Crown Jewels: A Free Agent Signing, a Town Hall and Some Early Draft Talk
For a team that hadn't done much, they were pretty busy this week.
I think the idea that the offseason has been totally quiet for the Royals is one that I’d disagree with. When you reassemble a coaching staff as they have done (and are still doing), there’s inherently a lot going on. It just isn’t something that stays inside people’s minds for too long. Matt Quatraro is old news. Brian Sweeney will be soon enough. People want action! And as far as I can tell, the minor league deal for Jakson Reetz didn’t get anyone to jump out of the chair with a fist bump. Of course, neither did the signing they made on Tuesday night, but at least it was for a big league contributor. I’ll get to that shortly.
I still think they need to sign at least one more starting pitcher and a reliever or two. I’ve written about some of the crazy free agent contracts we’ve seen and why the Royals are maybe sitting out a bit, but then we saw two guys who probably should have been Royals targets, Sean Manaea and Ross Stripling, sign identical deals with the Giants. Why didn’t the Royals do that? I will say that I’d be pretty surprised if the deal a pitcher signed with the Giants was the same he’d be willing to sign with the Royals.
I would not have gone to, say, 3/40 on either of them. But if they could have had them for 2/25 like they signed with the Giants, well, oof. They should have. I’d still have interest in Johnny Cueto, Corey Kluber, Michael Wacha, Michael Fulmer, Corey Knebel, Seth Lugo, Trevor May, Matt Wisler, Andrew Chafin, Matt Moore and Will Smith in addition to exploring trades for guys like Eric Lauer or Carlos Carrasco. There are still options, but they’re thinning.
Ryan Yarbrough, YOU Are a Kansas City Royal
The Royals hadn’t signed anyone this offseason until they had. On Tuesday night, they announced they had signed Ryan Yarbrough to a one-year deal for $3 million with $1 million in incentives. If you really needed proof that Dayton Moore is gone, there is no mutual option. In Yarbrough, the Royals aren’t getting an ace or even likely a number three starter. They are getting a pitcher who posted a 3.94 ERA and 3.87 FIP in his first three years in the big leagues from 2018 to 2020. Yarbrough does three things really well that I think will serve him well as a member of the Royals.
The obvious two are that he both limits his walks and he throws first-pitch strikes. His 6.2 percent walk rate in 2022 would have been only behind Taylor Clarke, Zack Greinke and Brady Singer among Royals to throw more than 10 innings. His first-pitch strike percentage of 67.9 percent would have been the best. We all know what an issue throwing strikes in general was for the Royals last year and especially throwing a strike on the first pitch. But the other thing he does extremely well is he limits hard contact. He ranked in the 97th percentile for average exit velocity allowed and the 94th in hard-hit rate. It isn’t a one-year blip either as he’s done a great job of that throughout his career.
Some of that is likely because he also gets hitters to chase, something Royals pitching struggled with greatly in 2022. I appreciate what they’re trying to do here and my hope is that Brian Sweeney and his team can get him back to what he was a couple of years ago, but even if they can’t, it’s a small investment that won’t hurt them in the long run. If you think back to those 450ish innings they need to find, a motivated Yarbrough could easily be 100-120 of them. It’s hard to sell this deal given the lack of other moves, but in a vacuum, it’s the type of pickup that makes a lot of sense. One more thing to note is that he has been very successful against lefties in his career, so at the worst, he can be someone they use from the left side, though they do have a lot of lefties now.
It does make me wonder just a bit if this changes anything on Greinke. Ultimately you want guys who can pitch. Greinke showed he can still pitch last year and at least help out a staff get some innings, but how many low strikeout guys can a staff sustain? I would still bet on the Royals resigning him, but this Yarbrough deal maybe makes it like 15 percent less likely.
More Ballpark News
Before the announcement of Yabrough’s signing, the biggest news for the team was that they put on a town hall to discuss their efforts to build a new stadium. There was a lot of information thrown out there, but two things specifically stood out to me. The first was that John Sherman announced that the entertainment district that would be around the stadium would be paid for entirely through private funds. That’s great.
He then said that they would pay for the bulk of the project privately as well, though “bulk” is a funny word because it can mean a lot of numbers. I’d love to see the end results. If a tax increase accounts for $100 million of the $2 billion total price tag, that’s one thing. If it’s $500 million, that’s something else entirely. So we’ll see on that. The other was that the cost to renovate Kauffman Stadium to make it viable for the long term would be more than $1 billion. I don’t know enough to know if that’s true or not, but if it is, it makes the decision even that much easier.
I’m of the opinion that this train isn’t going to get stopped, so it doesn’t especially matter how I feel about it. I guess it’s really true because I’m not a Jackson County resident, so I won’t even get a chance to vote on it. But one thing I mentioned in a comment here the other day that I think remains true is that people who follow the team as closely as we do or even not quite as much but are still in tune probably don’t make up nearly as much of the voting base as it’s easy to think. I don’t know what the percentage is of people who don’t care about anything but think a downtown stadium would be cool, but it’s probably higher than you think and likely high enough for a vote to pass almost no matter what, assuming the public responsibility is roughly what it was for the renovations a few years ago.
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Something Jake Lebahn on WIBW brought up to me yesterday that I thought was interesting is that Sherman said in his comments that he can promise the Royals aren’t moving. Should people call his bluff? Maybe. Like I said, I don’t think it’ll matter because it’ll pass, but that was an interesting comment. It could potentially take a relocation threat off the table if the vote doesn’t go well. But that’s something to think about in the future. For now, I actually think it was interesting that Sherman and Populous and all of that group was willing to open it up to questions in a town hall format. I imagine over the next few months, we’ll get a much more clear picture of their vision and I’d guess that vote happens in August.
Super Early Draft Talk
I honestly don’t remember if I’ve written about the Royals falling to the eighth pick in the draft in the first ever draft lottery. Maybe I have, but you probably know it happened anyway, so that means the Royals will pick at 8, 44, 69 and 76 for their four picks out of the top 100. That 77th pick could fall to 78th, I believe. Dansby Swanson could still provide a pick to the Braves before that pick if he doesn’t re-sign. MLB Pipeline put out their most recent top-100 and I just started doing a little draft research, but if you were wondering and didn’t click the link, here are the prospects who rank at the Royals picks:
8 - Enrique Bradfield, OF, Vanderbilt
44 - Mitch Jebb, SS, Michigan State
69 - Adrian Santana, SS, Doral Academy (FL)
77 - Gavin Grahovac, OF/C, Villa Park (CA)
Obviously, things change as the season goes on and teams don’t just draft based on one website’s list, but I wanted to give you an idea some of the names. It’s a bummer the Royals didn’t win that lottery because I think Dylan Crews, who is very likely to go number one, would have been kind of a perfect fit in a system with Gavin Cross, but I digress. Knowing the Royals, if guys like Chase Dollander or Paul Skenes end up there at pick eight, they’re going to take them. Both are college pitchers with big fastballs and good sliders. I don’t think they’ll fall, but you never know.
More likely, you should get to know a few names. Bradfield is absolutely one of them, though I really hope he’s not the pick. He’s a great defender and can fly and maybe I’m just pushing away too much of what the Royals have done so much in the past, but I want someone who can really hit if I’m picking in the top-10. I don’t think they’d go this way, but Max Clark, a high school outfielder out of Indiana is intriguing to me. Some scouts think his hit tool is even higher than MLB Pipeline’s 60 and, from what I’ve seen, I think there’s power in the swing. He can also play center. I’d be interested. Another interesting high schooler is Walter Jenkins out of North Carolina. He’s not the hitter Clark is but h has very real power and isn’t a bad hitter by any stretch.
I wonder a little if we see Matt Shaw start to rise up the draft boards a bit as the season goes on. He can hit, he can run, he can play a few positions. He’s someone who has a very good approach at the plate. I like the odds of the Royals development team using that to turn him into a very good hitter. Will Sanders might be in no-man’s land, but I feel like he’s the type of pitcher the Guardians excel with, so with Brian Sweeney in the fold, maybe they go somewhere like that, especially if they try to go underslot in the first round as they don’t do often, but have done. I’ll get more into the draft stuff as we get a little closer.
Crown Jewels: A Free Agent Signing, a Town Hall and Some Early Draft Talk
I was actually going to ask you about Grienke. You touched on it briefly here. My unsourced, unqualified opinion is that the may not willing to pay what Grienke is asking for after looking at the starting pitcher market. It just seems odd they wouldn’t have been able to come up with something by now had he wanted to be back and the Royals wanted him back as much as they said. IDK, I just get the feeling that may not be happening anymore. I’m more 50/50 on it now. I guess, if that’s the case and Yarbrough is the replacement for Grienke….did the Royals actually get any better? I’m clearly looking at this all wrong. They aren’t actually really trying to get better…I’m just not sure exactly what they are trying to do. Everybody just improves I guess.
I think the lack of movement by the Royals on even fringy free agents is a testament to how poorly managed the royals were under the mathenay-eldridge-moore regime. And before they spend a dime they want to see if these new coaches and manager can see if these prospects are for real or not, particularly the pitchers... (I actually think Bubic needs to spend whole year in the minors, Lynch should workout, Hernandez should be given every opportunity to start, etc. but i digress.) This is all coming from Mr. Sherman...he is a very easy book to read in my opinion. And maybe it's my age...but I agree with him....nobody gets any dessert till the homework is done! But it's so painful to watch.