Royals to Sign Kendrys Morales to Two-Year Deal

Mandatory Credit: Steven Bisig-USA TODAY Sports

Jeff Passan is reporting that the Royals have agreed to a 2-year, $17 million contract with free agent Kendrys Morales. Chris Cotillo was the first to report a deal was close.

Morales is coming off the worst season of his career, in which he hit just .218/.274/.338, with 8 home runs in 401 plate appearances. He didn’t join a team until June due to the draft pick compensation attached, and it appears that all of that time off really hurt him.

When healthy, Morales has been a very productive hitter, compiling a .286/.339/.494 line between 2009 and 2013. His best season came in 2009, but he still had a wRC+ of 119 in both 2012 and 2013. The problem is that Morales missed part of 2010 and all of 2011 due to an ankle injury, and he’s dealt with other injuries in the past, meaning a multi-year commitment isn’t ideal.

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He also is really only a designated hitter at this point, because his defense at first is arguably worse than the man he’s replacing, Billy Butler. And speaking of Butler, the two hitters have similar overall stat lines (~125 wRC+ from 2009-2013), and both had down years in 2014. Unfortunately, Morales’ down year was much farther down than Butler’s.

The hope is that Morales can rebound and return to his form from the past few seasons, providing some power to the middle of the Royals’ order. He’s a switch hitter, although he’s been better as a lefty (117 wRC+) than as a righty (96 wRC+). The team should see him collect more plate appearances from his stronger side, which is nice. He still has some power from the right side (.159 ISO), although he’s more of an out machine, with an OBP near .300.

While the Royals had been saying they wanted to rotate the DH position throughout the season to give players rest, the contract amount, and Morales’ defensive limitations suggest he’ll be the primary DH all season long. Considering the Royals could have had Butler for $12.5 million for 2015, this definitely reinforces the fact that the organization misread the market, although there is the chance Morales bounces back and is a productive hitter next season.

This deal is a risk, and I do think there were better options available (and there still are), but if Morales is healthy, he may provide some value to the Royals offense. The time away from baseball could have been such a big contributing factor to his poor performance, which would suggest a full offseason of training with the team could be a huge help. He is 31, though, meaning improvement is far from a guarantee. Hopefully 2014 wasn’t the start of a decline, because if it was, the Royals just handed out a lot of money for no real upgrade. Regardless of how this contract turns out, Dayton Moore still isn’t done making moves, because the Royals still have some work to do.