The Royals entered the 2018 season with a payroll of roughly $122MM — their fourth straight season with a $100MM-plus payroll — but Fancred’s Jon Heyman writes in his latest notes column that the team is expected to pare that figure back by as much as $30-35MM for the 2019 campaign.
Scaling back the payroll isn’t exactly a shock for a club that has been working to rebuild its farm system, though the cut described by Heyman would be a fairly substantial downturn in on-field spending. Unlike the Marlins, though, who slashed payroll to similar levels this past offseason, the Royals won’t have to orchestrate any type of fire sale to do so. They already saved money by trading impending free agents like Kelvin Herrera, Mike Moustakas and Jon Jay prior to the non-waiver trade deadline (plus Lucas Duda and Drew Butera in August). The Royals are also paying Travis Wood, Joakim Soria and Brandon Moss in 2018 as part of previous trades to shed each of those contracts; all of those obligations will be off the books come 2019.
[Related: Kansas City Royals depth chart]
After all those subtractions, the Royals have about $69.5MM on the books for the 2019 season by way of guaranteed contracts for Alex Gordon, Ian Kennedy, Danny Duffy, Salvador Perez and Jorge Soler. They’ll have several arbitration cases in the form of Brandon Maurer, Nate Karns, Brian Flynn, Cheslor Cuthbert, Jesse Hahn and Paulo Orlando, though some (if not most) of that group could be non-tendered this winter.
It’s unlikely that the Kansas City front office will be able to find a taker for any of the team’s most onerous financial commitments (Kennedy, Gordon), and it seems equally unlikely that the team would sell low on Duffy or Perez coming off lackluster seasons. Perez’s power numbers remain quite strong, but he’s turned in a career-worst .270 OBP to date — third worst among qualified MLB hitters. Duffy, meanwhile, posted a 4.88 ERA through 155 innings in a season that was marred by shoulder issues.
The Royals could organically scale back payroll by as much as $50MM, though it seems reasonable to expect that they’ll invest some funds in second- and third-tier free-agent pickups. They’re not likely to contend next season even with the rampant mediocrity that permeates the AL Central, but GM Dayton Moore has been candid about his desire to improve the on-field product sooner rather than later. To that end, Moore and his staff prioritized near-MLB assets in many of their trades over the past calendar year, landing players like Brett Phillips, Jorge Lopez, Heath Fillmyer, Trevor Oaks and Jerry Vasto. The Royals were also aggressive in the Rule 5 Draft (Brad Keller, Burch Smith) and picked up cast-offs with MLB experience from other organizations (Brian Goodwin, Ben Lively) over the summer.
Adding some low-cost veterans on short-term deals could help to field a more competitive product than the one the Royals trotted out for much of 2018 — and a full season of Adalberto Mondesi won’t hurt, either. Such investments could also present the opportunity to further stock the farm with some upper-level talent prior to the 2019 non-waiver deadline (as was the case with last winter’s Moustakas reunion, which ultimately netted both Phillips and Lopez).
Stories like this make me sad. Sure, it’s not our money, but team was already bad. Now they’re expected to cut it back by as much as $30m? Tough.
I wouldn’t be sad, it’s called gaining financial flexibility in the future. When the team is ready to compete, they will spend again. Such is the saga of a small market team.
“Financial Flexibility” is an awfully nice term for “”holding back the lions share from the players”.
Well, realistically, they’re not going to have a roster brimming with guys who demand decent money.
Did you read this? They have 50m coming off the books, investing 20m back in should help them be competitive again in 2020 with their pipeline.
Do you want them to sign another Ian Kennedy?
I want them to sign the guys andrew farelli listed below, and try flipping them.
Three over the hill veterans? Cargo can’t hit in Colorado. I’d sign Kang and try to add a few bargain bin pitchers. Old corner guys don’t bring back much more than salary relief in trades so I don’t see much use in doing that. Particularly when they have a young guy like ohearn to play 1B.
Yea, that worked well with Lucas Duda.
I’d rather give ABs to young players than sign a bunch of crap vets. They tried that in 2006+ and it got them nowhere.
bheath33……that’s exactly what I was thinking. Some people just read the headline and don’t actually read the story to know what they are talking about
You obviously didn’t read the entire story
Sad? Once they cut the payroll and got young talent the team has turned around with major glimpses of future hope! That and that extra cut in payroll may help with prices inside the park!!! $10 mini pizza u crazy
There’s never been any conclusive link between payroll, and stadium prices. Correlation does not equal causation.
As Cam mentioned… Ticket and concession prices are not really determined by the amount of team payroll. Broadcast fees are a much bigger area of income.
As stated in the article, most of the payroll cutting is already done. Pre-arbitration figures for those players mentioned has them around $70m, meaning if they non-tendered most of those players, which would make a lot of sense (or they’ll be added back at minimal cost), they will actually probably add a few small pieces to the current squad they are fielding right now.
I don’t believe the Nats DFAd goodwin
Ahh, you are correct. There was talk that the roster crunch would lead to a possible DFA, but he was moved before that. I amended the wording there. Thanks for that.
When are they going to be ready to compete? What’s the master plan?
What makes it worse, is their farm is ranked near the bottom. (Second team since 2000 to have back-to-back years with zero Baseball America Top 100.. Reasons to be optimistic other than 2015… hmm..
This summer they finally added Brady Singer to list at #59?
2021 or 2022
I’d take it. As long as there’s a plan in place.
Their farm system isn’t ranked at the bottom anymore.
Baseball code for We will moderately suck for cheap
What team has the next .500 season. Royals or Orioles?
Royals easily. They have pieces and started their rebuild already. Baltimore has tons of mediocrity holding them down.
I wouldn’t say royals easily. What pieces do they have? They have an easier division but their best offensive player is a nearly 30 year old whit merrifield or Sal Perez. Perez has a ton of innings behind the plate already hopefully he ages well but you never know. They started their rebuild but they dealt for MLB ready guys. I’m not complaining about getting Brett Phillips and Jorge Lopez for half a year of Moustakas but are those guys going to be part of the next winning royals team? They have nothing in the upper minors and a bad major league team. Mondesi has impressed I’ll give you that. It’s going to be a long road to contention for either one of those clubs but the royals seem to think it’s going to be sooner rather than later with the way their picking up near MLB ready pieces and I think that could ultimately make their rebuild last even longer.
WRONG
What impact prospects do you think you have anywhere near MLB readiness? I’ll answer that one for you. None. You might have a couple complementary pieces coming up in the next year or two but they aren’t moving any needles. The royals were giving up minor league talent for the likes of Trevor Cahill and Brandon Maurer as recently as the middle of last season. It’s not surprising that they don’t have much coming up. Dayton Moore clearly doesn’t want to be rebuilding very long. He’s dealing for MLB ready prospects and he selected 3 college pitchers in the first round this season. I’m all for trying to turn it around quickly but I don’t see that happening.
Nicky Lopez is ready to team up with Mondesi now. Staumont and Lovelady should join the bullpen next spring . it’s a shame Schwindel didn’t get to come up with O’ hearn. There are a number of youngsters who will be pushing for a September call up next year. The minors are far from bare. The top 100 list is interesting but half the kids on that list won’t pan out and a 100 other youngsters that nobody other than scouts and fans of minor league teams have heard of will have long productive careers. Never quote an arbitrary list as gospel a lot of the kids were put on that list before they had ever played professional ball.
I’d keep Karns, maybe Flynn and Orlando in arbitration. Sign cheap bullpen guys, starting rotation depth, Mark Reynolds at 1B, kang and Valbuena on minor league deals, cargo at DH.
Should be doable at $15-20 million for all of them.
Lol why do you want them to sign these crap retreads when they can actually give ABs to young players? You’re clogging up 1st and DH with old players when O’Hearn has been raking and Perez needs all the time off of his knees that he can get.
Signing old vets and flipping them for next to nothing doesn’t work anymore. Lucas Duda got them absolutely nothing in return.
Duda had a terrible season, Moustakas landed us something of note and picking up bullpen or cheap starting options could similarly net something.
MLB needs a promotion/relegation process as motivation for players and owners: take the worst 5 teams from each league and move them into a third (“C”) league and go to two 5-team divisions each in the NL and AL..Drop intra-league play entirely. Top 2 teams in C-league move up and replace the worst team in the NL and AL.
We’ll go with things that will not and should no ever happen for 500, Alex.
Well it does work in European soccer. Definitely an interesting concept though I highly doubt it would ever be implemented in MLB
Agreed — it will never happen.
Never ever gonna happen. Promotion/relegation is not in the DNA of baseball. Nor should it be.
How about just make it that the top 3 teams in AL/NL are the top teams and the next 2 are the wildcards. As it turns out right now the Brewers and Cardinals will be playing for a wildcard with better records than the NL East and West Champs. If the best in your division is 6th place in the rankings your division will not be represented. How about that—you’re the champ of your division, now go home cause you suck.
Wait, the Royals payroll is expected to be less than the amount they’ll likely receive in revenue sharing dollars?
Where, exactly is the revenue money going? And what is it’s purpose at this point?
Would love to see the Red Sox get Salvador Perez in a deal that helps both teams…..
Red Sox would have to give up literally their top 3-4 prospects plus a MLB guy to get Perez. Royals aren’t going to just give away their top player and face of the franchise for anything the Red Sox would be prepared to trade away.
The Sox farm is weak but Sal Perez’s price tag isn’t through the roof anymore. They’re better off holding on to him to see if he can hit like he did a couple of years ago but he’s been settling in as a roughly average-slightly below average hitter for the last few years. He plays almost every game of the year and handles a pitching staff very well but I’m sure the royals wouldn’t be against getting some top prospects and saving money. He’s owed 36MM the next 3 years which is still team friendly but it’s not the league minimum either. The royals won’t be competitive in that time period but they may look to lock up Perez long term. Which is risky for a guy who catches so many innings and let’s be honest if he’s not a catcher, there’s not a ton of value there. I think he’s very trade able for the right package. Do the Sox have that package? Maybe not but there’s not a lot of teams In the market for a catcher and if they are JT realmuto is their first choice. The
I’m thinking the Braves and Royals match up really well here. Sox don’t need him – they are fine behind the plate. They will focus on pitching. Braves need a catcher to help them over the next few years and have the prospects to make this a win-win.
Fine with me. Now they can focus on developing young players and giving them ABs and innings instead of signing old, cheap vets and hoping to flip them for A ball players who will never amount to anything.
It’s more fun to watch guys like O’Hearn and Phillips run around out there and try as hard as they can than vets who are just trying to hang on for another 2 years.
Royals won’t be winning a championship next year or the next. In few years they’ll be contenders again. Quality organization.
If people remember right more said last year he wanted to go into the season under 100mil and was around there til free agents went for dirt cheap. He raised it a little to try and flip vets for prospects which he did for most part. So now he is going back to his break even point. 100 mil is on player salary that doesnt count coaching, minor league players, draft and international signings ect. We have Chester at 3rd who is like 27 Raul at ss whit at 2nd and platoon w ohearn and hunter at 1st Perez at catcher outfield with Gordon lf Goodwin and Phillip’s in center soler and bonifacio for rf and DH
Pitcher is
Duffy
Junis
Kennedy
Keller
And a lot of mid tier guys for 5th spot in rotation
Our only big issue is bullpen now
1B is not Hunter it is Hunter Dozier 1B/DH/3B.
Also Top 4 Teams make it next 6 in Wild Card Game?
This isn’t shocking, and in fact a good thing. The team will get better deal picks (as long as those picks pan out), and move toward losing albatross contracts. Sounds good to me.
If you’re the orioles, do you propose a trade of Chris Davis for Ian Kennedy AND Alex Gordon? Would the royals accept?
It /could/ be a win-win for both teams. Orioles get stop-gap players in their rebuild while taking on some salary for a couple years.
Royals get a tremendous bounce back candidate. Maybe the O’s toss in a prospect or two to help?
Wanting to get your payroll down to $30M is kinda tough when you have one player getting over $20M.
It didn’t say down to 30M, it said CUT $30M. It would be a wash for Gordon and Davis but Kennedy gets $16M off the books.
Cmon Nate we’ve got to use our reading comprehension skills!
Sally Perez to the Braves for Allard, Ynoa, Jackson & Wilson
As a Royals fan, I’d love this trade
This off-season, DM needs to move an outfielder, explore a Duffy trade, and start rebuilding the bullpen. Don’t add free agents to the lineup or the rotation. Start the season and see if these kids are as good as they’ve been playing. If so, they’ll be in contention and pieces can be added at the deadline. If not, payroll stays low and the rebuild stays on track for 2020.
Thank you for a fantastic career for baseball, Victor Martinez! Good luck with the rest of your life.
Jorge Lopez is a future ace. Royals need to send Duffy and Salvy to ATL for Kolby Allard, Bryce Wilson, Travis Demeritte, and Alex Jackson