Hunter Gets a Brand New Bag
Of cash.
The Royals officially agreed to terms on a contract extension for Hunter Dozier that will keep him with the Royals through the 2024 season for $25 million with an option for the 2025 season worth $10 million. All told, he can earn as much as $49 million on the deal with incentives, which we don’t know yet, but should come out soon enough.
I wrote a few days ago about how Dozier was primed for a breakout season if he can combine the plate discipline he showed in 2020 with the batted ball numbers from 2019. From the Royals perspective, it seems this is about getting a deal done sooner than later to avoid having to pay even more if he does fulfill that promise during the 2021 season.
There are legitimate questions about Dozier long-term. One, he hasn’t been the picture of health throughout his career, often missing time during seasons. Two, he’s a bit of a man without a position. He’s poised to play third base every day in 2021, just as he did in 2019, but his defense was questionable enough that the Royals moved him to the outfield and signed Maikel Franco prior to last season. At the rate he’s signed, even if he ends up as a bit of a super utility player on the field every day, it’s good value, but for guys who are obviously part of long-term plans, it might be good to have more of an answer as to where he’ll play.
It makes me wonder if the Royals have decided Jorge Soler isn’t going to be in their long-term plans, so they have a suitable option as a right-handed slugger if and when Soler does leave as a free agent following the upcoming season. It doesn’t have to mean that, of course, but it would make some sense that they wanted some certainty from at least one of those two, so they got that in locking up Dozier for the next four or five seasons.
Ultimately, it seems like a good fit for the team and the player. For the Royals, they have an athletic player who can handle himself at four positions and has shown the ability to smoke the baseball while also displaying patience. For Dozier, it gives him some certainty in a career that really took a long time to get off the ground, thus limiting his free agency viability when he finally would get there in a couple seasons.
For the team, they’re sporting a payroll of about $86 million this season and now have their first player with a guaranteed contract beyond the 2022 season. I’d assume we see a deal for Salvador Perez come next, as I just can’t imagine they let that get too far away. We’ll see what the breakdown of the Dozier extension is, but assuming they’re keeping him around $3 million in 2021, that leaves $22 million for the next three seasons. If I had to guess, I’d say he’ll make something like $5.5 million in 2022, $7.5 million in 2023 and $9 million in 2024, but that’s just a guess at this point.
Other extensions we might see aside from Perez include Brad Keller and Adalberto Mondesi, and maybe they lock up one of the young pitchers very early as well, but I don’t think I’d hold my breath on that one. Still, nice to have some certainty in a player who has a chance to be a very important part of this offense for the next few years.