Hey Big Spenders

The Royals have been flashing cash this winter. What does it mean?

Since the start of the offseason, the Kansas City Royals have added $48 million to their 2024 payroll via free agency. To put that in perspective, that’s more than they’ve added via free agency in any offseason and we are not yet to the start of the calendar year. Now, they may be largely done adding by that method after the signings of Garrett Hampson, Will Smith, Seth Lugo, Chris Stratton, Hunter Renfroe and Michael Wacha. But the point remains that they’ve spent the money. It’s fair for you to be skeptical of the why. The Royals lost 106 games and are on the verge of asking taxpayers to vote yes on a new stadium.

But here’s the thing. I don’t especially care why. And I also don’t think the only reasons for the actions are nefarious. We were put through a hellish season in 2023 under the guise that it was an “evaluation year.” In lieu of signing players to put up the ruse that they were trying to compete, the Royals organizationally decided to rely as much on young players as possible. Sure, they had some veterans. It’s difficult to imagine building a team without a single veteran, especially when the idea is to trade some of them at the deadline.

But the whole plan of the 2023 season was to spend it figuring out what the Royals had and what they didn’t. And it suuuuuuuuuuucked to live through. Sorry to get technical there, but that’s the terminology. I don’t know if anything will ever make 2023 “worth” it, but the deal that was essentially made was that you (the Royals) get to see what you have for a year, but when it’s done, you better make some moves if it doesn’t work out. It didn’t work and they made some moves. I appreciate that.

An article in The Athletic from Friday dove into some additional rationale behind the spree.

The continued deterioration of a division the Royals perceive as winnable. An owner, John Sherman, who in one notable circumstance, chose to sign another free agent rather than trade a talented young hitter. And yes, a draft lottery that in its first two years of existence, punished the Royals by assigning them lower positions than they would have received under the old system, which was based solely on won-loss record.

Yeah, the AL Central is decidedly not good. The Twins won the division in 2023 with 87 wins and have since lost Sonny Gray’s 2.79 ERA over 184 innings to the Cardinals and Kenta Maeda’s 4.23 ERA over 104.1 innings to the Tigers. It’s also been reported that they’ll be cutting payroll. The Tigers actually finished in second place and they’re the popular team that people think will make a jump in 2024, especially after signing away Maeda from the Twins and signing Jack Flaherty to join their rotation. And I get it. Spencer Torkelson figured a lot out in the second half. Riley Greene is good. Kerry Carpenter appears to be good. They already have Tarik Skubal at the top of the rotation. They did lose Eduardo Rodriguez.

Then there’s the Guardians, who are always competitive but now no longer have Terry Francona in charge. They have the Naylor brothers and Jose Ramirez, but the rest of the offense, as of now, is a question. Their pitching is always good, but they are talking about trading Shane Bieber and even Emmanuel Clase, who you may not have noticed but only struck out 64 in 72.2 innings in 2023. And there’s the White Sox, who are in teardown mode and lost 100 games themselves in 2023. They are definitely not good and might be getting worse, at least in the short term.

So yes, the AL Central is supremely winnable. I still think the Royals are the fourth-best team in the division, even with all of their moves. So why then am I excited about what they’re doing? The obvious answer that doing something and signing quality players with that something is obvious. But what is a little less obvious is what those (mostly) quality players mean to the development of the younger players on the team.

Of the seven veteran additions, including Nick Anderson, none of them were brought in to be the stars of the team. They were brought in to solidify the roster. The Royals can win the division because of their additions, but it will have more to do with what the players already on the roster expected to be the stars do around them. On the pitching side, Wacha and Lugo allow Brady Singer to not be the best or second-best starter on this team. They allow Cole Ragans to not have to shoulder everything on his own and, let’s be real, he isn’t a sure thing either.

Anderson, Stratton and Smith allow James McArthur and John McMillon to be part of a bullpen rather than the whole bullpen. I’m a lot less excited about Renfroe, but if he can be the guy he was just two years ago, he provides additional protection and can allow Bobby Witt Jr., Vinnie Pasquantino and Nelson Velazquez to grow as hitters while allowing guys like MJ Melendez and Michael Massey (if they’re still on the team) to move to a less demanding lineup spot where their production can lengthen a lineup.

And I’ve said this so many times before, but they make the bottom of the roster better. Again, Singer isn’t a two, he’s a four now. Jordan Lyles isn’t a top-half starter in the rotation, he’s a five. Carlos Hernandez is a middle reliever. Steven Cruz isn’t being tested in a late inning situation. He’s pitching in the sixth. Massey isn’t hitting at the top of a lineup, he’s hitting seventh. You get the idea.

The depth in the rotation is no longer figuring out which reliever works best as an opener and trying to get three or four from a bulk guy. It’s Daniel Lynch IV, who has 252 innings of experience. It’s Angel Zerpa, who doesn’t have that much experience, but has pitched in the big leagues in three different seasons. It’s Alec Marsh, who flashed at times that he could be a good starting pitcher in the big leagues. In the past, at least a couple of those guys would have entered spring training in the rotation and would have had to pitch themselves out of it. Now they’ll head in having to pitch their way onto the team.

Will it get them a division title? If I could tell you that with any certainty, I would be retired to some island because I’d have won so much money betting on sports that I could do that. But I do appreciate what they’re doing here. And, if it all fails, there’s a heck of a fallback plan. Other than Lugo, every single one of these signings either will or can become a free agent following the 2024 season. The player option, which I don’t love, can put a bit of a wrench in that, but they could all be moved at the deadline to help bring in more young talent to start fresh with heading into the 2025 offseason.

You might scoff at that, but I’m beginning to find myself pretty impressed with JJ Picollo’s dealings. Aroldis Chapman brought back Ragans. They got Velazquez for Jose Cuas. James McArthur was a minor league deal that went largely under the radar. The Scott Barlow and Ryan Yarbrough trades are intriguing to me. It could be a blip, but they did a nice job of identifying talent in other organizations last season and I think that can happen. Picollo said the right things this past weekend on MLB Network Radio when he said they didn’t make the deals with trades in mind, but you’d be absolutely insane to not have it in your head at least.

If the Royals get to the break at 43-55 or something and are 12 games out of first, but Wacha is even doing 80 percent of what he’s done the last two years, there will be a bidding war for him. The same is true of Anderson, Stratton and Smith. If Renfroe really is hitting like he did in 2022, teams will want him too. Lugo may be tougher given the extra year before the player option, but if things have gone south and these guys are performing, they’ll get back talent. The problem with that is that if things have gone south and they’re performing well enough to get back talent, well, that probably spells some bad things for the young players on the roster. But I digress.

In that interview on MLB Network Radio, Picollo also mentioned that they’d still like to add a left-handed bat. That does make me a lot less confident about saying they’re going to trade Melendez. I still think there’s a good chance and I’m not going to delete that newsletter draft I told you all about, but I’m curious where that player fits if they don’t move another outfielder. I’m also curious who that player is! Do they add someone like Kevin Kiermaier and then dangle Kyle Isbel in a deal for a team looking for a great defender? I don’t tend to think so, but I guess it’s possible. They could sign Austin Meadows and hope for a bounceback but not move anyone knowing they can’t truly count on him. Or it could be a trade. I’m intrigued by this idea and am still thinking on this one.

Ultimately, anyone who says they don’t at least appreciate what the Royals are doing this winter is hating just to hate. You can not believe that it’s going to work, and that’s totally fine. As I said before, I think they’re still the fourth-best team in this division. While there aren’t any exceptionally good teams, I think there is now only one exceptionally bad team. The Royals are just not as good as the first three…yet. But aside from playing at the top of the market (in a generally bad market, by the way), this is exactly what I’d hoped they would do. They’re bringing in solid players who can help this roster in multiple ways and they deserve kudos for that.