Kendrys Morales May Be Worth the Contract

Two years for $17 Million and an additional $1.5 Million in incentives for Kendrys Morales. Since I was in the hospital at the time the Royals signing of Morales was announced, I wrote it off to a morphine drip induced hallucination and fell back asleep. Now that I am out of the hospital and somewhat in command of my faculties, I see that this signing actually took place. So much for the hallucination.

That type of a contract, especially for a player who may not have had that strong of a market to begin with, appears completely insane at first glance. After all, Morales did hit at only a .218/.274/.338 rate last season, with all of eight home runs. That “production” makes Billy Butler‘s bad season appear to be stellar.

While having Butler on that one year option for $12.5 Million may be better than the contract given to Kendrys Morales, but that Morales contract may prove to be better than the three year, $30 Million deal that Butler got from the A’s. After all, his 2014 season may just have been an aberration, based in part on his terrible luck with the fly ball and sitting out the 2014 season until the beginning of June.

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This may well be a worthwhile gamble. After all, from 2009 through 2013, Morales averaged a .286/.339/.494 batting line with 22 home runs. Those numbers may not look overly impressive, but Morales was also playing in pitcher friendly ballparks in Anaheim and Seattle. He also missed the vast majority of the 2010 season, playing in only 51 games, hurting his home run averages. If these averages are extrapolated out to a 162 game schedule, then Morales actually averaged 30 home runs and 36 doubles over that four year stretch.

Should Kendrys Morales be able to come close to replicating his success over those four years, and approach that 162 game average, then Dayton Moore may well have found that power bat that the Royals have needed. It is highly unlikely that Morales will be as bad as he was in 2014, since players tend not to go into a free fall from age 30 to age 31, but he is not a given either.

Perhaps with a full Spring Training, and an offseason where he knows exactly where he is going, Morales can be that player he was over the previous four seasons. Perhaps this gamble will pay off, and Morales will be that impact bat. It certainly does not hurt to try.

In the end, maybe the signing of Kendrys Morales would have been better on a one year deal. However, since Moore helped guide the Royals to the World Series last year, he may know something we do not. Maybe, just maybe, that something is that Morales is going to be the player that the Royals needed in the lineup.