The Royals Options with Bobby

The guy everyone thought would be a superstar for the Royals became one after so many gave up on him being a superstar.

How many superstars are there in baseball? Depending on your definition, you may count three or four or you could count as many as 12 to 15. Shohei Ohtani is one with a bullet. Ronald Acuña Jr. is one. I think Mookie Betts and Juan Soto belong there as well, in that upper-echelon. There is probably even disagreement on that. But there are also a few others. Mike Trout may be descending from superstar status right now, but he’s arguably there along with Julio Rodriguez and many others. One of the others plays baseball for the Kansas City Royals and his name is Bobby Witt Jr.

This all sort of happened quickly too. Witt was floundering in late May. His defense had improved, which raised his floor considerably, but he just wasn’t hitting. Matt Quatraro moved him out of the leadoff spot and he slowly started ascending. The goal was to not get himself out early in counts. We started seeing him make more contact and then that contact became more impactful. Now, he’s finding his way into some rarified air. You already know that he’s on a short list of players with his power and speed counting stats. But he’s become one of baseball’s most valuable players, which means the Royals have decisions to make.

As with all players, they have three real options, and they sort of intersect.

Go Year-to-Year Until Free Agency

The Royals made a decision to not delay Witt’s service time clock. He was on the 2022 Opening Day roster. I believe that was a calculated decision that has somewhat backfired. With the new rules in the new CBA, a player who wins Rookie of the Year receives a full year of service time no matter when they’re promoted. Plus, finishing in the top of the voting provides incentives as well, but that’s only if the player is on the roster to start the season. My guess that has never been confirmed is the Royals were convinced he would qualify for that and make it worth their while.

But he didn’t, so it was a mistake in hindsight. Many were arguing to wait either way, so it wouldn’t be hindsight to them, I suppose. Either way, what’s done is done. And now Witt is on track to reach free agency following the 2027 season. That’s four years of him for the Royals, which if they were to go this route, they’d need to maximize those four years with spending a little to support him in the lineup. Unless they somehow spend the next four years competing for titles with him, this is the worst of all the solutions. They may be competitive toward the end of his time, but that just feels like such a waste.

Trade Him

There has been a lot of discourse on the world wide web regarding the best thing to do with Witt. One of the options is for the Royals to deal him. If you aren’t going to sign a guy long-term, this is the answer with someone of Witt’s caliber. The question then becomes when? There are people out there today who think this offseason is the time to make that move. I sort of get the logic behind it even if I don’t agree with it.

Teams covet service time now more than ever and while going year-to-year with Witt is a bad idea for a team like the Royals, a team like the Dodgers, Giants or even the Braves would be able to maximize Witt’s time in their uniform even if they never got anything done long-term. So if that’s the case, there are teams who would be breaking down the door to talk deals. The question becomes if there is even a commensurate value.

While I don’t put Witt on anywhere near the same level as Ohtani, there were always issues with trading him before this season. There’s just a certain amount of value that you need to get back and it can be difficult for teams to match that. While Witt wouldn’t require the haul Ohtani would have in previous seasons, it’s more than just the player on the field. The Royals have a perception issue they’re facing and if they’re going to trade the guy after he becomes a star who they touted as a star, they’ll need to get back a ridiculous amount and probably more than any team would actually include in a deal.

That isn’t to say that this is the only time they can trade him. The way I see it, they can work on extending him all the way up until the trade deadline in 2025. That’s nearly two full calendar years. Why then? That’s the sweet spot for player value where they’ll be able to impact three pennant races and a team could flip the player still before he hits free agency. It’s the Soto timeline. The Nationals were in something of a different spot given that Soto came up and immediately was great and they won a title with him. But they traded him with two full years and one additional pennant race remaining and the return was massive.

They got back James Wood, who ranked as a top-17 prospect on all three major lists prior to the season. They got back Robert Hassell, who ranked as a top-66 prospect on all three major lists prior to the season. They got back CJ Abrams, who was a top-10 prospect prior to the 2022 season and then lost prospect eligibility. And they got back Mackenzie Gore, who was a top-10 prospect before he fell off with injury and performance issues.

Extend Him

This is the best-case scenario, I believe, and the one that I think will ultimately happen for a number of reasons. But something that I think is interesting here is that I don’t think there’s a middle ground in terms of the length of the deal. This isn’t saying something I’ve never said before, but my thought is the Royals would be hard-pressed to sign him to a nine or 10-year deal, at least not straight nine or 10 years. Why is that? Look at his age. Witt just played his age-23 season. As it stands right now, he’s on track to hit free agency after his age-27 season. That’s the sweet spot for any player and especially a star.

The goal for players is to get a major deal. The market could definitely change over the next four seasons, but if he plays out the next four years before free agency and then hits the market, he looks like he’d be in line to sign for 13 or 14 years. Based on the deals signed this year, I could see him being willing to sign heading into his age-30 season and get the 10ish-year deal up through his age-39 season. I could be wrong, but I don’t believe he’d be happy signing a deal for 10 years and then getting to free agency as a 33-year old.

So that means their options are to sign him for six years and buy out two free agent years or sign him for something like 14 years and get him through his age-37 season. It’s an interesting question and one that I don’t think I have a real answer or opinion on because I can see both sides and change my mind every few minutes when thinking about it. What does signing him long-term look like? As I always do, let’s take a look at what his remaining years of team control look like first without any sort of extension.

• 2024: $740k

• 2025: $5.4 million

• 2026: $12.8 million

• 2027: $20.5 million

Let’s talk about how I got to these numbers. In 2024, he’s still a pre-arbitration player. $740,000 is the minimum salary and the Royals could renew him at a bit more, but that’s a good base. In 2025, he’ll be arbitration-eligible for the first time. Assuming he remains an elite player (this is the assumption you make when you’re discussing a mega-deal), that $5.4 million is sort of an estimate, but I’m looking at players like Javy Baez getting $5.2 million a few years ago and Xander Bogaerts at $4.5 million and Trea Turner at about $3.8 million as a Super Two player.

Using Turner’s second-to-last arbitration season, he jumped to $13 million, Baez was at just $10 million. Francisco Lindor got $17.5 million. It’s sort of all over the place, so I sort of figured to double it and then add $2 million because I feel like Lindor is the outlier here, but I’m not completely sure of that. We’re just estimating anyway, but I could see this jumping a couple million as well. And then the final year is really anyone’s guess because in the third year of arbitration, players can compare themselves to free agents.

Turner was at $21 million in that last year. Lindor made $22.3 million. Carlos Correa made just $11.7 million. Baez was in that same ballpark. To add in Corey Seager to the equation, he made $13.75 million in that last year. It’s tough to pinpoint, so I went closer to the top end, but not quite there at $20.5 million. In the end, it gets us to about $39.5 million for the next four years of Witt without any sort of extension reached. You have to remember there’s some risk in signing a long-term deal, so let’s call it $35 million.

So now it becomes a bit easier. What are top free agents signing for on a yearly basis? Seager got $32.5 million per year but over 10 years. Lindor got $34.1 million over 10 years. Turner signed for $27.3 million over 11 years. Correa ended up at about $33 million over six years (with some options for $70 million over the subsequent four years). Baez got $23.3 million over six years. Dansby Swanson got $25.3 million over seven years. I think for this exercise, we have to assume Witt is closer to the Seager/Lindor/Turner/Correa group and also consider that they’re not factoring in his post-prime years in the two extra years they’re signing him. In my opinion, those will cost $35 million per year right now.

So for a six-year deal, you’re looking at roughly $105 million. I’m not completely sure that gets it done, but I think it’s pretty close and gets the conversation to a spot where it continues. But what if they do decide to sign him through his age-37 season?

The $39.5 million remains the same, but now you’re tacking on a full 10 additional years. Lindor’s deal is pretty instructive in some ways because he’s signed exactly through his age-37 season at $34.1 million per year. Seager is too at his $32.5 million per year. The other long-term deals go beyond that age, which skews the AAV because they’re clearly stretching the deal out in order to reduce the yearly spending for luxury tax purposes. So those are the two deals to go by. But signing an extension and signing as a free agent are different.

In free agency, you’re both beginning that deal immediately and there are, theoretically, multiple teams bidding for your services. So a free agent deal will inherently be higher than a long-term extension in most cases. The Royals, by not signing Witt during or after his rookie season, lost a little ground in terms of cost savings, but I also understand not signing him just yet. The Julio Rodriguez deal can be a bit of a starting point, but the structure is unique.

Rodriguez is going to make $119.3 million from this season through 2029. That’s guaranteed (so it sort of lends itself to the deal listed above for Witt for six years). Looking at the option the Mariners hold (that has to be exercised following 2028), the maximum value for 10 more years is $350 million if he wins two MVPs or has four top-five finishes. There’s also an eight-year, $280 million option through 2037 that’s $35 million per year. But, again, these are performance based. The option can be as little as eight years and $200 million.

I think this is where you find your number. The Royals can absolutely get creative in a similar way and they might as the two players share an agency. But if they were to be a little more straightforward. Let’s use that $35 million to start and then probably look at around $30 million per year for the final 10 seasons of that deal. In the end, they’re at 14 years and $340 million. That’s an exact match for the deal Fernando Tatis Jr. signed for with a bit less than two years of service time, but considerably better offensive numbers. Go ahead and tack on an extra $5 million to let Witt beat that and call it 14 years and $345 million.

Does that get it done? I don’t know if that’s the exact number, but I think it’s close enough to say that we basically have a winner.

I’ll maintain that he signs some sort of deal. Is it the six-year deal or the 14-year deal? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I think the Royals get something done with him and I think they head into next season knowing he’s part of the team for a long time.