Crown Jewels: The Greinke Conundrum, Making the Right Choices and What's Left
The last newsletter of 2022 is bringing the heat, and maybe a controversial opinion or two.
I truly cannot believe we’re at the end of 2022. It’s funny. As you get older, I think that time somehow simultaneously speeds up and slows down. For me personally, it was a big year. As you all probably know, my wife and I had a baby who turned a month old yesterday. It somehow feels like it was just last week that my jaw dropped learning that she was pregnant and also like it was an eternity ago. So when I tell you that we last saw the Royals play baseball just 86 days ago, that may come as a surprise. It feels like the defeat at the hands of Cleveland was way longer ago than that.
But, just like the amount of daylight we get starts to grow pretty quickly for the next few weeks, spring training is closing in. The Royals don’t have an official date for pitchers and catchers to report, but we’re less than seven weeks away from that and just 90 days away from the Twins coming to town to start the 2023 season. By then, every team will have had a chance to sign Carlos Correa and find issues with his physical. If you’re good at math, you can see that we’ll hit the halfway point of the offseason in relation to the next season starting on Sunday. That means it’ll be the new year and we’ve reached the back half of a long winter. We can do this!
Zack Greinke and Can vs. Should
We’ve heard for months that the Royals would like to bring back Zack Greinke and the expectation was that Greinke would also like to return. But as time has passed, there has been a lack of press releases announcing his being re-signed. And over the last few weeks, some nuggets have dropped that because of the salaries we’ve seen given out, the two sides might be a bit far apart on asking price and that’s where the holdup is. Tod Palmer of NBC 41 tweeted this:
That led to a lot of people taking some shots at John Sherman for being cheap. I get it. One of my biggest soapbox issues is that the Mets and Yankees and Dodgers and whoever else spending tons of money isn’t the problem. It’s teams not spending when they’re given the kind of money they are. The Royals, between television deals and revenue sharing, have $100 millionish before they sell anything. So they need to be spending. So I’m completely on board with being upset by them not spending. But I have two things to say to that.
One, I’ve been told by multiple people who would absolutely know that the team doesn’t operate on a one-year budget. So maybe this kicks the can of blame down the road, but I’m okay with them being light on the payroll in a year they don’t anticipate winning as long as they are not light on payroll moving forward. If they operate as if they have no shot to even sign mid-level free agents as soon as next season, I will raise hell. That’s a promise. So that’s out of the way.
But the second is that I still want them to spend money wisely. I know there are issues with Hunter Dozier beyond his contract, but I find a lot of the same people who don’t care what the Royals spend on Greinke are the people screaming about how overpaid Dozier is. If the money doesn’t matter, then it doesn’t matter anywhere. And I’m sure the response is that it’s not a fair comparison because Dozier has played poorly while Greinke was solid for the Royals last season. This is a totally fair response, but it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a limit to what someone like Greinke should get. I’m going to give you five pitchers and their 2022 stats. You’re going to know that one of them is Greinke but play along.
Player A: 4.34 ERA, 4.00 xERA, 164.0 IP, 20.2% K, 3.0% BB
Player B: 3.68 ERA, 4.78 xERA, 137.0 IP, 12.5% K, 4.6% BB
Player C: 4.27 ERA, 4.08 xERA, 124.1 IP, 20.7% K, 7.0% BB
Player D: 4.42 ERA, 4.94 xERA, 179.0 IP, 18.6% K, 6.7% BB
Player E: 4.50 ERA, 4.40 xERA, 80.0 IP, 17.2% K, 6.2% BB
If you had to rank the five in order of who deserves the most to who deserves the least, my guess is you’d probably have Player A with the most and Player E with the least. The players in order are Corey Kluber, Greinke, Rich Hill, Jordan Lyles and Ryan Yarbrough. To date, Kluber has gotten the most in terms of AAV with a $10 million deal with Boston and Yarbrough has gotten the least with the Royals at $3 million. Lyles is in the middle at $8.5 million per and Hill got $8 million for a year. Lyles pretty clearly got paid for the innings, which I still strongly dislike the second year, but I get it.
So if Greinke is asking for more than Kluber, I just don’t see it making sense. I know the argument is what difference does it make for the Royals and I truly don’t know how to argue against that because it doesn’t make a big difference, but I still want them to spend their money wisely. And previous poor signings don’t excuse future poor signings. I just have a hard time giving a 39-year-old with the lowest strikeout rate in baseball among pitchers with 40+ innings a contract bigger than the one even Kluber got. I think he probably belongs around Hill’s deal and I anticipate that if he wants $8ish million, he’ll get that and likely from the Royals. I just think there’s a difference between being cheap and being smart. The Royals may be both cheap and not smart, but not wanting to go above market on Greinke actually is smart to me.
They Got It Right on O’Hearn…Eventually
Speaking of not spending money wisely, the Royals guaranteed Ryan O’Hearn $1.4 million in signing him for the 2023 season. And then after they made their second 40-man roster acquisition of the season, he was the one who was DFAed. I never fully believed that they fully believed in O’Hearn, but I also didn’t expect him to be on the chopping block so soon. Don’t get me wrong, they made the right decision, but what a cluster of a move this was paired with the contract he signed just a few weeks ago. Now, it may not end up being a waste of money. I think there is a non-zero chance that he ends up getting traded for someone we’ll either never hear of again or cash.
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According to the Roster Resource pages on Fangraphs, the Rays are slotting in Jonathan Aranda as the strongside first base platoon. I could absolutely see them giving O’Hearn a shot. Seth Brown is the A’s first baseman, but any number of trades could either put him on another roster or back in the outfield. Dayton Moore is in Texas now, so you can never discount him loving O’Hearn. The Reds should always be looking to find power bats who could take advantage of their ballpark. The Cubs have Patrick Wisdom slotted for first base right now. I know he’s hit for big power and maybe O’Hearn is no different than him, but I could see that working. And the Giants played Lamonte Wade Jr. at first base 22 times in 2022. The point is there are potential landing spots and the first base market is garbage.
Also, if he refuses an assignment to Omaha, he has to forego the money as well. So they may not end up paying him, though the smart money is that he ends up as a non-roster invite to spring training, hits .464/.571/.893 and makes the Opening Day roster anyway. But regardless, him being off the 40-man was both correct and smart, even if there was some ridiculousness along the way. And that makes me wonder just a bit (and man do I hesitate to even bring this up without any knowledge but this is sort of what this spot is for, I guess) if there’s some sort of struggle. I don’t know if it’s between JJ Picollo and one of his lieutenants or with Sherman at the top of the organization or maybe even with a guy like Matt Quatraro, but there is absolutely a disconnect in giving out the contract and then cutting bait with the guy before we even turn the calendar to the new year. I’ve wondered a bit if there might be a short leash on this front office and this makes me wonder more.
Who Is Left?
We know the Royals haven’t made many moves at all, other than signing Lyles and Yarbrough, so what could they potentially do the rest of the way? From what we’ve gathered through interviews and from people with a good idea of what they want to do, I think we can expect them to be looking potentially at a backup catcher, a third baseman or a corner outfielder who can hit right-handed, one more starter and maybe a bullpen arm. They did sign Nick Wittgren to a minor league deal and he’s interesting to me because he was bad in 2022, but also changed his pitch mix quite a bit. Does Brian Sweeney know something? So maybe he’s the bullpen arm and from 2018 to 2020 he did post a 2.97 ERA with a 24.9 percent strikeout rate and 7.5 percent walk rate.
As far as third basemen go, there isn’t much on the free agent market. I still maintain Evan Longoria would be very interesting, but I don’t think he’s especially interested by the Royals. Brian Anderson is someone who I would give a shot to. He was non-tendered by the Marlins after being below average in 2021 and downright bad in 2022. But up through 2020, he was a .266/.349/.431 hitter who had rated okay defensively. I’d give him a few million on a one-year deal. If they shift to the outfield, there are two names who are interesting to me - Adam Duvall and AJ Pollock. Duvall is pretty good defensively and has big power while Pollock was bad in Chicago, but has pretty decent batted ball data that may indicate he could bounce back.
On the pitching side, there’s Greinke, but also Johnny Cueto, Wade Miley and Michael Wacha. I imagine Wacha ends up getting more than the Royals are wanting to give out, but any of the other three would make some level of sense to help provide more innings to the rotation. In the bullpen, it gets tougher because you’re really likely counting on some bounceback, but Steve Cishek has been solid enough and he’s still out there, though he probably walks more than you’d like. I still would like Michael Fulmer on a one-year deal or even Corey Knebel, though that 14.4 percent walk rate is a bit unsightly. Picollo mentioned a few weeks ago that they would likely be more active in the second half of free agency. Well, JJ, it’s here.
At least the Royals aren't _________. However, there are only a few teams you can put into that blank. Oh well. It seems like the Royals have recently had, and now have, at least good people in management and especially on the field. These are players I can root for even though they lose more than they win.
Although it took much longer than I thought that it would Ryan O'Hearn is now a bench warmer for another MLB franchise.