While the expectation surrounding the Royals has been that they’ll have to reduce payroll in 2017 after a franchise-record $140MM mark in 2016 — GM Dayton Moore himself has recently suggested as much, in fact — team owner David Glass tells Sam Mellinger of the Kansas City Star that he hasn’t made a final determination on the payroll. Glass calls Moore a “very persuasive” general manager and said there’s no way of knowing where the payroll will stand due to the fact that there’s no way of knowing what the offseason will hold.
“I don’t know where we’ll end up,” Glass tells Mellinger. “…[W]hat we actually do depends on the opportunities we have, and none of us, including our general manager, know right now what we can do.” The roster impact of Glass’ apparent openness to continuing to spend at an aggressive level remains to be seen, but Mellinger reports that the Royals, as a franchise, actually lost at least $10MM overall in 2016.
As Mellinger points out, the Royals are facing a payroll increase even if they simply stand pat and let Edinson Volquez and Kendrys Morales depart via free agency. (Kansas City reportedly plans to buy out Volquez’s $10MM mutual option.) Indeed, the Royals will see a number of built-in contractual raises as well as numerous arbitration raises that will spike payroll. Alex Gordon’s salary jumps from $12MM to $16MM next season, and he’s hardly alone when it comes to escalating salaries. Ian Kennedy ($7.5MM to $13.5MM), Lorenzo Cain ($6.5MM to $11MM), Mike Moustakas ($5.6MM to $8.7MM), Chris Young ($4.25MM to $5.75MM), Joakim Soria ($7MM to $8MM), Salvador Perez ($2MM to $3MM), Mike Minor ($2MM to $4MM) and Yordano Ventura ($1MM to $3.25MM) will all see their guaranteed salaries rise. And, as we projected earlier this week, the Royals also stand to see substantial arbitration raises for Eric Hosmer, Danny Duffy, Kelvin Herrera and Jarrod Dyson.
Kansas City does have some payroll coming off the books. In addition to Volquez and Morales, the Royals could see Luke Hochevar and Kris Medlen depart. And they have some non-tender candidates, including Tony Cruz, Daniel Nava, Tim Collins and Dillon Gee. Those subtractions, though, won’t offset the raises throughout the rest of the roster. That’s likely the reason that there are already rumors about the Royals trading closer Wade Davis, who is set to earn $10MM next year (once his option is picked up). However, Glass’ comments at least curb what appeared t be a foregone conclusion regarding payroll reduction.
As Mellinger writes, one creative way to manage the 2017 payroll to some extent would be to agree to backloaded extensions with Duffy and Herrera. Both the team and Duffy have expressed interest in a long-term deal before, and Mellinger writes that the plan is indeed to talk about an extension this winter. If that’s the case, the Royals could guarantee Duffy significantly less than his $8.2MM arbitration projection in 2017 and pay him at a higher rate in subsequent seasons of the deal — after some combination of Cain, Moustakas, Hosmer and Davis are off the books. A similar approach could be employed with Herrera, whom MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projected to receive a healthy bump from $2.55MM to $5.3MM.
One party, in particular, may come away as the beneficiary of a potential payroll crunch in Kansas City, though, as FanRag’s Jon Heyman reports within his latest notes column that the team is unlikely to make a qualifying offer to Morales. The 33-year-old switch-hitter enjoyed a monstrous four-month stretch to close out the season, hitting .296/.357/.531 with 24 homers in 106 games en route to an overall line of .263/.327/.468 (and his first 30-homer season since 2009). However, the Royals believe there’s a good chance that Morales would accept the qualifying offer after rejecting one from the Mariners in 2013 and languishing on the free agent market until the following June.
While Heyman writes that in an ideal world, Kansas City would prefer to keep the slugging DH in 2017 and beyond, the Royals are also intrigued by the idea of a floating DH role that would allow Gordon, Moustakas (who had surgery to repair a torn ACL earlier this year) and Perez to get the occasional breather from the rigors of their daily defensive routines. Perez, in particular, strikes me as someone who stands to gain from that line of thinking, as he’s averaged a staggering 137.5 starts behind the plate per season dating back to 2013.
Salvador Perez’s contract will continue to increase, and if it continues as it has for the last 3 seasons, his production will continue to decrease as well.
Enjoy, Royals fans.
Salvador Perez will make 3 mil next year. I think he’ll be fine.
I’m not talking about just 2017. His numbers have pretty much dropped every season for the past 3. At this point, there’s little reason to predict that’ll change until it actually does.
If the pattern continues, he’ll get older, more expensive, and worse. Not a great trio.
Perez had a better OPS this year than the previous two.
The guy is an OBP nightmare, but he’s also a gold glove catcher that hit 22 HR. His chasing pitches can be maddening – but he does SO much else for this team that his production would have drop significantly for him to be an ‘albatross’ when he reaches those 10-12 mil years. And even then – the total contract had value due to what he’s provided the past few seasons for pennies.
You clearly do not understand what is going on with Salvador Perez. He is 26 right now and will not be 27 until May 10th 2017. His offensive tailoff in recent years is not because of diminishing skills or advanced age.He has yet to hit his prime and is the Games Premier Defensive Catcher.. He has 3 straight Gold Gloves and is a shoe in to win a 4th after leading the majors in percentage caught stealing, putouts by a catcher, Assists by a catcher among other Statistics.All that said he has suffered from overuse in recent seasons.In addition to logging more innings behind the plate than any catcher in baseball for 4 years running, he has played in 2 full Post Seasons followed by extensive international exhibition tours. His declining offensive numbers were the result of overuse and nothing more. Even so he has had a remarkable knack of hitting in the clutch in both the Regular and post seasons. And each year he has had more Homers than the previous year.. But in both 2014 and 2015 he played in close to 250 games including Spring , regular season, playoffs, Exhibition games and winter Ball for his beloved Venezuela. Rest and a lazy off season and he should be ready to have a career year on offense.4-5 months off instead of just 1-2 off might cause a large rebound in his offensive statistics. His contract will be a bargain in the long run and at 26 he has a decade or more to amass impressive numbers
wOBA and wRC+ have gone down (with almost an unnoticeable rise this year). Strikeout rate as well as swinging strike percentage has also gone up.
From 2013–2016, his wRC+ is 92, his wOBA is a mediocre .310. He’s actually amongst the bottom of the pack in terms of qualified catchers offensively over the past three seasons, and most of his value is locked up in his defense, to which he’s been the best in that span, I’ll give you that much.
Perez will be making a lot more after 2017, as his extension really begins to kick in. No one should be concerned about him making $3M, in fact, $3M with those numbers isn’t too shabby. But before long, he’s going to be making a lot more money, and who knows if he’ll turn it around. He hasn’t yet.
A fire sale is a comin’
Wouldn’t totally surprise me. I don’t know if I see another deep run coming out of KC with this core.
The questions I have are:
1. How closed is that window? This team obviously has talent, but it’s aging. Perez is getting worse by the year. Hosmer stunk and Moustakas is coming off a bad injury. The pitching staff isn’t exactly anything to write home about.
But, they have several good, young players still. They could use their core and fill gaps out of their farm system.
2. What can they reasonably expect for a lot of their guys? They aren’t trading Hosmer or Perez. Cain is coming off a rough season. Kennedy is overpaid. Gordon is overpaid (and aging). Escobar isn’t going to be ridiculously sought after.
They seem to have Wade Davis and who else to move that would bring back considerable returns?
I’m thinking they make one more go at it in 2017, then a big chunk of their core hits free agency. They’ll QO all the worthy free agents and trade everyone else.
“Hosmer stunk”, I guess 104 RBI and 25 homers is bad now. He had a career year! But you’ll disregard Gordon’s abysmal season.
He had a 101 wRC+, his wOBA was the lowest it’s been his entire career, and his strikeout rate was the highest its ever been.
But seeing how you used simply HRs and RBIs to justify your argument, I’m not sure there’s much reason to even attempt to debate this with you.
Also, for what it’s worth, not mentioning Gordon’s abysmal season does not equal disregarding it. I didn’t realize I had to cover every player.
more to baseball than rbis and dingers….
Not being a KC fan, I was a little surprised by this statement. But sure enough, he ended up with a -0.2 WAR. Even Cultbert had a 0.2 WAR. So I’d say to say Hosmer was not good.
Hosmer did stink
This payroll looks like trouble. Especially given it’s a small market team with good size contracts to aging players.
If I were the Royals, I would combine some of my prospects or more worth players with players like Ian Kennedy just to empty payroll.
However, the only problem with doing that is your will need to spend that savings back on the free agent market in order to build back some WAR. So who knows how grand it works out in the end.
Part of the issue with Perez is the amount of games he starts. Ned needs to have a better plan to get Perez more rest, which means finding a backup catcher he can or will trust. Regarding trades, if they can get something of value for Davis, they should make that move. Wade has been great, but KC needs to add players with solid potential for down the road.
Drew Butera was actually a very solid backup catcher for KC this year. I expect him to get even more playing time next season, especially with the possibility of a rotating DH.
I could see a salary dump type of trade working between the Royals and Braves. Royals could go ahead and pick up Volquez’s option at 10mil, then trade him, Soria and Duffy to Atlanta for Blair, Wisler, Jenkins and Ramirez. Before you say not enough coming back-keep in mind you guys would be exchanging 25.5 mil for 2.2mil. Wisler, Blair, And Jenkins could all benefit from pitching in that large park as well as in Det and Minn. Ramirez is a hard throwing young gun for your pen to replace Soria and his large salary. Atlanta get’s the two starting pitchers they need and an experienced BP arm to pair up with JJ. Atlanta has a pile of cash this off season, and could afford to offer Duffy a nice extension that KC probably won’t be able to afford. Probably won’t happen but it would work.
The braves would be stupid to do that trade Volquez had a high era and Soria would be a bust, Duffy would be the only value the braves would be getting and tradeing Blair, Wisler, and Jenkins would be a terrible move, maybe Duffy for one of the three and a prospect
Prior to 2016 Volquez was pretty solid, and for 1 yr at 10 mil with his solid past that’s a bit of a bargain, especially considering he should get back to pitching to a 3.6-3.8 ERA in the NL and eat innings from the backend. Soria’s last stint in the NL was very good, still throws hard and is another bounceback candidate. Duffy is the real prize here as he’s a young Lefty which the Braves really need until the rookies are ready. Duffy will cost more to move because of his age and low salary for 2017. Also Volquez and Soria are trade candidates mid season for teams contending, if we’re out, if somehow we’re in then their experience is a plus. Yes it’s a bit of an overpay, I know this but through several snippets of media, Coppy doesn’t seem to think much of Blair and Wisler, hence why I would move them because the FA is better next offseason for SP and they wouldn’t block anyone.
they gotta find a way to get rid of kennedy, soria and maybe even gordon. IMO a fire sale is real close to happening
The Royals are very capable of, and have every intention on competing for the post season in 2017. Why in the world would they need to “get rid of Kennedy”? He’s one of their two best SP and had a very solid year.
Royals need to not regress, we got 1 more year of contention, need to make the most of it