The Royals May Be Plotting

Third base doesn't appear to be an immediate need for this club, but that doesn't mean the Royals aren't looking.

I don’t have enough information here to call this a rumor even, but to use an overused term at the trade deadline, I’ve heard rumblings that the Royals may have something big up their sleeve. And that trick would be to pull a third baseman out and plug into the middle of the lineup to lengthen a lineup that still needs an additional bat or two. There are a couple of free agents still available who I think make some sense, at least on a player level. The big fish, money-wise, is Matt Chapman, but Justin Turner and Gio Urshela are also still out there waiting to get signed.

On the trade market, it’s less clear, as it generally is. There are some rumors that Alex Bregman could be had given his pending free agency. That seems pretty unlikely to me as a Royals move. Maybe Ramon Urias is out there with Gunnar Henderson seeming poised to move to third as Jackson Holliday works his way to the big leagues. The Reds also have too many infielders. I suppose Jonathan India could be an option at third given that it was his position up until he reached the majors. Otherwise, unless it’s a surprise, I’m not sure who else is available.

So if they are actually pursuing third basemen, my guess is it’s a free agent. And my guess is it’s either Urshela or Chapman. On the surface, Urshela is the obvious choice. His defensive reputation has generally been better than the reality. Still, he was +6 in Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) last year for the Angels at third base in just 270 innings before his injury and was +4 DRS for the Twins at third in 1,144 innings in 2022. Outs Above Average tells a bit of a different story, so it’s hard to say for sure. He generally does pass the eye test.

Offensively, I just don’t know what to think here. In 2019/2020, he hit .310/.358/.523 in 650 plate appearances, which was good for a wRC+ of 133. Since then, though, he’s hit .281/.323/.415 with a 106 wRC+ and missed most of the 2023 season with a fractured pelvis. He’s now 32 as well with batted ball metrics that don’t paint a rosy picture and he swings too much with a chase rate well above league average. I suppose for a year it wouldn’t be the worst gamble, but his .329 OBP and .374 SLG are pretty much in line with what the Royals got from Maikel Garcia and there’s a whole lot more upside there.

The name I’ve heard a surprising number of times is Chapman from a surprising number of people with no dog in the fight. It took me a long time to buy that they were interested, but I’ve now heard from enough people that I think the interest is at least real, though I still don’t know quite how much. Chapman is intriguing. Like Urshela, his defensive reputation is stellar. Unlike Urshela, the numbers back it up. His DRS numbers, by year, are 15, 23, 28, 2, 10, 2, 12. One of those two years was 2020, which was a shortened season and the other was a bit odd. His OAA numbers, by year, are 9, 7, 15, 1, 7, 1, 4. So they follow a similar pattern. He’s a heck of a defender and fits the Royals like a glove in that respect.

The bat is the question. He has hit above .249 once in his career. Average isn’t the be all, end all, of course, but the casual fan will see that and not like it. In the last three full years, he’s hit .226/.322/.420 for a 110 wRC+. There’s good and bad in that. The bad, of course, is the low average and the subsequent low SLG. The good is that his OBP is about 100 points higher than his average and his ISO is just under .200 and it’s an above-average overall line. He does hit for power, but contact can be a concern. He’ll work a walk, but he also strikes out. His swinging strike rate is a bit high, but not absurdly so. He just takes a lot of pitches. It’s a similar issue to what we see from Nick Pratto, but Chapman is just better at overcoming it.

And he does overcome it because the batted ball data is mostly elite. He’s in the 98th percentile in average exit velocity, the 98th percentile in barrel percentage and the 100th percentile in hard-hit percentage. The issue is that he doesn’t get to the sweet spot. I’m going to be honest that I don’t know how to fix that, but I’d wager that somebody does. Is that someone on the Royals? That I also can’t tell you. But I do know that it’s possible. It’s also only fair to point out that he had a finger injury in the middle of the season that probably didn’t help things too much. So maybe there’s more bat in there. I’ll get to the cost in just a second, but it’s a tough bet on that given what the price tag was at least rumored to be earlier this winter.

Chapman is absolutely a better player than Urshela. He’s a better defender and I think he can be more reasonably counted on to be above league average with the bat. The big and obvious question I’d have is the difference in cost. I can’t imagine Urshela requires more than a year and probably not more than $5 million or so. I’m not sure that matters much to me at least because, again, I’d rather ride with Garcia at third and Michael Massey and Nick Loftin at second. That’s preferable to whatever combination ends up happening if they signed Urshela, but he’s certainly out there.

Let’s focus on Chapman then because I also haven’t heard a single person tell me the Royals are in on Urshela and, believe me, I’ve aksed. What does Chapman cost? The answer is likely a lot. He turned down the qualifying offer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a ton on the price tag (though I’ll come back to this). The initial prediction on MLB Trade Rumors was for six years and $150 million. I’m not going to say that’s not happening because there are still plenty of big deals left to hand out, but it seems less likely today than it did a couple of months ago. Still, the Blue Jays, Cubs and Giants appear to still be in on him and they all have money. Even with that knowledge, let’s say the cost is four years and $92 million, which is exactly what Josh Donaldson got a few years back, that’s a pretty large expenditure for the Royals. In fact, it would be the biggest ever for them in total dollars.

There is an additional cost if they did go the Chapman route. As he did receive a qualifying offer, the Royals would lose a draft pick if they signed him. As a revenue-sharing recipient, they would lose their third-highest draft pick. For the Royals, that’s the 41st overall pick in next year’s draft. That’s significant for two reasons. One, it’s a high draft pick. The 41st pick has produced some quality players like Austin Riley, Lance McCullers Jr., Dan Plesac and Fred Lynn. That’s kind of a silly way to look at it because good players come from everywhere, including 40th and 42nd, but you get the idea. The other thing they would lose is the money associated with that pick. Last year, it was just under $2.1 million for that pick. That is a lot to lose.

You can say it doesn’t matter because they can’t draft anyway, but I have a bit of a tough time thinking they’ll give away $2.1 million in slot money and that pick for a player like Chapman who is more good than great and some might argue he’s more above average than good. Still, the rumors are what they are and, as I said before, I’ve heard it from enough people that I’m comfortable writing about it here. Which leads me to the next point of what the next move is because you know there’s another move associated with it if it were to happen.

I maintain that there’s at least a chance that Maikel Garcia has more value to the Royals as a trade piece to a team that sees him as a shortstop. It’s not that I don’t think Garcia is a good player and one with significant upside. But, as I’ve written before, if a team values him as a shortstop, they may be able to provide a return at a position that’s harder to find while the Royals can backfill his spot for nothing more than money.

Maikel Garcia and the Quest for Improvement

In the long-term, are the Royals better off with Garcia and their current rotation or are they better off with Chapman and someone like Jesus Luzardo? I think the latter, but there’s also every chance they could upgrade their rotation through free agency with what’s left. It does seem like Jordan Montgomery, for example, wants to come back to Texas, but maybe they could give him a deal that I’d be super uncomfortable with.

It doesn’t have to be Luzardo that’s the return for Garcia. The Dodgers would be a really nice fit for him and they’ve built some rotation depth for a club that didn’t have much at the start of the winter. Whether they’d be willing to give up one of their many high-ranking pitching prospects or even someone like Emmett Sheehan, that’s something interesting. Again, I’m just spitballing here, but adding a top-line or potential top-line starting pitcher to Cole Ragans for the next few years would be a lot easier to do via a trade than free agency for a number of reasons.

They could also look to move Massey, though I think I’m a bit less on board with this. It’s not necessarily that I think Massey is a better player than Garcia but I think he returns less. Maybe I'll never be justified in this, but I do think the upside for Massey is much higher than we’ve seen and he plays a very good second base as well. In a Massey move, I assume Garcia would shift to second, which sounds great in theory, but maybe there’s a reason Garcia has stayed on the left side of the infield. Some guys struggle with that move even if it seems like they should have no problems at all.

I just want to be clear again that none of this may come to fruition. In fact, it probably won’t, but I’ve talked to enough people who have told me they hear about the Royals in the third base market that I wanted to use this space to at least mention the possibility and the potential ramifications that a move like that could have. It’s not so much that Garcia and Massey are players who you can’t improve on, but the cost to get Chapman and not be sure if he’s actually an impact bat is just too high for my liking.

I hate giving up that high of a pick for him and that much draft slot money. And I can’t imagine I’d like the contract, though that’s also not my money and as long as spending now doesn’t impact spending when they actually need it, I don’t really care what that cost is personally. But I also think the 2024-2026 Royals can be a better team if they made that move and the subsequent moves around it. Are they better enough with those moves? In the AL Central, maybe. I tend to think probably not, but adding a bat that’s been above average and a great defender in one move is also attractive. I’m still a no, but I’d get it if they do it.