Jac's Cost
On the day the Royals top prospect arrives, why wouldn't we look 10 years down the road?
The Royals are going to make the call everyone has longed for since Jac Caglianone was launching absolute bombs in Surprise. The most anticipated debut since Bobby Witt Jr. in 2022 will happen tonight in St. Louis. I think you’d argue this one might be even more anticipated since the Royals are actually a pretty good team and need a bat more than anything. You might have to go all the way back to Eric Hosmer to find a debut with this much fanfare. Regardless, it’s an exciting day to be a Royals fan with him coming to the big leagues.
One thing that sticks out to me is the fact that the Royals made this move before the projected date where a player would be considered Super Two status. If you’re not sure what that is, I get it. We can’t know everything about baseball contracts. A quick primer here is that a player is under team control for six seasons with the first three seasons having salaries determined by the team and the final three where a player is arbitration-eligible. They don’t always go to arbitration, but still, the team can’t solely determine the player’s salary without at least a conversation and sometimes it leads to a trial.
But not every player has exactly a year of service time after one year, exactly two years after two, etc. In order to qualify for a full season of service time, a player has to have 172 days on a big league roster, so once they get below that, their free agency delays a year. But, a player is classified as Super Two if they are among the top 22 percent of service time in players who have between two and three years of service time. What that means is they still don’t reach free agency earlier, but they do get an extra year of arbitration. And the Royals made the call before that projected date. It can change, so we don’t actually know what the date is just yet, but generally you get to the middle of June and you’re safe. It’s early June.
Okay, having that out of the way, I think that says a lot about the current team and the mindset of the front office and ownership group. They are prioritizing the 2025 Royals over anything in 2028 or whenever. I appreciate that. Some might find it silly, but the goal is to win and the Royals are some bats away from being one of the best teams in baseball, so why not make this move with a guy who was banging down the door with his play in AAA? The question I’d ask first is how much could that cost the Royals?