The Royals are exploring the market for relief help, manager Matt Quatraro said at this week’s Winter Meetings (relayed by Anne Rogers of MLB.com). General manager J.J. Picollo took a broader approach in an appearance on the MLB Network with Matt Vasgersian and Harold Reynolds, saying they’re evaluating both the rotation and bullpen markets.
Picollo expressed a similar desire to upgrade the starting five a couple weeks ago. Kansas City subsequently brought in Kyle Wright in a trade with the Braves, but he’ll miss all of next season recovering from shoulder surgery. It’s natural they’re still searching for pitching help in any area, although Picollo noted today they’ll need to “rebuild (the) bullpen.”
That could point to multiple additions to the relief unit. The Royals acquired Nick Anderson in a cash transaction with Atlanta in the middle of November. He’s one fairly experienced addition to a bullpen still consisting of mostly young pitchers. Among returning hurlers with 20+ innings pitched, only James McArthur and swingman Alec Marsh turned in a sub-4.00 ERA when working out of the bullpen. Carlos Hernández and Taylor Clarke joined that group in narrowly posting a strikeout rate better than league average.
Only the Rockies — who play in a much more difficult home park for pitchers — had a worse bullpen ERA overall. K.C. relievers finished 23rd in strikeout rate and 28th in walk percentage. Given that lack of depth, it’s unsurprising that the Royals are looking to add beyond Anderson. Quatraro noted the roster as currently constructed doesn’t have a closer, so they project to have a committee approach to the late innings for now.
If the front office wants to add some stability, they could pursue someone with experience handling the ninth inning. Kansas City’s $3.75MM free agent deal with Aroldis Chapman last offseason was one of the winter’s best rebound fliers, as the Royals flipped him for breakout lefty Cole Ragans after Chapman turned in a stellar first half. While Chapman is presumably out of Kansas City’s price range this time around, the likes of David Robertson and Dylan Floro are speculative bounceback candidates who have worked as closers in the past.
Picollo also confirmed reports that the Royals have had some extension talks with franchise shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. The GM predictably didn’t tip his hand about the status of negotiations or handicap the odds of getting a deal done but noted the team “(loves) having him” and called Witt the “face of our future.” The righty-hitting shortstop connected on 30 home runs with a .276/.319/.495 batting line while playing 158 games this year. He’s under club control for four more seasons and will reach arbitration for the first time next winter if the sides don’t agree to a long-term deal in the interim.
Royals have way too much heavy lifting to do to worry all the much about relievers outside of flip candidates.
They’re getting all the respect they deserve right now. It’s been 8 consecutive years since the Royals finished a season over .500. They’ve lost 203 games over the past 2 seasons and they’ve lost 100+ games 3 of the past 6 seasons.
They’ve been one of the worst teams in baseball for a long time now and they’ve been bottom 5 in MLB 3 of the past 4 years in player salaries, but poor fan attendance has a part to do with that. KC has been bottom 5 in attendance 5 consecutive years. Even after appearing in back to back World Series’ the Royals only sold out 9 games at Kauffmann in 2016.
What the hell does attendance have to do with team performance or roster construction? I guess nothing since the Rays are in the mix every year and no one shows up to the Trop during the regular season. Every team is owned by a billionaire or multi multi millionaire so let’s not pretend they couldn’t spend more
@KCMOWHOA – A quick lesson on economics.
The average Royals ticket price in 2023 was $36.42 and the FCI breaks down to $60.92 per fan.
10,000 fans = $49 MM in revenue
16,136 fans = $80 MM in revenue (this is actual attendance)
20,000 fans = $99 MM in revenue
30,000 fans = $148 MM in revenue
31,498 fans = $155 MM in revenue (this was MLB median average)
37,903 fans = 187 MM in revenue.
The Royals would have $75MM more in revenue, largely profit to spend if they had average MLB attendance levels.
Wow you’re annoying
Don’t be a jerk and I might be nicer? The bottom line is fans attendance matters more than most people realize.
“Billionaires” aren’t in the position they’re in because they spend wildly and recklessly, but the billionaire you’re mad at is proposing spending close to a billion dollars for the benefit of the team for just an extension of the 0.0375% sales tax in Jefferson County. It was shot down.
Lmao I live in KC moron. You’re wrong and it’s Jackson County. We haven’t even voted on it yet
kmbc.com/article/jackson-county-use-tax-royals-sta…
“Jackson” County shot it down November 8th.
Haven’t even had the vote yet. Trust me. Sherman is hoping for it to be on the ballot in April. Boy you’re hard headed
A use tax isn’t even the same thing as an extension of the existing sales tax to fund the stadiums. Did you read it?
“KC Mayor Quinton Lucas sees it as a warning sign for the potential county wide vote on a stadium tax this April”
Dashaun Watson is also exploring the “Relief market” as well as Charlie Sheen just a warning to the Royals and anyone else “Exploring their own relief market” is be careful use protection. And the cops are out and about.
They gotta make a trade before Wednesday. Their 40 man is full despite having the #2 overall pick in the Rule 5 draft. Even if they don’t want any Rule 5 guys, they gotta pick someone and then trade them to another team. The Rockies also have a full 40 man and will surely make a move before Wednesday.
I must have missed Bobby Witt Jr batting left handed last year. Perhaps that’s his representation putting that out there to drive the price of his extension up. Just need to learn how to switch hit now.
The Royals have a lot more to be concerned about than relief pitching. Last year they ranked:
24th in fWAR for position players.
26th in fWAR for starting pitchers.
28th in fWAR for relief pitchers.
Making matters worse.
29th in Farm System rank by Bleacher Report and MLB.com. Fangraphs has them bottom feeding at 27th as well. So Kansas City needs to turn like 10-15 poorly performing players around on their roster at the same time because they’ve got no budget to buy their way out of the depths.
Mercifully, at least their defense was rated highly at 4th in MLB.
The Royals are going into the 2nd full year of an unplanned rebuild. They have hitters likely to make it at every offensive spot with a couple spares. They have some starters with promise in Ragans, Singer, Bubic and Lynch. Certainly not enough to contend but if the kids get better next off-season it will be time to buy or trade for a few big arms and fill a lineup hole. If you paid attention to the Royals last year the bullpen was the team’s biggest flaw. Time and time again they had a lead after 6 only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. 5 or 6 quality relievers wouldn’t have made them a contender last year. It however might have allowed them to win 70 to 80 games. That would be 1 year closer to contending in baseballs worst division. This year 5 or 6 arms out of the pen could make them a .500 team if the offense matures some. Witt, Perez, Velazquez, Olivares, Prato and Melendez are just a few of the team’s power bats. García, Blanco and other hit for average and steal bases. The offense will break out 1 of the next 2 years. When they do we have a 20 game winner returning from Tommy John surgery to boost Ragans,Singer and company. This year the relievers are needed to develop the kids in the starting rotation. As bad as they appear to you every other team in the central is cutting salary. 2026 is the target but in this division it could come faster. It did 10 years ago.
Desperately needing the bullpen to put up 3 innings of 0’s on a nightly basis was their biggest flaw. Kansas City scored 676 runs last year. That’s bottom 10 in baseball and within 10 runs of bottom 5. Their starters were also awful.
Believe it or not, MLB teams are not banned from scoring in the last 3 innings and bullpens
Th offense was terrible. When you play kids you are bound to have growing pains. That said the players they have now will get better as a group. The starters were also bad. Injuries to Bubic and Lynch didn’t help. Ragans the kid they got from the Rangers in the Chapman deal was a revelation. And the hope is that Singer can return to his 2022 form. That said there’ll be no reason to spend on starting pitching until the offense progresses. That and at least 2 of the starting pitcher’s prove to be reliable. The first thing to fix is the pen. KC has a surplus of of offensive talent. There is no way they can play all these kids. When the offense improves expect them to deal some of these kids for starting pitching. They have at least 2 kids lined up at each position who are likely to produce or already are there. They were worse than every team except the A’s last year. That said most rebuilds begin with offense then move to relief with starting pitching being the final piece. As bad as the offense was it’ll get better. The pen is the next step.
Imagine how much worse the pitching would have been ranked if the defense wasn’t ranked so high…
Or, conversely, would the defense have been ranked so high without balls zipping around the yard?
Touche
Yep. It’s like Cousins in the 4th quarter padding those stats! LOL!!!
Rep as a reliable midtier QB is probably worth fighting for.
Zzzzzzzzzzz
Us Marlins fans would gladly give you Okert.
I’m not sure why Quartaro would say that we are looking for a veteran outfielder. We have 7 outfielders on the 40 man, one of them is a converted catcher. We could certainly trade Edward Olivarez and Dairon Blanco to free up some space for a reliever.
Because our outfield can’t hit the broad side of a barn and Melendez isn’t even really an OFer. He has frying pans for hands and looks lost out there. Olivares is the same. So that’s two non fielders and then three or four guys that are fast and play good defense but can’t hit
Royals back to doing Royals things.