin their charge back to the postseason.

I’m far from a fan of shopping for relievers (and especially closers) on the open market, but this seems like a relatively low-risk deal from my perspective. The industry consensus for a contract for Estévez was in the neighborhood of two to three years at around $25 million. It works out to an average annual value of about $10.5 million or so. The Royals are giving him a two-year guarantee at an AAV of $11 million. It’s a fair deal. And it’s a fair deal that will improve the bullpen. Look back at the list of relievers who opened with the team in 2024 and contrast that with the group who will be in the bullpen in a couple of months. There’s a massive difference in talent.

Yes, there’s still work to be done with the lineup—specifically the outfield—but Picollo waited out the market and found a guy who makes this team better.