Royals brass held their end-of-season press conference today, with general manager J.J. Picollo and manager Matt Quatraro fielding questions from MLB.com’s Anne Rogers (two links) and other reporters about the club’s successful 2024 campaign and some of their plans for the coming offseason.
While Picollo described the Royals’ offense as “acceptable” overall, the team is looking for bookends around the powerful 2-3-4 lineup combination of Bobby Witt Jr., Vinnie Pasquantino, and Salvador Perez. The Royals relied heavily on that trio for most of their offense, and thus finding a more consistent leadoff hitter and no. 5 hitter are the first steps in increasing production.
Picollo noted that impending free agent Tommy Pham did a good job in stabilizing the leadoff spot after Pham was claimed off waivers from the Cardinals at the end of August. In general, however, “that leadoff spot, we were circulating guys all year long, trying to find the right person….Every lineup, and the better lineups that we faced, they’re deep,” Picollo said. “The more you can push guys down, the better our lineup will be. You start with a leadoff man, and then you try to find somebody in the middle of the lineup, as well. The deeper you get, the more explosive you can be as an offense.”
Kansas City batters had a collective .306 on-base percentage this season, ranking 19th of 30 teams. Witt’s .389 OBP did a lot of the heavy lifting on that cumulative total, as Yuli Gurriel (in only 65 plate appearances) ranked second on the team with a .338 OBP, followed by Perez at .330. Maikel Garcia had the majority of at-bats out of the leadoff spot and his strong third base defense kept him in the lineup, but he hit only .231/.281/.332 over 626 PA. Garcia’s 69 wRC+ was the lowest of any qualified hitter in baseball this season.
Despite Garcia’s lack of production, Picollo said Garcia and left fielder MJ Melendez (who also struggled) will be counted to improve at the plate as they head into their fourth Major League campaigns. However, Picollo singled out the outfield as a natural area where the Royals could add some power and more offense in general, as only the Pirates and White Sox got less production from their outfielders in 2024 than the 79 wRC+ posted by Kansas City’s outfield mix.
“Generally speaking, when you’re looking at left field, right field, that’s where you’re thinking about power guys,” Picollo said. “And we know this ballpark doesn’t lend itself to homers, but it does lend itself to slug. So we’ve got to be more productive there. And that’s where being optimistic about some of the guys that we have and looking at the experience they had, I think that’s fine.”
Right field is the most logical target area if Hunter Renfroe declines his $7.5MM player option for 2025, though Picollo said he hadn’t yet spoken to Renfroe about his upcoming decision. Renfroe can take a $1MM buyout and return to free agency, but it probably seems likelier than Renfroe will take the larger $7.5MM payday after a sub-replacement season. Renfroe had a -0.1 fWAR over 120 games with Kansas City, hitting .229/.297/.392 with 15 home runs, and he sandwiched a red-hot stretch in June and July between ice-cold performances in the first two and final two months of the regular season.
Kyle Isbel was also a below-average hitter but at least played some solid defense in center field, so he might have the most job security of all Royals outfielders heading into 2025. If K.C. did indeed pick up a new corner outfielder or two, Renfroe, Melendez, Dairon Blanco, and Nelson Velazquez could all be vying for part-time or bench duty, or the Royals could look to move any to create roster space.
On the pitching end, Michael Wacha will have to decide on either exercising or declining his $16MM player option for the 2025 season. Wacha’s excellent changeup powered his 3.35 ERA over 166 2/3 innings in his first season with the Royals, and induced a ton of soft contact while posting an above-average 6.6% walk rate. Though his lack of strikeouts and velocity will always limit his market to some extent, Wacha has now posted very solid results in each of the last three seasons, and should certainly find a multi-year pact again on the open market this year.
Even if the likelihood is that Wacha does pass on his option, Picollo said “there’s no question we’d like to have him back. How we go about that, I’m not sure just yet….He’s going to have opportunities with other clubs. So we’ll work on that.”
The Royals aim to add more pitching with or without Wacha still in the rotation, though obviously it will be a more glaring need if Wacha does head elsewhere. Cole Ragans, Seth Lugo, and Brady Singer still combine for a nice top three and Alec Marsh earned himself a rotation job, so on paper Kansas City would have plenty of internal candidates to compete for just one open starting job. But as Picollo noted, “we were remarkably healthy this year,” so the club expects to need more pitching in the likely even that the Royals aren’t as lucky in avoiding the injury bug.
As to how much the Royals will have to spend for any upgrade, Picollo was naturally unspecific on the topic, but he felt owner John Sherman would have as much “flexibility” with the payroll as last winter. “I would suspect it would be very similar,” the GM said. “Not necessarily in, ’We’re going to spend $100 million,’ but more so his flexibility, him being open-minded to what our team’s needs are.”
RosterResource estimates that the Royals finished the year with a payroll of slightly more than $113.5MM, which represents the franchise’s biggest spend since its $122.2MM payroll on Opening Day 2018. An increase in attendance and two playoff games should boost revenue, but the Royals are also one of the teams whose broadcast deals with Diamond Sports Group will be severed as part of DSG’s ongoing bankruptcy proceedings.
It remains to be seen if the Royals could work out a new deal with DSG/Bally Sports for the 2025 season or if the team might seek out another broadcast partner, or pursue an agreement with Major League Baseball itself to broadcast games (as six other clubs have done). While obviously a lot of uncertainty exists here, it should be noted that the Royals’ previous deal with Bally was already up after the 2025 season, and the team still went ahead and had a relatively big spending splurge last winter even with the looming questions about its broadcast future.
In some injury updates, Hunter Harvey, James McArthur, and Chris Stratton should all be ready for the start of Spring Training after finishing the season on the injured list. Some health uncertainty awaits Adam Frazier, who will be undergoing some type of procedure on his right thumb this week.
Frazier had a minimal 10-day IL stint in late June/early July due to a sprain in that same thumb, and an injury could explain his rough hitting numbers, as the veteran batted only .202/.282/.294 in 294 PA. Kansas City is sure to decline its end of an $8.5MM mutual option on Frazier for 2025, and he’ll be bought out for $2.5MM. Between his down year and perhaps this surgery impacting his readiness, Frazier may have to settle for a minor league pact in free agency.
“Maikel Garcia had the majority of at-bats out of the leadoff spot and his strong third base defense kept him in the lineup, but he hit only .231/.281/.332 over 626 PA. Garcia’s 69 wRC+ was the lowest of any qualified hitter in baseball this season.”
Im surprised is wasn’t Brandon Drury of the Angels that had lowest wRC+ this season. He was absolutely”dreary” at the plate!
Garcia had the worst wRC+ of any qualified hitter. Drury didn’t even have 400 plate appearances this season.
Just like Quatraro, this article forgot about Daniel Lynch IV who was solid after they brought him back up.
Who would the Royals give up for Cronenworth and Cease?
Can’t see the Padres trading Cease.
Well since the Padres are unlikely to trade either of them, nobody.
Padres likely need to clear $50M of payroll again (and resign or replace Profar, Kim, Scott and Musgrove), so I think anything is on the table. Indeed, I’d be surprised if all 3 of Cease, Croenworth and Arraez are back next year.
Cronenworth contract is prohibitively expensive for KC.
Nobody wants Cronenworth at that way overinflated salary. Plus his defense is sketchy at best.
Caese looked pedestrian in the playoffs. White Sox dodged a bullet there.
With guys like Garcia, Renfroe, Frazier and several other squalid hitters I still scratch my head about how on earth this team made it into the playoffs and the Mariners didn’t. They certainly didn’t look like a playoff contender down the stretch or against the Yankees, in fact that series has been the most mundane and lackluster of the postseason so far. I think the Mariners would have at least given the Yankees a run for their money. Oh well, we shall see how it shakes out in 2025.
Healthy rotation and playing the White Sox more helped them over the Mariners
Barry – incorrect, and stupid as usual. The M’s were 5-8 against the Angels, and 9-4 against the A’s.
The Royals were 12-1 against the ChiSox.
Just compare for a second what beating a team 12 times at the cost of only one loss means – had Chicago been even league average, KC would have been a .500 team. Meanwhile, the Mariners lost the season series to the Angels AND they’d have had to lose all but one game to Oakland to get down the level of KC’s reliance on ChiSox poundings.
The White Sox are the reason the Central took so many playoff spots.
Mariners went 6-0 against the White Sox my man. Take away half those and they’re not even close to the playoffs either lol
82-80 and they’re sweating the Red Sox and Rays at the end, who both basically gave up the last week of the season due to being out of it.
Plus you forgot the Royals beat the #1 Wild Card team in the Orioles in the WC round. So it’s not like they just coasted into the playoffs then stunk it up the entire time.
Ba2929 – The Royals lucked into the playoffs. The Orioles were hapless – those games were dumb for both teams. It was more a case of the O’s failing than KC succeeding.
And regardless of the M’s record against Chicago, the argument was that the M’s had an intra-division advantage because of Oakland and Anaheim that eclipsed the AL Central’s season-long domination of the ChiSox.
How Chicago presented out of division, with half as many games, is irrelevant. The facts are that AL Central teams benefitted more from a bad Chicago team than the M’s did from bad teams in their own division. There is no valid argument to the contrary. The AL Central flooded the playoffs a year after being the worst division in baseball SOLELY because they got to pound away against the worst team in modern history for 13 games each.
Squalid definition. Extremely dirty and unpleasant place, especially as a result of poverty or neglect.
Alright I get that you’re a Mariners fan and you probably only watched their games….but let’s go into your claims a bit. The royals offense was not great, but they were quite a bit better than the mariners…we had Witt, Perez, and Pasquantino in the middle of the order, and had Pasquantino not broken his thumb, all 3 would have had over 100 rbis. JRod had a down year, Raleigh hit 34 Homers with a .220 average, but I couldn’t even figure out your third best hitter. The main reason why the royals didn’t look great down the stretch was vinny’s broken thumb. You mentioned Garcia, Renfroe, and Frazier…can you say they’re worse than Crawford, Haniger, Moore, and Garver. Frazier wasn’t even a regular, but let’s just say you meant Melendez instead. The royals led the league in average with running in scoring position, which meant they may not have been great hitters, but came through when it counted. They also were one of the hardest teams to strike out, the mariners struck out a ton.
As far as the series against the Yankees, it took a botched replay call for the yanks to win game one and not a single game was won by more than 2 runs, which means they were in every game with less than half of the payroll. I was at game 4 and the wind knocked down Isbel’s drive in the sixth that would have tied the game. Giancarlo Stanton had the series of his life, we could not get that guy out….Yankees fans wanted him gone halfway through the season, wish they had.
All valid points, and FWIW, the Royals beat the Mariners in the season series between the two clubs. Our 3rd best hitter would probably be Luke Raley for somebody there the entire season, or Victor Robles but he came in June.
Great starting pitching and Bobby Witt. Shame the mariners didn’t even make the playoffs but keep dreaming
“We were remarkably healthy this year”. A top factor, IMO, of the success or lack thereof of wins and losses in a season. KC gambled on signing some older FAs last off season and solid play held up. Kudos to them for going for it!
Great article.
Puts the saga of Mr. Ragans and his 2 teams into perspective. The use of the Statcast data helps to explain WHY the before and after statistics changed so.
Would be interesting to know what influenced the change that precipitated the: “adding about 1.2 inches of vertical break” on his fastball. The first 2 suspects to me would be the influence of manager Matt Quatraro and pitching coach Brian Sweeney. Quatraro came from the Rays organization – of which there seems to have been a run on all levels of personnel by franchises around MLB the past few years. Sweeney was the bullpen coach for years with the Guardians. A franchise that’s built around their system of working with pitchers, and where the Padres and Yankees poached their pitching coaches from that turned around their pitching results. Should also add that Royals owner John Sherman was a minority owner and ‘Vice-Chairman’ with the Indians (at the time) for 3-4 years.
The problem with the Royals for years was pitching. Even during the WS years in the mid-2010’s their bullpen was knockout, but the starting pitching was below average. The pitching was then run into the ground when GM Dayton Moore continued to back manager Mike Matheny that was clearly ruining the young pitchers that Moore had drafted a few years earlier.
Point being that Cleveland has the best pitching system in MLB, and the Rays are right behind them along with the Braves and Astros; although the Rays do better with position players as they take a different approach. Additional point being that any MLB franchise that can be self-sufficient in bringing along pitchers – as opposed to signing hot pitchers in FA or acquiring them via trade only to see them become ineffective – is going to compete for an extended playoff spot more years than not.
The Royals are going to be very good for a number of years. It’s all about pitching…..and defense up the middle.
Agreed with “It’s all about pitching…..and defense up the middle”. I can only add how healthy a team can stay throughout a season is critical … especially smaller market teams that can’t “buy” expensive help at trade deadline.
I hate Matheny but I wouldn’t blame him for the team’s pitching woes. It was Dayton and organization wide. We have barely drafted and developed a notable starter since Greinke. Duffy and Ventura would be the closest thing. They were dinosaurs in a lot of ways and didn’t embrace analytics a ton until recently.
What is the market for Wacha? 3/45? Another 2/32 with opt out?
Is his market higher than last year? He was coming off 2 solid years (now 3) and only got what he got then but also a year older?
Padres are going to likely look for a mid range shorter term starter and he was good for them in 23.
I’d love to have him back with the Pads. He’s one of those I have eyes on as a Cease replacement if they trade him (which I think is going to happen).
Perez and his contract are holding that team back. They can find that production for under 20 mil. It’s time to move on and try to trade him instead of resigning him long term in 26. The 20 million savings should go into a new stadium or into the Hunt family’s investments making KC better
He has aged better than any catcher I’ve ever seen, but the wear and tear of 13 seasons left him gassed by that Yankees series for sure. He has just a year left on his contract, so if I was the FO I’d look for a platoon partner or just make him full time DH for next year. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t retire when his contract expires.
I see Perez getting less than 60 starts at catcher next year. He’ll see a lot more time and DH and the occasional 1B. Fermin is good defensively.
Haha no. He helped carry the team this year. He’s a leader and only has one year left on his contract. Tell me you didn’t watch the team this year. And what the hell does Hunt have to do with Salvy and the Royals?
Pham’s OBP with KC was .250. I don’t see how that stabilized the lead off position, unless they are just counting it because the manager put Pham in the lead off spot more frequently than others?
He was decent at times which was better than what we had with Garcia leading off. Like the article says, Maikel was the worst OBP of any everyday player
Frazier has an 8.5 MILLION option? You can’t be serious!
I ma serious. And don’t call me Shirley.
It is on the steep side. Gulp.
That said; 3rd year in a row this vet has been a part of a playoff team. Seattle, Baltimore and KC.
As a role player, he was a presence in Baltimore. As were guys like Hicks and McCann. These guys showed up more often during that 101 win 2023 season then the young guns the media was hyping like Cowser, Nevin and Stowers. Looks like an injury or 2 did him this year. All said; go buyout route KC.
Really hope the Royals find a way to keep Wacha.