Kansas City Royals: Off-Season of Transition?
By Jason Evans
The Kansas City Royals are facing a payroll crunch this off-season and the first dominoes fell yesterday.
You can’t blame the Kansas City Royals for trying to keep the good times going. When you win two AL pennants in a row, one which led to a World Series title, you want to see how long the train can keep going. Unfortunately, the Royals finished 81-81 and missed the playoffs and now, according to Jon Heyman of Today’s Knuckleball, the Royals payroll, which was up over $144 million is going to need to be cut. The first domino fell yesterday.
The Royals picked up the options next year for Alcides Escobar and Wade Davis, but will decline the mutual option on Edinson Volquez. Instead of paying him $10 million in 2017, they pay him $3 million to leave.
The 33 year old had a rough second half of the season, going 2-3 with an ERA of 6.12. In just 78 innings, he gave up 102 hits and had a WHIP of 1.756. Woof.
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Volquez did win 13 games in 2014 and 2015 with sub 3.50 ERAs. In a shallow free agent market, Volquez could find himself in a nice position.
The issue for the Royals is they have a lot of money tied up in players who aren’t living up to their contracts, and when you’re not the Dodgers or the Yankees, it’s hard to make those kinds of mistakes. The Royals cut Omar Infante and still have to pay him $8 million next year. Chris Young will get $5.75 million next year. He had an ERA of 6.19 in 2016.
The Royals brought back Joakim Soria in free agency last year and will get $17 million combined over the next two years. He went 5-8 with an ERA over 4.00.
Their payroll cutback will probably see them lose Kendrys Morales in free agency after he had another productive season.
The Royals want to keep their core together, however. Eric Hosmer is a free agent after 2017 and would fetch a ton in return on the trade market. So would Lorenzo Cain and Mike Moustakas. Davis would also bring back a lot in return with a full season of control if a team doesn’t want to go into the market and pay for Aroldis Chapman or Kenley Jansen.
Kansas City had an excellent run over the last couple of seasons. Now the challenge is to try and keep it together as everyone gets older and more expensive. It should be quite the off-season for the boys in blue.