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Royals Hire Gene Watson As Vice President/Assistant GM

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The Royals announced the hiring of veteran executive Gene Watson as vice president and assistant general manager of major league scouting, relays Alec Lewis of the Athletic. Alden González of ESPN reported Wednesday that Watson would be taking on a role in the Kansas City front office.

Watson is no stranger to the Royals, as he previously spent fourteen years in the organization as a scout and executive. He’d ascended to the role of senior director of pro scouting and assistant to the general manager before departing last December to join the Angels’ front office. Watson interviewed for the Angels’ GM job last winter and ultimately accepted a special advisor role in Los Angeles after the team hired Perry Minasian to lead baseball operations. (He also interviewed for the Astros’ GM job that eventually went to James Click the previous offseason).

Kansas City will welcome the well-respected evaluator back into the fold as part of a broader shakeup of the front office structure. On Tuesday, the Royals promoted longtime GM Dayton Moore to president of baseball operations, bumping assistant GM J.J. Piccolo up to general manager in the process.

Royals Place Brady Singer On Injured List, Select Jon Heasley

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The Royals have placed right-hander Brady Singer on the injured list and selected the contract of right-hander Jon Heasley from Double-A Northwest Arkansas, per a club announcement. An injury designation was not provided for Singer. The Royals already had a full 40-man roster but did not announce a corresponding move, suggesting that Singer is going on the Covid-19-related IL.

Heasley is expected to start tonight’s game in Singer’s place, tweets Alec Lewis of The Athletic. The 6’3″, 225-pound righty was Kansas City’s 13th-round pick back in the 2018 draft and has turned in a solid season in Double-A thus far. Through 105 1/3 innings, the 24-year-old had pitched to a 3.33 ERA with a 27.7 percent strikeout rate, a 7.9 percent walk rate and a 38.9 percent ground-ball rate.

Baseball America ranked Heasley as the Royals’ No. 17 prospect on its midseason reranking of the team’s farm system, and he’s listed 14th over at MLB.com. Both reports praise Heasley’s high-spin four-seamer, which tops out at 97 mph, and an above-average curveball. He throws a changeup and slider as well. Heasley hasn’t drawn as much national fanfare as teammates like Singer, Jackson Kowar, Daniel Lynch and Kris Bubic, but he gives Kansas City yet another young, MLB-ready rotation candidate for 2022 and beyond.

The Royals didn’t specify whether Heasley is being selected as a Covid-related replacement player for Singer, though making that designation would allow the team to return Heasley to the minors without needing to first pass him through waivers. However, Heasley would be eligible for the Rule 5 Draft this offseason if not on the 40-man roster, so it’s likely the Royals would’ve added him within the next two months or so anyhow.

Singer, 25, is third on the Royals in both innings pitched and games started, trailing only Mike Minor and Brad Keller in that regard. He’s taken a step back from last season’s solid rookie debut, pitching to a 4.85 ERA with a 22.4 percent strikeout rate and 9.2 percent walk rate — both slightly worse than league-average — through 120 2/3 frames. Singer has been hampered by a .347 average on balls in play, however — an 87-point increase over last season’s .260 mark despite giving up less hard contact than he did a year ago. Metrics like FIP and SIERA feel he’s been essentially the same pitcher as in 2020, pegging him in the low-4.00 range.

Royals Place Mike Minor On Injured List

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The Royals have placed left-hander Mike Minor on the 10-day injured list due to left shoulder impingement syndrome and recalled righty Scott Blewett from Triple-A Omaha, per a club announcement. Righty Carlos Hernandez is moving up in the rotation and starting tonight in Minor’s place. Left-hander Daniel Lynch will get the nod tomorrow.

Given the timing of the injury, it’s at least possible this will mark the end of Minor’s season. Minor’s placement on the IL is retroactive to Monday, so he could be back in about a week’s time, but there’d only be 12 days left in the season, at most, once Minor is eligible to return.

Minor, 33, revitalized his career as a reliever with the Royals back in 2017 — his first stint with the club. He signed a two-year, $18M contract with Kansas City this past offseason in hopes of doing so a second time, but he hasn’t been able to improve much upon last year’s 5.56 ERA.

To his credit, Minor has been a stabilizing presence in the Kansas City rotation and has been quite effective of late. He’s taken the ball 28 times this year and soaked up 158 2/3 frames, keeping the Royals from leaning too heavily on a collection of young arms whose workloads they’d hoped to closely monitor this season. And while Minor was struggling for much of the season’s first four months, he’d given the Royals a solid 3.78 ERA with a 21.2 percent strikeout rate and a brilliant 3.7 percent walk rate in 52 2/3 innings across his past nine outings.  That type of output was likely just what the Royals hoped for in signing Minor, but because of his ugly start to the season, that recent streak has only dropped his ERA to 5.05.

Minor has become increasingly homer-prone in recent years, and his strikeout rate is also down from the past two seasons, although he’s counteracted that to an extent with one of his stingiest walk rates. Fielding-independent metrics like FIP, xFIP, xERA and SIERA all peg Minor in the 4.28 to 4.44 range, suggesting there’s some hope that he can continue to the solid run he put together late in the 2021 season next year — health permitting, of course. The Royals owe Minor $10MM in 2022 , and his contract also contains a $13MM club option with a $1MM buyout.

Royals To Promote Dayton Moore, JJ Piccolo

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The Royals called a press conference for 2pm CT this afternoon, and while they did not disclose the reason for the presser in that announcement, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reports that the organization will announce a pair of key front-office promotions: Dayton Moore will be bumped from general manager to president of baseball operations, while assistant general manager JJ Piccolo will be promoted to the title of general manager.

Moore becomes the third general manager in as many weeks to be promoted to the title of president of baseball operations, following Tampa Bay’s Erik Neander and Seattle’s Jerry Dipoto in that regard. As with prior front-office promotions of this nature, the timing likely isn’t a coincidence. The Mets will be looking for new front-office leadership this offseason, and it’s possible at the end of any season that additional front-office openings will arise. Teams generally only allow their baseball ops executives to interview with other clubs if the new opportunity represents a promotion, so it’s relatively common this time of year to see some clubs promote baseball ops personnel they have a strong interest in retaining.

Moore, 54, was retained as general manager after former owner David Glass sold the franchise to current owner John Sherman last year, and reports at the time of the sale indicated the expectation was that new ownership had no plans to make sweeping changes. Today’s forthcoming press conference further cements that, as a promotion to president of baseball operations figures to be accompanied by a contract extension.

Initially named the Royals’ general manager back in 2006, Moore has the fourth-longest tenure of any baseball operations leader in MLB, trailing only Oakland’s Billy Beane (1997), the Yankees’ Brian Cashman (1998) and the Rangers’ Jon Daniels (2005). He’s overseen the franchise through multiple cycles of rebuilding and contending, highlighted by consecutive World Series appearances in 2014-15 — including a World Series championship with that 2015 squad.

Moore never fully tore down the team after that World Series core departed, even as the club took a step back. He resisted temptation to trade away the likes of Whit Merrifield, Salvador Perez and (until this summer when he was a free-agent-to-be in a non-contending season) Danny Duffy. Throughout the current rebuilding effort, the Royals have sought to build through the draft and international free agency while still fielding some key stars with whom the fans connect. It’s not the typical rebuild blueprint, but it’s hard to suggest that the Royals aren’t well-positioned moving forward.

Despite this year’s 65-78 record, Kansas City appears on the cusp of taking a pronounced step forward. Bobby Witt Jr., the No. 2 overall pick in the 2019 draft, has emerged as one of the game’s elite prospects. Meanwhile, 2017 first-rounder Nick Pratto has exploded with a breakout showing in Double-A and Triple-A this season, landing himself in the middle of Baseball America’s latest top 100 ranking. Both figure to make their debuts early in 2022, and they’ll be joined by a growing crop of young arms that has not necessarily broken out in unison but carries a good amount of promise.

Each of Brady Singer, Jackson Kowar, Kris Bubic and Daniel Lynch have at times ranked among the game’s top 100 prospects according to multiple publications, and each has had at least a cup of coffee in the Majors. Right-hander Carlos Hernandez wasn’t as highly touted but certainly has the look of a potential big league starter based on his strong rookie showing in 2021. Asa Lacy, the No. 4 overall pick in 2020, has had a rough debut in Double-A but might have the highest ceiling of the entire bunch. In the bullpen, right-handers Scott Barlow and Josh Staumont have been excellent, while lefty Richard Lovelady looks impressive in his own right (albeit in a bit smaller sample of 20 2/3 innings).

Piccolo and Moore have been working together since their days with the Braves in the early 2000s. Piccolo broke in as a scout with the Braves before moving up to director of minor league operations. With the Royals, he served as the team’s director of player development before being promoted to assistant general manager and vice president, a role in which he oversaw both the player development and player personnel departments.

For the past several offseasons, Piccolo has been an oft-cited candidate for positions with other organizations. He’s reportedly been of interest to the Phillies, Marlins and D-backs, among others, but ultimately stayed in Kansas City and now will get a significant bump in title.

From a big-picture standpoint, today’s pair of promotions doesn’t necessarily shake things up in dramatic fashion. Moore will still have the final say on baseball operations decisions, but the elevated titles (in addition to presumably coming with some notable pay increases) will keep both Moore and Piccolo in high-ranking positions as they see the latest rebuild through. They’ll continue to work with assistant general managers Scott Sharp and Rene Francisco — the former an oft-cited GM candidate with other clubs himself — as they look to transition the Royals to yet another run of prominence in an AL Central that looks weak behind the inevitable division-winning White Sox.

Minor MLB Transactions: 9/13/21

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Some minor moves from around the league that were announced Monday…

  • The Royals announced this morning that they’ve reinstated right-hander Ronald Bolanos from the 60-day injured list and optioned him to Triple-A Omaha. Kansas City had a pair of open spots on the 40-man roster already, so a corresponding transaction was not required. A forearm strain has limited Bolanos, who turned 25 last month, to just 40 1/3 innings between the big leagues and the minors combined in 2021. He came to the Royals alongside Franchy Cordero in the 2020 trade that sent left-hander Tim Hill to the Padres but hasn’t yet gotten much of a look. Bolanos served up 17 earned runs in 16 1/3 innings on a minor league rehab assignment, so it’s not too surprising that the Royals want him to get some more work in the minors. Bolanos still has a minor league option remaining beyond the current season.
  • Right-hander Sal Romano went unclaimed on waivers after he was designated for assignment, the Yankees announced Monday. He’s been sent outright to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and is no longer on the 40-man roster. The 27-year-old signed a minor league deal with the Yanks back in May and has been added to the big league roster and removed thrice now. He’s pitched in three games and totaled three innings with one run allowed on five hits, a walk and four strikeouts. Romano has logged a 3.56 ERA in 30 1/3 innings with the team’s Triple-A affiliate as well. He hasn’t had much big league success since his rookie season back in 2017 (4.45 ERA in 87 innings/16 starts with Cincinnati), but he’s been a solid depth add for the Yankees thus far.

AL Central Notes: Perez, Jimenez, Dobnak

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“Everyone destroyed that deal,” a rival executive tells The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal about the general opinion of the Royals’ four-year, $82MM contract extension with Salvador Perez last March.  Though that extension doesn’t kick in until next season, it is now looking like a shrewd move in the wake of Perez’s huge 2021 numbers.  Perez entered today’s action with 42 homers, a .276/.316/.548 slash line, and a league-best 104 RBIs over 569 plate appearances.  While Perez had shown some big power in the past and delivered a .986 OPS during 156 PA in the abbreviated 2020 season, nobody saw this type of slugging breakout coming in the veteran catcher’s age-31 campaign.

What looked like an overpay in March now looks pretty close to what the market value would’ve been for Perez as a free agent this winter, as 2021 was the final year of Perez’s previous deal (a five-year, $52.5MM pact) with Kansas City.  Given Perez’s importance to the Royals organization, the team might have been willing to engage in some form of a bidding war to retain Perez in free agency, though that is a scenario the Royals are undoubtedly pleased to have avoided.

More from around the division…

  • White Sox slugger Eloy Jimenez has missed his team’s last two games due to a bone bruise on his right knee.  The injury is “significant,” manager Tony La Russa told ESPN’s Jesse Rogers and other reporters, though there is some hope Jimenez can return to the lineup in relatively short order.  While sitting in the dugout on Tuesday, Jimenez suffered the injury after being hit by a line drive of an Andrew Vaughn foul ball, and eventually had to leave the game.  The increasingly banged-up White Sox are missing a few key players on the injured list already, though Chicago has plenty of cushion atop the all-but-decided AL Central.
  • The Twins placed right-hander Randy Dobnak on the 10-day injured list (retroactive to September 8) due to a strain in his right middle finger.  Left-hander Andrew Albers was called up from Triple-A to take over Dobnak’s scheduled start in today’s game against the Indians.  Dobnak already missed over two months of the season with another strain involving the same finger, and given both the late date on the calendar and the apparent recurring nature of the injury, it is possible that Dobnak might not pitch again in 2021.  It’s been a tough season for the righty, who pitched so well in his 2020 rookie season that Minnesota inked Dobnak to a five-year extension worth at least $9.25MM in guaranteed money.  Working as both a starter and a reliever this year, Dobnak struggled in both roles, en route to a 7.64 ERA over 50 2/3 innings, with 11 home runs allowed.

Royals Place Cam Gallagher On Injured List, Recall Tyler Zuber

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The Royals have placed catcher Cam Gallagher on the injured list with left knee inflammation, per a team announcement. Right-handed pitcher Tyler Zuber has been recalled to take his place on the roster.

It’s been a tough season for Gallagher, after he seemed to have taken a step forward in 2020. In the shortened campaign last year, Gallagher got into 25 games and hit .283/.356/.434, good enough for a wRC+ of 116. This year, however, he’s been hampered by various injuries, getting into only 41 games and slashing .202/.262/.277, a wRC+ of just 48. This stint on the injured list will be his fourth of the year, after twice going on the concussion IL and also being put on the shelf with shoulder impingement syndrome.

Salvador Perez will continue to take the bulk of the playing time behind the dish as he has been one of the best catchers in baseball since missing all of 2019 because of Tommy John surgery. Since the start of the 2020 campaign, Perez is slashing .289/.324/.565, for an outstanding wRC+ of 136. 22-year-old Sebastian Rivero is on the active roster to absorb whatever playing time isn’t taken by Salvy.

Adalberto Mondesi Moving To Third Base

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The Royals reinstated Adalberto Mondesi from the injured list when rosters expanded to 28 yesterday, but he won’t be moving back to his customary spot at shortstop, per Anne Rogers of MLB.com. Instead he’ll split the majority of his time between third base and designated hitter for at least the remainder of the 2021 season.

It’s a decision brought about largely by a strong showing from fellow infielder Nicky Lopez, who has put together a nice season while Mondesi has been limited to just 10 games due to a pair of oblique strains (one on each side of his body) and a hamstring strain. In Mondesi’s absence, Lopez has turned in a .292/.363/.363 batting line and gone 18-for-18 in stolen bases.

The 26-year-old Lopez’s offense is heavily BABIP-dependent thanks to his lack of power, but even if his current .342 mark began to regress, his glovework at shortstop is enough to keep him in the lineup. Lopez has positive marks at shortstop across the board. He’s made just six errors in 979 innings at short and has plus rankings in Defensive Runs Saved (3), Ultimate Zone Rating (5.2) and Statcast’s Outs Above Average (11). That plus-11 mark in OAA is the fourth-highest of any Major League player at any position in 2021.

For the time being, the move to third base likely displaces Hunter Dozier, who’s been struggling to find his form at the plate all season. Dozier looked to perhaps be righting the ship with a strong July performance, but his bat wilted in the month since that hot streak. He’s hitting .203/.272/.351 on the whole as he plays out the first season of a four-year, $25MM contract extension he inked with Kansas City following what looked to be a breakout 2019 showing (.279/.348/.522, 26 home runs, 123 wRC+). Dozier can see some time at first base, at designated hitter and in the outfield corners with Mondesi at third base, and he can of course continue taking reps at the hot corner on days when it’s Monedsi who is tabbed as the designated hitter.

Looking further down the road, an eventual position change for Mondesi has never seemed far-fetched — not with top prospect Bobby Witt Jt. rapidly rising through the system. Witt, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2019 draft, has split his 2021 season between Double-A and Triple-A, batting a combined .299/.364/.595 with 28 home runs, 28 doubles, four triples and 22 stolen bases. If shortstop is his eventual home on the diamond, it stands to reason that one of Mondesi or Lopez (perhaps even both) would be pushed into a more fluid role, seeing time at multiple positions. The Royals have Whit Merrifield installed at second base this season, but Merrifield can certainly handle the outfield and, speculatively speaking, could be ticketed for more time there in 2022 as the infield picture begins to shift.

Royals general manager Dayton Moore was rather candid when discussing Mondesi’s durability issues earlier this summer, stating publicly that the Royals aren’t able to count on the talented but oft-injured 26-year-old as their everyday option at shortstop. “He may not be a guy that plays more than 100 games a year, best-case scenario,” Moore said at the time. The GM emphasized that the Royals “love Mondi to death” and have no plans to move on from him but simply “can’t, obviously, count on him as an everyday player.”

The Royals control Mondesi for two seasons beyond the current campaign — the same amount of time for which they control the aforementioned Merrifield. Mondesi is making $2.525MM in 2021, and his limited number of games played will keep any raise paid out through arbitration rather minimal. How he handles the move to third base — a position he has not played at all in his professional career — could in some ways influence the Royals’ approach to the 2021-22 offseason. Moore’s prior comments suggest Kansas City won’t count on Mondesi as the regular third baseman even if he wows defensively, but if he looks relatively comfortable there it’s certainly possible that could impact their infield pursuits this winter.

Every Team’s Initial September Callups

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The limit on active roster players expanded from 26 to 28 today, as the calendar flipped to September. Every team announced at least two additions to the big league club (some teams made three or more due to injured list placements). Here’s a recap of today’s spate of transactions:

Royals Place Richard Lovelady On IL With UCL Sprain, Recall Tyler Zuber

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The Royals have placed left-handed pitcher Richard Lovelady on the injured list with a left UCL sprain, per a team announcement. Right-hander Tyler Zuber has been recalled to take his place on the roster.

While the extent of the injury isn’t known at this time, anything involving the UCL is always a cause for alarm. If this does end up as a serious injury, it would be very unfortunate for both Lovelady and the Royals. The lefty seemed to be finding his groove this year, after struggling a bit in his first tastes of the big leagues. In 2019, Lovelady logged 20 innings out of the Royals’ bullpen, but with a bloated ERA of 7.65. In the shortened 2020 season, he was only able to get a single appearance of one inning. But in 2021, in 20 2/3 innings, he has an ERA of 3.48, with strikeout and walk rates of 27.4% and 7.1%. (League averages are 23.4% and 8.7%.) The 26-year-old will now go on the shelf and figure out what options he has for recuperating.

Zuber, also 26, has an ERA of 6.00 across 18 big league innings this season, with a below-average strikeout rate of 20.7% and unsightly walk rate of 18.3%. His Triple-A performance has been much better, however. In 26 2/3 innings with the Omaha Storm Chasers, he has an ERA of 3.04, with a gaudy strikeout rate of 35.4%. He has still struggled with command, as evidenced by a walk rate of 13.8%.

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