Crown Jewels: A Delicate Balance, More Outfield Shopping and Moooooooose

We are now inside three weeks until the Royals are scheduled to start their season. This is not a drill.

The Royals have now played 13 spring games. They have 18 more scheduled in Arizona (I’m going to guess they don’t play today due to rare Phoenix-area rain) and then two more in Texas as a final tune-up. This is kind of the sweet spot of the spring to be visiting and going to games. The starters get three or four plate appearances, but you still get to see a handful of prospects. I used to think getting to spring training later was better because you see guys play full games, but we see that all season long. Being at spring training games is about trying to figure out who number 83 is and becoming a stan for the prospect you hadn’t heard of before you were at the game where he struck out the side.

It’s also the time of spring that can get a little dull, if we’re being honest. The excitement of baseball being back has now worn off and guys are truly just getting their work in every day. You see it in little ways like when they're happy but not ecstatic about something positive. You see it in bigger ways like when Salvador Perez suffers a laceration under his eye and he’s removed from a game because the game simply doesn’t matter. And you see it in huge ways like when a pitcher is removed from a game mid-inning and then comes back the next inning because he simply had a pitch limit per inning that he reached. There’s a monotony to the regular season because it’s so long, but there’s a real monotony to spring because it’s still daily and also the results mean nothing. It’s a fun juxtaposition.

This week’s newsletters:

Royals Roster Projection 2: The Bats

Royals Roster Projection 2: The Arms

An Ode to the First Game of the Year

The Delicate Decision-Making Balance and How That Impacts the 2025 Royals

This is the time of year when you start to hear from people you haven’t talked to since the end of last season or maybe just a bit after. It’s almost like school is back in session, and with some of these contacts, it feels like you pick up right where you left off, just talking baseball. When I was talking about being down in spring training the other day, one of my baseball buddies, as I like to call them, reached out. I looked at the timestamp of our last conversation. It was November 12. The text was “Managers have it really hard in spring.”

I responded with something snarky about how it sure is tough to sit on a folding chair in the beautiful weather and watch baseball, but then he brought up such an interesting point that I think about, but maybe not in this way exactly. They have to balance exactly how to weigh spring training stats and what they see in March in something less than full competition with their preconceived notions and previous season results. I’ve written about this before, but last spring was an interesting combination for the Royals. They gave Alec Marsh the fifth starter’s job based on his spring work while they gave Nelson Velazquez the designed hitter job in spite of his spring work (and in spite of Nick Pratto’s spring work).

With one of those players, they allowed him to win a job. With the other, they simply didn’t. Is that because they believed in Marsh beforehand and didn’t believe in Pratto? I think that’s part of it. Is it because Pratto did well while not really improving on any of the issues he’s had throughout most of his professional career? Probably so. Both decisions were proven right, though I guess Velazquez wasn’t necessarily the correct choice given that he spent more than half the year in AAA himself. But it really leads to a question of how the Royals will react to spring this year.

They don’t have a ton of competitions really. I think you can look at the roster and know that probably 20 of the 26 roster spots are decided. A few of those that aren’t are relievers, which matter but are a little different because of how teams utilize the minors in their 26-man roster. But, for example, do the Royals go with Cavan Biggio over Nick Loftin in spite of the fact that Loftin is doing pretty much everything right this spring? He’s hit the ball harder than he did last year while showing defensive versatility. He’s younger. He’s a better defender. And they have similar skill sets in both being very patient hitters while neither has excelled in the big leagues (at least not in awhile in Biggio’s case). I continue to hear positive things about Biggio this spring, but do the Royals have a preconceived notion about Loftin that a few weeks in the Arizona sun can change? Or are they hoping he can win that job? We’ll find out, but it’s interesting.

Joey Wiemer is another interesting player in this sort of conversation. If Dairon Blanco is still out through Opening Day, I think it becomes moot, but Blanco is supposedly making good progress and will be on the field soon. So do the Royals want Wiemer to win the job and take over as a platoon partner for Kyle Isbel or do they want to get him more time in AAA. He’s just 2 for 15 this spring, but he has walked five times and his home run on Wednesday night came on a great swing. We don’t see the behind-the-scenes work that probably matters more than the results on the field in random samples throughout March, but I’ll be curious to see how they balance this when determining the roster that goes to Kansas City on March 27.

The Royals are Still Trying to Upgrade the Outfield

Reports came out this week that the Royals had made Adam Duvall an offer for one year and $1 million with another $1 million in incentives. Duvall’s response was that he wanted $3 million fully guaranteed or he’s going to retire. Well, okay then. I think he’s an interesting option because he still crushes lefties, but the guy hit .182/.245/.323 last year (.252/.342/.514 against lefties). I’m not sure he’s really in a spot to say he’s worth more than anything he’s offered, but he’s also put in a long career and deserves to ride off whenever he wants. The point, though, is that it’s clear the Royals aren’t done trying to find an upgrade in the outfield.

Reports also resurfaced that they had talked to the Mets about Starling Marte earlier in the winter. What I can’t quite figure out is if these reports came up again because they’re talking again or if it was just a slow news day. I did ask around a bit and a couple of people told me that the Royals are just super active. It hasn’t resulted in a move, but they’re making calls all the time, which is nice to know, I think. I still believe that the Angels will actually trade Taylor Ward at some point and I think the Royals are a perfect fit there. Is that point this month or is it the deadline? That could make a difference.

At this point, it really feels like the Royals are going to give MJ Melendez a chance to prove his changes can lead to better results. The spring numbers are encouraging. He’s hitting .304/.360/.696, which doesn’t mean a ton, but it’s better to be good than bad. He’s struck out eight times in 25 plate appearances, which is quite bad, but his first two games accounted for four of those in six plate appearances. I know it sounds like I’m an apologist here, but I also think facing live pitching in a near big league environment with a new stance and swing for the first time would take some adjusting. He has a 21.1 percent strikeout rate since those first two games and has all seven of his hits (with four extra base hits since). We’re going to see if he can sink or swim this year, and if he sinks, well, so be it.

But it’s interesting if they are still trying to acquire a starting outfielder because unless they can get someone who can handle center field in Kauffman Stadium, only Hunter Renfroe’s spot would be available. Could Renfroe simply be a platoon partner for Melendez? Sure. Could he be a roster casualty? I think that’s a bit less likely, but I wonder a little if a team like the Yankees might be willing to give up a Jimmy John’s gift card or something for him since they’re going to be without Giancarlo Stanton to start the season. Maybe that’s the path where the Royals make a move in the outfield.

None of this has even mentioned the attempts to put either Michael Massey or Jonathan India out there. I haven’t seen Massey in left yet, but as I wrote yesterday, India just doesn’t feel comfortable. So I don’t know how that factors in. And Jac Caglianone can’t be counted on yet for this season, but he’s put up a heck of a show this spring going 4 for 9 with two homers, two walks and just one strikeout. He’s going to get some run in the outfield and if he can move as quickly as some believe he can, he could easily fill that right field spot by midseason. There’s a world where they need two outfielders at the deadline, but there’s another world where Melendez figures it out and Caglianone comes up and fills in the middle of the lineup and they go from a top heavy lineup to a deep one that no pitcher wants to face. This outfield situation is going to be fascinating all year, I think.

Moose Retiring as a Royal

The Royals announced this week that Mike Moustakas would sign a one-day contract and retire as a Royal with a ceremony on May 31 to honor him. I think if you read yesterday’s newsletter, you’d know that I’m a complete baseball romantic, so it’s probably no surprise at all that I love stuff like this. Moustakas is such an interesting part of Royals history. He was a high draft pick all the way back in 2008 and was part of the best farm system ever (though that may have been surpassed). He was part of the crew that debuted in 2011 and just couldn’t figure it out for the longest time. He was finally demoted in 2014 to work on things but was back very quickly because Danny Valencia got hurt and the Royals needed a third baseman back.

He didn’t fare that well the rest of the season, but he hit a bunch of home runs in the playoffs and made one of the most memorable catches in Royals history when he reached into the dugout suite against the Orioles in Game Three of the ALCS. From that point forward, it felt like he was a folk hero. I remember all the talk of his work in the offseason between 2014 and 2015 and he put together a solid spring, but much like we’re hearing about Melendez, people needed to see it to believe it. I will never forget Opening Day in 2015. It wasn’t a particularly nice day, but I remember tweeting that he was going to homer in the fifth inning and on a 1-1 pitch took Jeff Samardzija deep to left-center. If I’m not mistaken, that was his first home run of his career to the opposite field. People though I was a wizard, but I’ll let you in on a secret nearly 10 years later. It was a stupid guess tweet that nobody would have paid attention to if it was wrong. Still, I was happy to be right.

He came into that season with a career wRC+ of just 82. That number jumped to 123 in 2015. His 2016 was cut short due to the brutal collision with Alex Gordon that kind of derailed the Royals too. But he put together a heck of a career. He’d set the Royals home run record in 2017 (that was broken by Jorge Soler two years later) and earned himself a nice contract with the Reds after the 2019 season. His career wasn’t one that ended with him knocking on the door of the Hall of Fame or anything, but he was a solid defender at third and even moved to second to help the team. He grew up and became one of those glue guys in the game. He absolutely deserves to be honored in the same way Lorenzo Cain was in 2023.

One day, he’ll be enshrined in the Royals Hall of Fame, which will be well-deserved too. I look forward to hearing the MOOOOOOOOSE chants on May 31 when he gets back to Kansas City to officially retire where it all began and I love that the Royals do this sort of thing.