Crown Jewels: The Royals' Baseline, What's Still Out There and an Early Look at the Draft

As we enter 2025, time is getting short for the Royals to make their team better, but they still can.

The home stretch to get back to baseball has begun. There is still a whole lot of time before we see a game that even matters, which means there’s still a whole lot of time for the composition of the team to change. But we’ve gotten over that hump at the very least. Of course, now we’re in the part of the offseason where I can start to convince myself that a guy like Joey Wiemer can actually be a difference maker for the team. Look, I like the guy and I appreciate acquiring the upside and it might happen that way, but it’s time for some real action. I know people are getting frustrated at the inactivity, but I continue to hear that the Royals are active in discussions at least.

What does that even mean? I don’t know at this point. I can tell you that they aren’t satisfied with what they have yet, no matter what you might have read online. The fact is that I hear from people around the game, many not even connected with the Royals, that they’re just being disciplined. I think there are two ways to view that. The first is what I’ve seen from some of the sentiment. Why be disciplined the year after a huge jump that resulted in a playoff spot? Fill the obvious holes and don’t worry about the cost. I get that idea. I really do.

But I also understand the idea that they believe they’re building something sustainable and the stopgap moves are just that until the system can build up. There’s a lot of risk in that. I think there are good things happening with the farm system, but also we haven’t seen the results come through yet. Maybe it happens this year. I know they believe that a guy like Jac Caglianone can be up very quickly, but you just don’t know on that until you know. I still stand by my belief that they’re going to add at least a couple more pieces, including someone who can slot in at five or six in the order. I guess I’ll continue to die on this hill whether people want to believe it or not.

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The Baseline

Heading into last winter, the Royals were a 106-loss team, but their Pythagorean record was 64-98 and their record by BaseRuns was 66-96 (I think, I can’t find it anywhere). So when they went into the offseason saying they felt they were better than their 2023 record and got a bit ridiculed, there was some truth to it. Of course, there was also a relatively strong finish along with additions like Cole Ragans and Nelson Velazquez (hey, he had a fun couple of months). Still, they finished 2024 with a record of 86-76, but their Pythagorean record was 91-71. Their BaseRuns record was 86-76, though, so that checks out with their final record.

Looking at the Pythag, it’s easy to see how that number might be a bit misleading. With such a strong rotation but a weak bullpen for the majority of the season, their losses were generally closer games while their wins were often bigger. They were 34-18 in games decided by five runs or more, which is a great indicator of a truly good team. One-run games aren’t indicative of much other than an excellent or poor bullpen while blowouts tend to show the true talent level of a team. But I wonder a little bit if one acquisition at the deadline makes the Royals a bit more likely to start off closer to the 91-win theoretical record than the 86-win reality.

Getting Lucas Erceg at the deadline transformed the bullpen…eventually. I’ve written about where the bullpen stands and there are still a lot of questions, but we saw what that unit was able to do in September when it posted the fourth-best ERA in baseball, the second-best FIP, the fourth-best strikeout and the sixth-best walk rate. Erceg was a huge part of that, but so was Kris Bubic who is going to be given every shot to start again in 2024. But Daniel Lynch IV, Angel Zerpa and John Schreiber all had great months and great peripherals to match. That’s a reason for optimism.

The reason for pessimism lies in the rotation and the relatively inconsistent offense. I think the rotation is still going to be a strength for this team in 2025, but I also question whether or not they’ll be able to get as much out of their starting five as they did in 2024. They were just so healthy, and I think it would be a huge upset if they were as healthy in 2025. It’s not that it can’t happen, it’s just that there will likely be some regression. There likely would have been regression with Brady Singer too, for whatever that’s worth. I think it’s a very reasonable thought to say that the main pieces of the rotation will be as good as they were in 2024, but they just won’t pitch as much. Then it falls more on unknowns like Bubic, Kyle Wright, Noah Cameron and others.

And offensively, the Royals are an interesting bunch. They were fifth in baseball in runs scored the day Vinnie Pasquantino went down. They finished 13th. On one hand, they got to fifth with one of the worst leadoff seasons of the last 20 years. On the other hand, are they likely to get as much from Bobby Witt Jr., Pasquantino and Salvador Perez? I wouldn’t assume so. Again, I believe they’ll still upgrade the offense, but I would anticipate their final total of 735 runs (4.54 runs per game) is probably more believable moving forward than the 657 runs (4.87 per game) through Pasquantino’s injury. On the other hand, that was 135 games worth of action compared to 27, so I don’t know. I go back and forth.

Is the offense better with Jonathan India leading off and the rest staying the same? I’d say yes on paper, but I feel like it’s probably a bit of a wash until they get someone else. I don’t think the 2024 team overperformed by any stretch and a stronger bullpen should help in 2025, but I still struggle to figure out where the baseline is. I definitely think it’s somewhere between the 86 wins of reality and BaseRuns fame and the 91 wins on the Pythagorean record.

What’s Left?

As I mentioned, we’re now past the point that the offseason is early, but I’m still going to preach patience. As I’ve said, I get if that’s difficult to keep, but this offseason has been odd. There have been moves pretty regularly, but there also haven’t been a ton of big moves. MLB Trade Rumors always lists a top 50 free agents and this year, 24 remain unsigned. That includes four of the top 10 still out there and nine of the top 25. By my estimation, the only players signed who I thought the Royals would be at least interested in are Sean Manaea, Yusei Kikuchi, Nathan Eovaldi, Clay Holmes and Michael Conforto and outside of Kikuchi, it kind of adds up for all of them. Manaea and Eovaldi got PAID while Holmes was signed as a starter and Conforto pretty clearly just wanted to play for the champs.

So who is still out there for them? Anthony Santander hasn’t signed yet, but I question how wise it would be to give a low-OBP, power-first hitter the contract he wants. Jurickson Profar is out there, but I don’t feel great about giving a multi-year deal coming off a career year (.238/.322/.383 career before 2024) to a player who isn’t a good defender and doesn’t do much especially well outside of hit when he does hit. There just aren’t a ton of bats out there in free agency and there never were, which is why they’ve talked about a trade for some time. I still think Taylor Ward and Adolis Garcia are targets that we’ll hear about more, particularly if the Angels end up signing Santander as is rumored to be a possibility.

If they want to add to the bullpen, pretty much anyone they could have wanted is out there. David Roberston, Kirby Yates, Carlos Estevez, Jeff Hoffman (if he signs as a reliever), Kenley Jansen and a ton of others are still out there. I think you could see a signing there at some point as the prices come down. And if they want to add to the rotation, I won’t be too surprised if the market for where they want to spend ends up coming back to them here in the next week or two. I think a lot of pitchers saw what happened to Jordan Montgomery and Blake Snell last year and would rather lose a couple million now to not torpedo a deal for 2026 and beyond.

That means any of the back-of-the-rotation starters I’ve talked about quite a bit are still around and seem like they could end up being fits to build depth. Jose Quintana, Kyle Gibson, Michael Lorenzen and Andrew Heaney are my top choices, but there are others like Lance Lynn and Cal Quantrill out there as well. I think I’ll end up somewhat surprised if the Royals don’t end up adding to their starting depth in some way, even if it’s more of a swingman. I guess my point is that part of my reason for preaching patience is that the players the Royals were always going to be in on are generally still out there and available.

Early Draft Thoughts

I’ll get into this a bit more as we get closer, but with some free agent signings shaking up the draft order a bit and knowing the Royals get a pick for Witt’s MVP finish and their Comp B pick, they have five picks in the top 98 (23, 28, 62, 73 and 98). I believe they can move up a little bit more depending on where Pete Alonso, Alex Bregman and Nick Pivetta sign, but that’s generally where they’ll pick. The last time they had five picks in the top 100 was in the famed 2018 draft (which I maintain ended up way better than people realize). They also had five (or more) in the top 100 in 1980, 1992, 1998, 1999, 2004, 2014 and 2015. So it’s happened before, but not all that often.

It’s kind of tough to really gauge who will be available when the Royals pick, which is a nice change of pace from the years when you have a pretty good idea of who might be available. It’s also way too early to really be digging into the draft, but here I am doing it anyway. The players at 23 and 28 will likely be from a pretty similar group. I’d like to see them target bats, but I’ll pretty much always skew toward bats. That said, Brian Bridges ran four drafts with the Braves and had just one pick in the 20s and went with Michael Soroka. I’m not sure if that tells us much in reality. He also took Austin Riley at 41 in 2015, Joey Wentz at 40 and Kyle Muller at 44 in 2016, Drew Waters at 41 in 2017 and Greyston Jenista at 49 in 2018. Of course, Caglianone wasn’t in the same realm as many of his Braves picks, so I don’t know how much his Braves history has to do with what the Royals will do.

Some of the hitters, I like are Devin Taylor, an outfielder from Indiana, Tre Phelps from Georgia, Ethan Conrad from Wake Forest and Brady Ebel, a high school shortstop out of California. I wonder who might fall like the last time the Royals picked this low in the first round. You might recall that Singer was mocked near the top of a few mocks this early in 2018 and he fell all the way to the Royals at 18. Maybe Aiva Arquette from Oregon drops down into the 20s. I’d love that. Max Belyeu is very interesting to me too. I’m not sure if him in the 20s would be a huge surprise, but he’s ranked a bit higher than that.

If they turn to an arm, I would not go with a high schooler, though I have a bad feeling they really will like Carmen Appenzeller. I guess he is a young arm, but still, the high school arms this high are just so risky. Give me Kyson Witherspoon or maybe AJ Russell. Both have fastballs that will get your attention and then I feel good about them working on the secondaries based on what we’ve seen from the development staff the last couple of seasons.

Again, it’s way way way way too early for this, but it’s fun to start looking ahead and to put a pin in a few players to keep an eye on as the seasons get started in a little more than a month.