Royals Notes: Kazmir, Infante, Gordon

Here’s a look at the World Champions:

• The Royals are among the many teams with interest in Scott Kazmir, Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com tweets.  Kazmir met with the Astros last week to explore the possibility of a return to Houston, but it remains to be seen whether that reunion will take place.  The soon-to-be 32-year-old has thrown 373 1/3 innings of 3.33 ERA ball with 7.7 K/9 against 2.6 BB/9 and he’s maintained his average fastball velocity at about 91.5 mph.  On the flip side, Kazmir’s advanced metrics (3.98 FIP, 4.14 xFIP, 4.10 SIERA) weren’t as impressive and he struggled to a 6.52 ERA over the months of September and October.
• The Royals are once again open to moving second baseman Omar Infante, Andy McCullough of the Kansas City Star tweets.  Of course, it could be tough for the Royals to find a decent haul for Infante given his age and contract.  Roughly two years ago, the Royals signed Infante to a four-year deal for more than $30MM plus incentives with a $10MM team option for 2018.
• Royals GM Dayton Moore says that his front office is only monitoring the Alex Gordon situation for now, as Jeffrey Flanagan of MLB.com writes.  When asked if Gordon is even within their financial reach, Moore said, “I don’t know. We’ll see. I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know because I don’t know what [the asking price] will ultimately be. We’re still in the market for an outfield bat. But we also know this: If we do nothing in the outfield, we’ll still be very good defensively at the corner outfield — we’ll have speed and upside with Jarrod Dyson, Paulo Orlando and Brett Eibner and Reymond Fuentes. Jose Martinez isn’t the defender those guys are but has offense. We’ll see.”