When the Royals moved Ian Kennedy to the bullpen, it seemed to mark a rock-bottom moment for the right-hander’s value. Kennedy was owed a total of $33MM from 2019-20 after a two-year stretch in which he logged a 5.06 ERA and 5.17 FIP. He was being taken out of a rebuilding team’s rotation in favor of Homer Bailey, another veteran whose underperforming contract was being paid off by another team.
Fast forward a couple of months, and not much has gone right with the Royals’ pitching staff, but the Kennedy bullpen experiment has been nothing short of excellent. While teams still won’t be interested in his contract, they may have interest in acquiring Kennedy if the Royals are willing to pay down some of the salary.
It’s only 19 2/3 innings, but Kennedy has a 3.20 ERA with a 23-to-2 K/BB ratio and a 47 percent ground-ball rate out of the bullpen. His average fastball has jumped from 91.9 mph to 93.4 mph now that he’s working in short stints. Perhaps there’s reason to be skeptical of the strikeout rate given a lack of swinging strikes, but Kennedy is also among the league leaders in weak contact induced. Opponents are averaging just 84.7 mph in terms of exit velocity against him, and Statcast pegs his .266 expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA) in the 86th percentile league-wide.
Kennedy has dropped his changeup entirely in favor of a four-seam/curveball/cutter arsenal that has proven to be more effective than his prior pitch mix. While his curve has never been a source of many whiffs, Kennedy is suddenly sporting a 17.7 percent swinging-strike rate on the pitch — up substantially from the roughly nine percent mark he posted in the three prior seasons. He’s altered his release point on his curve and picked up more movement than he’s seen in recent seasons, which has not only led to misses but also quite a few more ground-balls (55 percent). Kennedy’s curve hasn’t generated great results yet (both the homers hit against him this season have come on the pitch) but the .444 average on balls in play opponents have recorded against that offering figures to regress.
Prior to Opening Day, Kennedy would’ve been the type of arm one would expect to receive a minor league contract and a Spring Training invite in a free-agent setting, but he now looks more like a reliever who’d command a reasonably significant big league deal. If he can sustain this output or even improve upon it, he could even be the type of pitcher who’d command a two-year pact in a theoretical open market. He doesn’t have the track record for clubs to look at him as a David Robertson/Andrew Miller type that’d make $11-12MM per year, but we’ve seen quite a few two-year deals in the $4-7MM annual salary range in recent offseasons — even for pitchers who don’t have lengthy track records (e.g. Jesse Chavez, Brandon Kintzler, Anthony Swarzak).
It’s suddenly not crazy to think that in a couple months’ time, teams could view Kennedy as reliever worth paying $5-7MM per season. Some teams may already be starting to think that way. If the Royals were willing to pay down $10-11MM of next season’s $16.5MM salary (and the prorated equivalent of that sum for the remainder of the 2019 campaign), Kennedy could suddenly be movable. Being movable is different than having much in the way of positive trade value, but the very fact that it appears possible is a nice, somewhat unexpected development for Kansas City.
And if the Royals were willing to pay down even more of that sum, perhaps they could pry a decent return out of the whole deal. No team is going to give up anything of value just for the right to pay Kennedy at what could be the high end of his market value, no matter how well he throws between now and July 31. If the Royals pay him down to the point where he’s only owed a couple million dollars in 2019 and 2020, though, surplus value could be created.
There has already been a bit of chatter involving Kennedy, though there’s no indication of actual trade talks. Recent suggestions of some type of deal involving Dominic Smith don’t make any sense to me, even if Smith is blocked by Pete Alonso in New York. But if Kennedy can sustain his bullpen renaissance — and the numbers suggest that he can — then the Royals can score some salary relief and maybe even a mid-range prospect or two this summer. This outcome isn’t what they were anticipating when they signed Kennedy, but it’s about as good as they could’ve hoped for when they moved him to the ’pen.
What can we get if we include Hamilton and Owings in the deal?
A lotto ticket and some cash probably.
less then if you traded him alone.
A bucket of balls and a barrel of laughs??
The Royals will have to include more than a bucket of balls.
No one will trade for owings. And billy isn’t that bad. At least his BA is above 200. .
I have a question about salaries listed. In the past if someone was making $5,000,000 per year I seem to remember the abbreviation would be $5M. Now to M’s are used ($5MM). Does the extra M stand for anything?
The Roman numeral M means one thousand. MM means 1,000 x 1,000, which equals one million. Hence, the MM. I think that was probably the correct way to do it all along.
One small issue with that theory: MM = 2,000, not a million.
When the ancient Romans wanted to write a million, they would write (M) … the parenthesis signified “times one thousand”. It’s also acceptable to put a bar over the M, instead, to mean the same thing.
History lesson!
YES! Thanks!
Mutatis mutandis.
Reasons to choose MM – MM is a designation that is derived from the Roman numeral M for one thousand meaning “one thousand one thousands” or one million. The best argument for the use of MM for million is that it cannot mean anything else (unlike M, which could stand for one thousand). MM (“thousand thousands”, from Latin “Mille”; not to be confused with the Roman numeral MM = 2,000)
I’m suddenly hungry for M&M’s…
I’ve previously speculated the Braves swing a deal with KC for Kennedy and Barlow that sees Atlanta paying for Kennedy’s entire contract. Barlow the add in helping to soften the blow of taking on the contract. Not sure the prospects that would need to head the other way with KC getting out of such a large financial commitment but it could help ATL hang on to some of their more prized prospects by simply assuming greater financial expenditures
Since they have money to spend and all… or so they keep telling Braves fans.
This move would totally remove them from Kimbrel most likely though. Even though it shouldn’t, hard to see this organization truly opening up the wallet like they keep promising
Including Scott Barlow is one of the few plausible ways to get out of the Kennedy contract entirely. But I hope that doesn’t happen. Despite the blow up yesterday, I think Scott Barlow is an absolute star in the making.
I want to keep Barlow. He’s still young (26) and our bullpen needs pitchers that rarely walk batters. He can be part of the future.
What’s KC’s payroll these days?
Isn’t it relatively low?
they can certianly eat some money
They could but won’t. No way Glass agrees to eat enough of Kennedy’s salary to be able to trade him. Plus…Dayton Moore is still convinced it was a good signing.
Isn’t it always low?
It’s actually been pretty high the last few years. I think it approached 140M a couple years ago. Still around 100 I think.
Well I’ll be damned it did get up to $127 it looks like. Not gonna lie I had no idea.
It’s back pretty low this year though at $67. Maybe getting out from Kennedy’s contract won’t be as enticing to them as I originally thought.
Oh well…. I hope Braves sign Kimbrel anyway rather than spend so much on Kennedy and others
Anthony Swarzak 2.0?
Ian Happ for Kennedy and cash.
Doesn’t happ play 2nd? We have a 2nd baseman & we’ve been burned on trades with the cubs so no thanks
Whats his salary as a reliever?
Last winter when it looked like the Padres had no room for Wil Myers I was hoping the two teams could work out a trade of bloated contracts that sent Kennedy back to SD and Myers back to KC.
Doesn’t Myers play the OF? Plus his salary is even more than Kennedy’s. It wouldn’t be salary shedding for KC for long.