Kansas City Royals to re-sign Chris Young to two-year deal

The Kansas City Royals have reached an agreement with pitcher Chris Young on a two-year deal, according to MLB.com’s Jeffrey Flanagan. The deal is pending a physical, and Young is reportedly in Kansas City taking the physical on Monday morning.

Young was perhaps the biggest bang-for-buck signing of last offseason, giving the Royals 123.1 innings of 3.06 ERA-ball across 18 starts and 34 total appearances. While advanced metrics suggest Young was more of a mid-4’s pitcher, he still provided outstanding value for his $675k salary. Young was also a key player for Kansas City in the postseason, pitching in two of the Royals’ World Series wins. Young gave Kansas City three innings of relief work in Game 1, tying the World Series record for most extra-innings strikeouts (4), and also gave the Royals four innings of two-run ball in their Game 4 5-3 win.

Young will reportedly receive between $10-11 million over the life of the two-year deal, which is a healthy raise from his 2015 salary. The deal will take Young through his age-38 season, which raises questions of how he will age with his fly ball tendencies and decreasing velocity going up against American League hitters. But based on his track record over the course of the last two seasons, $5-million a year isn’t an unreasonable gamble for the Royals to pay for Young.

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With Young back in the fold, it’ll be interesting to see whether the Royals continue their reported pursuit of Scott Kazmir. Kansas City was linked to the left-hander yesterday, but it was unclear whether the concept of signing Young and Kazmir were mutually exclusive. Kansas City is seemingly looking into outfield options as well, and it’s unlikely they’d be able to sign both an impact starter and an outfield bat.