Royals To Acquire Joey Krehbiel

10:26am: The Royals are sending cash to the Rays, reports Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic.

10:16am: The Royals are acquiring right-handed reliever Joey Krehbiel from the Rays, reports Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. The 32-year-old Krehbiel is not on Tampa Bay’s 40-man roster. He’s been pitching with their Triple-A affiliate in Durham after signing a minor league deal back in January.

Krehbiel has a 3.65 ERA in 74 big league innings spread across parts of four seasons. He most recently pitched in the majors for the 2022-23 Orioles. He’s posted an ugly 6.11 earned run average with Durham this season but has far more encouraging rate stats: 20.6% strikeout rate, 6.1% walk rate, 53.8% ground-ball rate. Krehbiel has been dogged by a .371 average on balls in play and a 57% strand rate, both of which seem ripe for positive regression. Fielding-independent metrics feel he’s been far better than his ERA would otherwise indicate (3.99 FIP, 3.96 xFIP).

Krehbiel is averaging 93.8 mph on his four-seamer this season and has coupled that pitch with a cutter sitting 89.6 mph, a sinker at 92.6 mph and a changeup that’s averaged 85.4 mph. Unsightly earned run average notwithstanding, he’s done a nice job avoiding hard contact, limiting opponents to an 88.3 mph average exit velocity with just a 33.3% overall hard-hit rate.

Since Krehbiel isn’t on the 40-man roster, the Royals don’t need to make a corresponding move — unless the plan is to immediately select him to the majors. If that’s the case, they’d need to open a 40-man spot. Krehbiel has one minor league option year remaining and is technically controllable for another five seasons, though that’s not much of a consideration at this time, given his age and lack of track record.