The Royals are suddenly big spenders

A few thoughts on the Royals and their dive into the free agent market.

Where do we start?

That’s a very good question since it’s been quite some time since we’ve seen this kind of off-season action emanating from One Royal Way. It is enough to make one’s head spin.

In the last few weeks, the Royals have splashed the free agent cash on Garrett Hampson, Will Smith, Chris Stratton, Seth Lugo, Hunter Renfroe and Michael Wacha. The total spend to acquire these players is $105 million. Yes…$105 million. To say this represents a change in how the Royals approach roster building would be an understatement. While none of the names represents a “top-tier” free agent, the sheer quantity is unlike anything we’ve seen in Kansas City. We’ve been told that it’s difficult to attract free agents to play for the Royals. This says otherwise.

I’ll break down the latest deals in depth this week. For now, I’d like to just throw out some items that have crossed my mind as I attempt to digest what is happening.

Thankfully, Jeff Passan is here to let us know how the Royals’ spending stacks up against the rest of the league thus far.

I was going to trim the Tweet to include just the teams that have crossed the $100 million spending threshold, but the team next in line is just too tasty not to include. Passan’s Tweet covers the entire league, all 30 teams. So far the Blue Jays, Cubs, Mariners, Marlins, Padres, Rockies, Twins and Yankees have yet to spend a free agent dime. Although a couple of teams have made some important trades.

Seeing the Cardinals on the list above at $99 million makes me wonder about the respective haul of the two teams from Missouri. Specifically the starting pitching. The Cardinals added a front-line starter in Sonny Gray and two back-of-the-rotation types in Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn. Meanwhile, the Royals added two mid-tier starters in Wacha and Lugo.

Which team has done better thus far? I think it’s kind of a fun question.

The cynical side of me (yes! That’s still very much a thing!) says this is Royals CEO John Sherman opening his team’s checkbook in order to advance his primary goal of building a new stadium. The realist side of me is struggling to care about the motive for these moves beyond anything that is seeking to improve the team.  Yes. These two items go hand in hand. Sherman needs the votes to secure public funding for his stadium dream. The only way he can avoid defeat is to show commitment to improving the product on the field.

Win—or show a strong effort to attempt to win—and you get votes.

Personally, my stance on the new ballpark remains the same: Sherman and his ownership group need to fund the entire project themselves and leave the taxpayers out of it. However, I understand if positions are swayed. That’s politics.

I’m sure you’ve seen the clip that has gone semi-viral of a panel on MLB Network proclaiming the Royals the favorites in the AL Central.

It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement, isn’t it?

I’m not here to slow anyone’s roll, but I’ll simply warn that coming off a 106-loss season and vaulting to contention, even in a weak Central Division, is a tall task. It’s not impossible, by any means, but if we’ve learned anything by watching baseball since the advent of free agency is that, Rangers of the last year aside, it’s damn near impossible to buy a title.

Although I am intrigued at the thought of trying to buy the AL Central.

David Laurila at FanGraphs had another interview with Royals General Manager JJ Picollo last week.

Laurila told Picollo that he thought the 2023 Royals would do better than they ultimately did. Picollo’s response gained a bit of traction:

“We did too (thought they would win more games). We had us projected, internally, at around 77-78 wins. But our pitching… you look back and Kris Bubic got hurt. Daniel Lynch barely pitched this year. Brad Keller was hurt. Those are three guys we had penciled into our rotation, and I don’t know that we got 20 starts between them. That really hurt us. Consequently, we used the second most starters in all of baseball. We ended up deploying openers, trying to shorten games that way. We were doing a lot of different things to try to make up for the injuries. I don’t like to make excuses, but the reality is that we had three guys from a five-man rotation out.”

I posted the whole quote for context, but the item everyone is focusing on is the projection the Royals ran internally that had them at around 77 wins. You will recall that they finished at 56, a whopping 21 games worse than the club projected.

It’s a big whiff from their internal projection system. ZiPS had the Royals at 70 wins at the start of spring training last year. PECOTA was more bearish (I know, you’re surprised) at 63 wins.

I appreciate Picollo’s candor in publically discussing the Royals’ internal analytics. If I was in charge of a system that missed by that much, I don’t think I’d be that specific. And while the lack of quality starting pitching was one of the many culprits in the failure of 2023, Bubic, Lynch and Keller were not alone responsible for that gap. Their collective absences played a role, but that particular trio if healthy would not have been worth 20 wins. They probably wouldn’t have been worth six.

Here’s the difference between the last two general managers, though. If this was Dayton Moore, he would have doubled down, bringing back Keller and insisting that those three are close to a breakthrough and that they’re arms the Royals can absolutely count on. Picollo sees that are there no easy answers, the current attempt at solving the riddle wasn’t getting job done and changes need to be made.

Yes, Picollo is being transactional.

If you’re looking for another difference between the two GMs, look at how they’ve handled subtracting players from this roster.

The Royals, as of this writing, have cleared four players off the 40-man roster since the start of December.

12/06 - Traded RHP Dylan Coleman to the Houston Astros for RHP Carlos Mateo.

12/11 - Designated RHP Collin Snider for assignment.

12/14 - Traded RHP Taylor Clarke to the Milwaukee Brewers for RHP Ryan Brady and SS Cam Devanney.

12/15 - Traded RF Edward Olivares to the Pittsburgh Pirates for 2B Deivis Nadal.

They’ve needed to remove four players and netted four in return. I’m not so certain that Moore would’ve been able to get much of anything for these players, outside of Olivares (leaving Clarke out of that equation because I don’t think Moore would’ve parted ways with him at this point). I think there would’ve been players just DFA’d to get them off the roster. It’s a new way of doing business for the Royals.

I’m not sure we’ll ever see anything from any of the players moving into the organization, but it’s better than your garden variety DFA to free up a spot. The Royals still need to find two more roster spots in the coming days. It will be interesting to see how Picollo handles that.

When I heard that Olivares was being dealt to Pittsburgh, it just felt right. Pittsburgh is the Kansas City of the NL Central.

While the Royals seem to be changing direction, the Pirates remain mired in their own muck.

Let’s take a pause in this flurry of transactions to gaze at the cost of doing business.

The Royals have committed a total of $105 million to six free agents this winter. You’d have to go back to the winter after the World Series victory to find spending at that level.

It’s truly a new day in Kansas City.

Here are their current commitments for 2024 per Cot’s Baseball Contracts.

Salvador Perez - $20M
Michael Wacha - $16M
Seth Lugo - $15M
Jordan Lyles - $8.5M
Hunter Renfroe - $5.5M
Will Smith - $5M
Chris Stratton - $3.5M
Garrett Hampson - $2M
Jake Brentz - $1.05M

The Royals have $75.55 million on the books for nine players. They have six players eligible for arbitration who are projected to earn a combined $13 million per MLB Trade Rumors. That would leave 11 players not yet eligible for arbitration and that group is projected to earn somewhere in the neighborhood of a combined $8 million.

There’s also the business of the Hunter Dozier contract. The Royals will pay him $9.25 million next year. Ugh.

Add it all together and the Royals are currently staring at a payroll of around $105 million.

They had an Opening Day payroll of around $92 million last year. Just ahead of this spending spree, Picollo noted he had around $30 million in cash available.

I think there’s room to do more.

Finally, news broke from Ken Rosenthal last week that the Royals discussed sending Vinnie Pasquantino to Miami in exchange for starter Jesús Luzardo. While this deal ultimately did not happen and appears to be dead, I would caution into reading too much into this…as in, “The Royals are shopping the Pasquatch.”

If I put my thinking GM cap on, I would wager the Royals inquired about the availability of Luzardo, knowing the Marlins have the pitching to move and are looking to acquire a bat. Maybe they thought the price would be MJ Melendez. The Marlins asked for Pasquantino instead. The sides went back and forth for a bit, and nothing happened.

But something did happen! The Royals realized the cost of adding a descent starting pitcher via trade was something they didn’t want to pay. The market is still evolving and trading five years of Pasquantino for three of Luzardo isn’t something that makes sense for the Royals. Armed with this information, the Royals instead directed their attention to the free agent market.

Maybe that’s how we got to this moment.