Very good analysis. The Royals should offer him somewhere in the low 60's. They have several other players to extend as well. Whitt, Jr, hasn't been extended to my knowledge. MJ may be worth locking up as well as either Pasquantino or Pratto. Then there are Lynch and Bubic . A lot of decisions to be made, but they should consider their window of opportunity as starting next year and running for 4 years beyond that if they can't secure some of these guys for longer.
They do have a handful of guys who deserve the consideration at least. I wrote about Witt before the season and MJ a few weeks ago. Waiting only makes it more expensive.
I’d be down for extending Singer at this point. Don’t really care what it costs as it plants a flag in the ground (probably already have done that with all the young guys). I thought i heard Soren…maybe it was with you on I don’t recall, that this FO isn’t going to be around anyway if it doesn’t work. The bigger question, that we can’t really answer, is would Singer do it?
Because, he’s a first round pick. I don’t know that money is as huge a factor. Don’t get me wrong, he wants to get paid, but I mean he should have some first round money to lean on. Maybe what I’m trying to say is he has the ability to bet on himself with a little change in his pocket already. Give it another year or two to see if the Royals will actually be any good. I’m pretty sure the Royals are gong to have to be paying the bad team tax on its OWN FREAKIN PLAYERS extensions. Lol.
Yeah, like I wrote, who knows if he’d do it? He does have bonus money and all that, but there’s also the uncertain nature of pitchers with injury risk. Maybe he’s willing to take some security and still hit free agency young enough to get another contract. Keep in mind he’s five months removed from having a bad spring coming off a bad season that got him pushed to the bullpen.
That was me with Soren you’re thinking about too. It was a good segment from him.
I was looking at some of the bigger (more than 2 years) extensions this last year to see how many were on good teams going into the year -
Clase - 5yr/20M - good team
Ramirez - 5yr - good team
Hayes - 8yr/70M - Pit (bad team) - give royals hope
Kyle Freeland - 5yr/64M (bad team) - CO, lol
Alvarez - 6yr/115m - good team
Ashby - 5yr/20 m - good team
Riley 10yr/212 m - good team
Musgrove - 5yr/100m - good team
Analysis - IDK - Most of these are good teams but the Pirates and the Rockies were able to get some done. I’m sure its all just dependents on the player and his individual situation. But 75% of these are so are good teams to begin with. Maybe the royals have a win a little first?
Here’s my question. Do they sign because they’re on a winning team or are the teams winning because they’re proactive with their young talent? Outside of the longest deals, they don’t end any possibility of free agency. They just delay it some.
Its a combination of both I’m sure. And its a two way street. Once a player has some coin (Alvarez, Ramirez,) I feel like winning is the next step in the progression. Its the chicken or the egg scenario almost. But somehow the Royals have to get there. The Royals have been good to its players for so long and not been rewarded with it. So clearly on some level the players care about winning more.
The Royals have to overpay for the first one. Because the first one is going to get the second one and so forth. If its even for a number David Lesky doesn’t like all the better because something has to give at some point. So just make it happen for Witt Jr, or Singer at this point. Plant the flag.
I kinda think you have to if you are DM or JJ. I think about how they go into the offseason and try and sell job performance. Yes, the fallback is all these guys are up in the majors now. Ok. Great. In 6 years they all leave, Farm system ranked towards the bottom. By the way I’m replacing our entire minor league pitching development team, and major league coaching staff. How do you sell that to Sherman?
Really, the only way you can is say we just gave Singer 6/75, 6/80, 6/85 whatever it is until he says yes. I don’t care on the number. Now you go to Sherman and sell that we have our “ace” locked up for 6 years. Market around him, around Witt Jr, Melendez next year. Try and sign a Clevinger and get some excitement around the team in FA. Attendance should be up. We’ve locked up young talent like you did in Cleveland. Here’s the route forward. Maybe I’m overselling it and its not that big a deal to Sherman anyway. I don’t know. But in a normal position, it’s just a hard sell to a boss if you don’t sign one of these guys to an extension…pick up a solid FA and rebuild some excitement within the org.
I'm absolutely supportive of making extension offers to some of the crew at this point. Brady, Witt, and Melendez would be where I would start. If Sherman is serious about creating a strong core of players to build around, I think we really need to invest in them. I don't think we have to be crazy about it, and some creative incentive bonuses would be useful to reward the kind of performance we would expect to see from them. Use those contracts to let other guys know what they can expect if they continue their development. We can't lock in everyone, but we do need to be thinking about how to build to sustain, not just to compete for a year or two, and then return to .400 ball again.
The most Royals thing to happen would be for them to give him a deal that treats his last year of arbitration as a free-agent year since he was really close to the line and hey, it doesn't cost anything to be nice. Also, they would fully not recognize the irony of that statement.
Just to play devils advocate, who cares if they do that? They start the season with around $100 million from revenue sharing and television money. If it’s necessary to get a deal done for an actual organizational success, oh well. I don’t think it would be, and I get why that would be silly, but also it wouldn’t honestly be that big of a deal.
I definitely think they should lock him up at the 60 to 70 mark. Then they have to follow with Witt and Melendez. Those 3 would make a great core to build around. On a totally unrelated topic. Don't you think Pratto need sent down to Omaha for a while. He looks totally lost at the plate. Great writing David, as usual.
I think Pratto probably should spend a little time in AAA. I’m guessing he’s reached the point of it being in his head and could use a couple weeks. I also wonder if he would have been had Vinnie not gotten hurt.
The Hunter Dozier extension makes me skeptical of the Royals handing out big contracts to players who have had only one good season. Dozier hasn't been the same after he signed that contract and is regressing again this year. Salvy Perez had the career season last year but can he stay healthy and come anything close to that again? Sure, Singer has obviously turned a corner, but can he pitch like this for a full season? He hasn't won even 10 games yet (though he may get there this year). I say let's see what he does for a full season next year and if he can win 15 games or something like that, then extend him.
But, Scott, the Dozier extension has nothing to do with a Singer extension. A mistake was made on Dozier, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be doing what all the smart and good teams are doing and locking up your young talent. And I'll never care about wins and losses for a starting pitcher. Singer has a no decision or a loss in the following games:
7 IP, 4 H, 0 R
5 IP, 2 H, 2 R
7 IP, 6 H, 3 R
6 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 1 ER
7 IP, 1 H, 0 R
6 IP, 5 H, 2 R
You wait a full season and he does it again, the $60ish million becomes $80ish million.
Gotta admit, my first reflex is to say that whatever is best for the Royals, we can be certain they won't do it. Then I have to remind myself that 2014-15 really did happen. Whether it was luck or baseball genius in the front office, or some combination of the two, I'll leave up to others.
So I do have a certain amount of hope that the saga of Singer will end well both for him and the Royals. But I ain't bettin' the ranch on it.
I think it gets a little reductive to say everything they do is wrong or not in their best interests. People were concerned Santana would get hot and they wouldn't move him. He got hot and they moved him. People were concerned they'd hang on to Benintendi and Merrifield but they moved both.
My opinion is the message gets lost with stuff like that. No, they don't do everything right, but they also don't do everything wrong. In Dayton Moore's tenure, he's extended David DeJesus, Billy Butler, Zack Greinke, Alex Gordon, Salvador Perez, Alcides Escobar, Yordano Ventura, Danny Duffy, Hunter Dozier and Whit Merrifield beyond their team control. There's one bad one in there. I think they need to do more of it, but they generally do a nice job of getting their talent locked up and generally don't miss. Now, they haven't gone BIG yet and it looks like they might have the types of talent finally where they need to, but they've shown a willingness and an ability to get it right when they do it.
I think the Royals have also shown an ability to know when to let guys go. They got the most they could from Hosmer, Moose, Cain, Escobar, Volquez and probably some others I'm not thinking of. Gordo was probably the one big whiff, but when the market came back to them that offseason, bringing back a local, productive World Series hero was not optional.
The only one of those I'd argue about is Hosmer. If he'd have said yes to their offer, he'd be in year five of a seven-year deal. He saved them from themselves on that one.
We'll have to agree to disagree. I see it as symptomatic of the lack of plate discipline and strike zone judgment that has plagued this team, with occasional and rare exceptions, for decades now.
We can all hope and even believe that Zumwalt & company will make it all better. I'll believe it when I see it.
You can disagree, but they’re middle of the pack in walk rate. That’s a fact. Not an opinion. They have three hitters on the team who qualify for a batting title, so naturally their leaders in counting stats aren’t going to have terribly impressive numbers. Rate stats are much more relevant than any counting stat when you take that into consideration.
I don't contest the facts for a second. I can't say the same for your evaluation of the facts. MJ leads the team - which means everyone else is worse than him - and is 44th in walks? Don't think I'll be doing any cartwheels over that fact.
"Middle of the pack" in walk rate is slightly surprising to me, I'll admit. I also know that "middle of the pack" in anything is rarely a key to winning championships. Especially when they traded away one of the guys who got them that far up in the rankings.
Once again, look at rates, not totals. Melendez is 23rd in walk rate among hitters with 200+ PA. Pasquantino is 52nd. They have four guys in the top 130, which is just about right, and traded away two others. Among teams with lower walk rates are the Blue Jays, Braves, Orioles, Guardians and White Sox, all teams either in a playoff position or close. There is so much the Royals do wrong, but this is another thing that is not nearly the problem you’re making it out to be.
Upon further review... It's possible that spending an entire third of a century watching Royals hitters absolutely refuse to take 100 walks in a season may have made me just a BIT touchy on this topic.
I think what makes it even worse, at least in my case, is that Royals pitchers (except for Singer) seem determined to walk about 75 guys per game. At least that's how it feels sometimes.
In my own defense, all I can say is that it might have affected you the same way as well if you had had to endure those 33 years as a grownup baseball fan. Let's hope we never have to find out!
Looks like Matheny is at least trying to give Hernandez and Keller a chance to be more than 1-inning guys out of the bullpen. I fully approve of the experiment. It's not as if these games mean much anyway, other than as opportunities for player evaluation and development.
My gut tells me that Hernandez has a better chance to succeed in that 2 or 3-inning role than Keller does. Then again, coming out of spring training my gut told me that Lynch and Hernandez had the best chances to do well among all the young starters.
Very good analysis. The Royals should offer him somewhere in the low 60's. They have several other players to extend as well. Whitt, Jr, hasn't been extended to my knowledge. MJ may be worth locking up as well as either Pasquantino or Pratto. Then there are Lynch and Bubic . A lot of decisions to be made, but they should consider their window of opportunity as starting next year and running for 4 years beyond that if they can't secure some of these guys for longer.
They do have a handful of guys who deserve the consideration at least. I wrote about Witt before the season and MJ a few weeks ago. Waiting only makes it more expensive.
I’d be down for extending Singer at this point. Don’t really care what it costs as it plants a flag in the ground (probably already have done that with all the young guys). I thought i heard Soren…maybe it was with you on I don’t recall, that this FO isn’t going to be around anyway if it doesn’t work. The bigger question, that we can’t really answer, is would Singer do it?
Because, he’s a first round pick. I don’t know that money is as huge a factor. Don’t get me wrong, he wants to get paid, but I mean he should have some first round money to lean on. Maybe what I’m trying to say is he has the ability to bet on himself with a little change in his pocket already. Give it another year or two to see if the Royals will actually be any good. I’m pretty sure the Royals are gong to have to be paying the bad team tax on its OWN FREAKIN PLAYERS extensions. Lol.
Yeah, like I wrote, who knows if he’d do it? He does have bonus money and all that, but there’s also the uncertain nature of pitchers with injury risk. Maybe he’s willing to take some security and still hit free agency young enough to get another contract. Keep in mind he’s five months removed from having a bad spring coming off a bad season that got him pushed to the bullpen.
That was me with Soren you’re thinking about too. It was a good segment from him.
I was looking at some of the bigger (more than 2 years) extensions this last year to see how many were on good teams going into the year -
Clase - 5yr/20M - good team
Ramirez - 5yr - good team
Hayes - 8yr/70M - Pit (bad team) - give royals hope
Kyle Freeland - 5yr/64M (bad team) - CO, lol
Alvarez - 6yr/115m - good team
Ashby - 5yr/20 m - good team
Riley 10yr/212 m - good team
Musgrove - 5yr/100m - good team
Analysis - IDK - Most of these are good teams but the Pirates and the Rockies were able to get some done. I’m sure its all just dependents on the player and his individual situation. But 75% of these are so are good teams to begin with. Maybe the royals have a win a little first?
Here’s my question. Do they sign because they’re on a winning team or are the teams winning because they’re proactive with their young talent? Outside of the longest deals, they don’t end any possibility of free agency. They just delay it some.
Its a combination of both I’m sure. And its a two way street. Once a player has some coin (Alvarez, Ramirez,) I feel like winning is the next step in the progression. Its the chicken or the egg scenario almost. But somehow the Royals have to get there. The Royals have been good to its players for so long and not been rewarded with it. So clearly on some level the players care about winning more.
The Royals have to overpay for the first one. Because the first one is going to get the second one and so forth. If its even for a number David Lesky doesn’t like all the better because something has to give at some point. So just make it happen for Witt Jr, or Singer at this point. Plant the flag.
Oh I don’t actually care how much it costs. If it’s 6/75, oh well. If that breaks them, then they were already broken.
I kinda think you have to if you are DM or JJ. I think about how they go into the offseason and try and sell job performance. Yes, the fallback is all these guys are up in the majors now. Ok. Great. In 6 years they all leave, Farm system ranked towards the bottom. By the way I’m replacing our entire minor league pitching development team, and major league coaching staff. How do you sell that to Sherman?
Really, the only way you can is say we just gave Singer 6/75, 6/80, 6/85 whatever it is until he says yes. I don’t care on the number. Now you go to Sherman and sell that we have our “ace” locked up for 6 years. Market around him, around Witt Jr, Melendez next year. Try and sign a Clevinger and get some excitement around the team in FA. Attendance should be up. We’ve locked up young talent like you did in Cleveland. Here’s the route forward. Maybe I’m overselling it and its not that big a deal to Sherman anyway. I don’t know. But in a normal position, it’s just a hard sell to a boss if you don’t sign one of these guys to an extension…pick up a solid FA and rebuild some excitement within the org.
We are at a large enough sample size that I would want him to be my co anchor of the rotation for the next 3-4 years and be the GUY for another 4.
Go Big 8/100
Also....I really want to see a trade this off-season that'll have to include some of these rookies that just graduated.
Time to shit or get off the pot with Daytons regime.
I'm absolutely supportive of making extension offers to some of the crew at this point. Brady, Witt, and Melendez would be where I would start. If Sherman is serious about creating a strong core of players to build around, I think we really need to invest in them. I don't think we have to be crazy about it, and some creative incentive bonuses would be useful to reward the kind of performance we would expect to see from them. Use those contracts to let other guys know what they can expect if they continue their development. We can't lock in everyone, but we do need to be thinking about how to build to sustain, not just to compete for a year or two, and then return to .400 ball again.
I think you start with Witt, MJ and Singer and I don’t just say that because those are the three I’ve written extension newsletters for. But I agree.
I'm a little surprised you didn't put Vinnie on that list. Too soon? The injury? Something else?
I'd extend him too, but I don't think it's quite as pressing. The combination of age and position make it a little easier to wait.
The most Royals thing to happen would be for them to give him a deal that treats his last year of arbitration as a free-agent year since he was really close to the line and hey, it doesn't cost anything to be nice. Also, they would fully not recognize the irony of that statement.
Just to play devils advocate, who cares if they do that? They start the season with around $100 million from revenue sharing and television money. If it’s necessary to get a deal done for an actual organizational success, oh well. I don’t think it would be, and I get why that would be silly, but also it wouldn’t honestly be that big of a deal.
I definitely think they should lock him up at the 60 to 70 mark. Then they have to follow with Witt and Melendez. Those 3 would make a great core to build around. On a totally unrelated topic. Don't you think Pratto need sent down to Omaha for a while. He looks totally lost at the plate. Great writing David, as usual.
I think Pratto probably should spend a little time in AAA. I’m guessing he’s reached the point of it being in his head and could use a couple weeks. I also wonder if he would have been had Vinnie not gotten hurt.
The Hunter Dozier extension makes me skeptical of the Royals handing out big contracts to players who have had only one good season. Dozier hasn't been the same after he signed that contract and is regressing again this year. Salvy Perez had the career season last year but can he stay healthy and come anything close to that again? Sure, Singer has obviously turned a corner, but can he pitch like this for a full season? He hasn't won even 10 games yet (though he may get there this year). I say let's see what he does for a full season next year and if he can win 15 games or something like that, then extend him.
But, Scott, the Dozier extension has nothing to do with a Singer extension. A mistake was made on Dozier, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be doing what all the smart and good teams are doing and locking up your young talent. And I'll never care about wins and losses for a starting pitcher. Singer has a no decision or a loss in the following games:
7 IP, 4 H, 0 R
5 IP, 2 H, 2 R
7 IP, 6 H, 3 R
6 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 1 ER
7 IP, 1 H, 0 R
6 IP, 5 H, 2 R
You wait a full season and he does it again, the $60ish million becomes $80ish million.
Gotta admit, my first reflex is to say that whatever is best for the Royals, we can be certain they won't do it. Then I have to remind myself that 2014-15 really did happen. Whether it was luck or baseball genius in the front office, or some combination of the two, I'll leave up to others.
So I do have a certain amount of hope that the saga of Singer will end well both for him and the Royals. But I ain't bettin' the ranch on it.
I think it gets a little reductive to say everything they do is wrong or not in their best interests. People were concerned Santana would get hot and they wouldn't move him. He got hot and they moved him. People were concerned they'd hang on to Benintendi and Merrifield but they moved both.
My opinion is the message gets lost with stuff like that. No, they don't do everything right, but they also don't do everything wrong. In Dayton Moore's tenure, he's extended David DeJesus, Billy Butler, Zack Greinke, Alex Gordon, Salvador Perez, Alcides Escobar, Yordano Ventura, Danny Duffy, Hunter Dozier and Whit Merrifield beyond their team control. There's one bad one in there. I think they need to do more of it, but they generally do a nice job of getting their talent locked up and generally don't miss. Now, they haven't gone BIG yet and it looks like they might have the types of talent finally where they need to, but they've shown a willingness and an ability to get it right when they do it.
I think the Royals have also shown an ability to know when to let guys go. They got the most they could from Hosmer, Moose, Cain, Escobar, Volquez and probably some others I'm not thinking of. Gordo was probably the one big whiff, but when the market came back to them that offseason, bringing back a local, productive World Series hero was not optional.
The only one of those I'd argue about is Hosmer. If he'd have said yes to their offer, he'd be in year five of a seven-year deal. He saved them from themselves on that one.
Well, that's true. I thought they drew the line at 5/100. Either way, Hosmer did save them from themselves.
I'd heard that and I'd heard they went to 7/140ish, so I don't actually know for sure.
I think you nailed it. The framework is the Danny Duffy extension (5/65), adjusted for inflation.
Thanks, Kevin. Just a couple years earlier to make it slightly more affordable. Because I'm all about saving John Sherman's money for some reason.
We need to look out for Mr. Sherman's bottom line. He probably didn't qualify for Uncle Joe's student loan debt relief.
Tough times out there for billionaires.
*whew* It's so nice to know that there's SOMEBODY out there who understands what we're going through....
Did you just see what the Mariners are doing with Rodriguez
Oh I did. It's interesting.
How horrifying is it that it's near the end of August, and MJ leads the team with 48 bleepin' walks!?!? He's on pace for....what? .... maybe 60-ish?
With 600 PA's Pratto would be on pace for 68 walks, Vinnie for 66. What's that you said? The other youngsters? You're not serious, right?
I know, I've had a third of a century to get used to it by now. But still sometimes it really bugs the hell out of me!
48 walks is 44th in baseball. Had they kept Santana, he’d be up there as well. It’s not as big of a deal/problem as you think.
We'll have to agree to disagree. I see it as symptomatic of the lack of plate discipline and strike zone judgment that has plagued this team, with occasional and rare exceptions, for decades now.
We can all hope and even believe that Zumwalt & company will make it all better. I'll believe it when I see it.
You can disagree, but they’re middle of the pack in walk rate. That’s a fact. Not an opinion. They have three hitters on the team who qualify for a batting title, so naturally their leaders in counting stats aren’t going to have terribly impressive numbers. Rate stats are much more relevant than any counting stat when you take that into consideration.
I don't contest the facts for a second. I can't say the same for your evaluation of the facts. MJ leads the team - which means everyone else is worse than him - and is 44th in walks? Don't think I'll be doing any cartwheels over that fact.
"Middle of the pack" in walk rate is slightly surprising to me, I'll admit. I also know that "middle of the pack" in anything is rarely a key to winning championships. Especially when they traded away one of the guys who got them that far up in the rankings.
Once again, look at rates, not totals. Melendez is 23rd in walk rate among hitters with 200+ PA. Pasquantino is 52nd. They have four guys in the top 130, which is just about right, and traded away two others. Among teams with lower walk rates are the Blue Jays, Braves, Orioles, Guardians and White Sox, all teams either in a playoff position or close. There is so much the Royals do wrong, but this is another thing that is not nearly the problem you’re making it out to be.
Fair enough. I hope your evaluation is better than mine. This type of discussion is the main reason that I subscribe to your newsletter!
And just for the record I'm utterly incapable of doing cartwheels anyway.
Upon further review... It's possible that spending an entire third of a century watching Royals hitters absolutely refuse to take 100 walks in a season may have made me just a BIT touchy on this topic.
I think what makes it even worse, at least in my case, is that Royals pitchers (except for Singer) seem determined to walk about 75 guys per game. At least that's how it feels sometimes.
In my own defense, all I can say is that it might have affected you the same way as well if you had had to endure those 33 years as a grownup baseball fan. Let's hope we never have to find out!
Looks like Matheny is at least trying to give Hernandez and Keller a chance to be more than 1-inning guys out of the bullpen. I fully approve of the experiment. It's not as if these games mean much anyway, other than as opportunities for player evaluation and development.
My gut tells me that Hernandez has a better chance to succeed in that 2 or 3-inning role than Keller does. Then again, coming out of spring training my gut told me that Lynch and Hernandez had the best chances to do well among all the young starters.