The 2025 Royals Rotation and How They Can Improve Using It
The 2024 season is rocking and rolling, but an off day gives us a chance to look ahead to the next Royals team.
As the Royals are off to one of their best starts in franchise history, a big reason for that is the group of five starters that has kept them in just about every game this season. The Royals rotation has the fourth-best ERA in baseball, the sixth-best strikeout rate, the 10th-best walk rate, has thrown a ton of innings and is generally one of the best in the game. What’s so great about them is that it’s easy to see this continuing because it certainly appears that the pitching program is on track.
It also helps that four of the current five starters are guaranteed to be under contract in 2025. So a rotation of Cole Ragans, Seth Lugo, Brady Singer, and Alec Marsh can remain intact, assuming health. The only pitcher not guaranteed to be under contract is Michael Wacha, who has an opt-out in his deal after this season, which I’d bet he takes. But even so, for the first time in a long time, it feels like there are more answers than questions for Royals starting pitching. The reality is that the viewpoint of many front offices is that when you think you have enough pitching, get more. So, no matter how great of a shape you think you’re in, always plan for more.
But what does that look like for the Royals in 2025? I will state this one last time and then move on from it because I don’t want to put this out in the universe, but everything here is assuming health for the rest of 2024. Many things can happen between now and March, but I can’t predict the future, so I will assume they won’t happen. So, as I mentioned, Ragans will be under contract and still in his pre-arbitration years, which is wild. Lugo will be in the second year of his deal, earning $15 million after his first Cy Young Award (hey, we can dream, right?). Singer will be in the penultimate year of arbitration and likely earning around $10 million. And Marsh will be pre-arbitration as well.