Spring training baseball is ramping up and the excitement for the MLB season is starting to set in.
While no stock should be the Kansas City Royals’ 7-3 record to start the spring, there is plenty of reason for optimism for Royals fans headed into the year.
Coming off a dreadful 56-106 season in 2023, this past offseason was an extremely important one for the Kansas City front office.
There was expectations the Royals would be aggressive during the winter as they need public support to pass the upcoming vote for the new downtown stadium proposal. It would’ve been difficult for the Jackson County voters to fork up money for a team that was unwilling to spend on itself.
The front office blew the expectations out of the water, though.
While there are still free agents on the market and the situation is still fluid, Kansas City spent $110.4 million on eight free agents this offseason -- signing the third-most players in the league and spending the fourth-most money on free agents.
The Royals spent big on the area most needed -- pitching.
Kansas City finished with the third-highest team ERA in baseball last season at 5.17, and the starting rotation and bullpen were equally bad. The Royals starters finished 26th in ERA at 5.12 and the relievers were 28th at 5.23, per FanGraphs.
Cole Ragans was the lone bright spot of the pitching staff after being acquired in the Aroldis Chapman trade, as he went 5-2 in 12 starts to the tune of a 2.64 ERA with 89 strikeouts in 71⅔ innings.
Ragans looked the part of an ace in a relatively small sample size, and Brady Singer has shown flashes in his four-year career of being a productive arm. But that was the end of the list of starting pitchers to be optimistic about.
The Royals addressed the issue aggressively, signing Seth Lugo to a three-year, $45-million deal and Michael Wacha to a two-year, $32-million contract. Kansas City also set itself up in the department for the future by trading Jackson Kowar to the Atlanta Braves for Kyle Wright, who will miss all of the 2023 season but put together a 21-5 record and a 3.19 ERA in his last full season in 2022, to step into the rotation in 2024.
While a rotation of Ragans, Lugo, Wacha, Singer and Jordan Lyles won’t make a leap to one of the best in baseball, it is unlikely the unit ranks in the bottom five in MLB again.
Kansas City also revamped the bullpen with the free-agent signings of Will Smith and Chris Stratton and the trade acquisitions of Nick Anderson and John Schreiber.
Bringing in veterans -- all four previously mentioned players have at least five years of MLB experience -- is important as the Royals try build up the younger arms of James McArthur, John McMillon and Matt Sauer, who the Royals selected in the Rule 5 Draft.
Kansas City’s biggest addition on the offensive side of the ball in free agency was Hunter Renfroe’s one-year, $5.5-million deal with a second-year option, but the Royals also added much-needed depth with players like Adam Frazier, Garrett Hampson and Austin Nola.
All of the spending to get additional talent on the team is exciting for K.C. fans, but nothing was more exciting than the contract extension Kansas City gave its young star, Bobby Witt Jr.
After a sophomore season with 30 home runs and 49 stolen bases, the Royals locked up Witt Jr. for the foreseeable future with an 11-year, $288.8-million extension that could be as big as 14 years and $377 million.
The deal blew the biggest contract in Kansas City history, Salvador Perez’s $82-million extension from 2021, out of the water and was completely unprecedented for the club.
The big-money offseason has jumped the Royals into 20th in payroll for the upcoming season. While it is by no means a big-market payroll, it has put Kansas City into the company of recently successful teams like the Minnesota Twins, Seattle Mariners and Milwaukee Brewers.
There are no guarantees these moves will pan out perfectly for the Royals, but they are meeting a baseline of putting in efforts to try and compete again.
If it doesn’t work out, so be it.
But with the A.L. Central looking like the weakest in baseball headed into the regular season, Kansas City can realistically have its sights set on competing to win a division crown for the first time since 2015.