Kansas City Royals: Five Realistic Starting Pitcher Free Agent Targets

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TORONTO, ON – SEPTEMBER 24: Jaime Garcia /

Will the Kansas City Royals look to add a starting pitcher this winter? It’s one of many unanswerable questions right now. If the team does, here are a few players the front office could target.

The Kansas City Royals will likely see Jason Vargas head elsewhere during free agency. While there are plenty of in-house options for the organization, it’s possible Dayton Moore looks for some outside help to give the starting rotation some depth.

There are plenty of great pitchers who will be on the market this offseason. The Kansas City Royals will not be landing any of them. Jake Arrieta? Not a chance. Masahiro Tanaka? If he opts out, he’s not coming here. Yu Darvish? No way.

There are plenty of other arms available the team could look to add, though. Some are aging veterans who are likely to take a cheap one- or-two-year deal in hopes of getting one last big payday before riding off into the sunset. Others are a little bit younger guys who, for one reason or another, have struggled to reach their potential.

For years, the Kansas City Royals’ philosophy when it came to free agent pitchers was buy-low. Plenty of woebegone hurlers have come to the franchise and helped turn their careers around. Vargas is just the latest example. Wade Davis did it, although he achieved it through the bullpen. Ervin Santana, who started the AL Wild Card Game this year, used his one year in Kansas City to get right. And many others before that.

To be clear, these are not options fans should necessarily be excited about. Some of these pitchers would be upgrades; others maybe not. But given the turbulent offseason ahead — and the likely few resources the team will put towards bolstering the rotation — these are some realistic starting pitching options the Kansas City Royals could add for 2018.

Tyler Chatwood

As a former second-round pick, Tyler Chatwood has had a disappointing career to this point. Thankfully for the 27-year-old, he still has plenty of time to prove his worth. He’ll likely seek a short-term contract in hopes of landing a five-year deal that will take him through the first half of his thirties.

The Kansas City Royals would be a nice fit for Chatwood. After pitching since 2012 in Colorado, it would be nice for the right-hander to pitch in a friendlier environment. Chatwood struggled mightily in 2017, leading the National League with 15 losses. His 4.69 ERA and 1.44 WHIP weren’t pretty either, although those were sadly close to his career averages of 4.31 and 1.49, respectively.

In 2017, he went a respectable 5-7 away from Coors Field with a 3.49 ERA and 1.23 WHIP.

Despite those numbers, Chatwood still has shown some promise. He understandably has performed much better on the road. In 2017, he went a respectable 5-7 away from Coors Field with a 3.49 ERA and 1.23 WHIP. His advanced stats also tell a compelling story.

Steve Adams at MLB Trade Rumors looked at how potential free agent starting pitchers fared in a variety of statistical categories. He found that Chatwood had the highest average fastball of the group at 94.6 MPH — o.4 MPH faster than Darvish. According to Adams, that puts Chatwood 2.2 MPH faster than the MLB average. Chatwood also led the group in groundball-rate at 57.1 percent. He also ranked seventh in lowest percentage of hard contact at 29.5 percent.

Those numbers indicate Chatwood would likely improve greatly with a change of scenery. A ballpark like Kauffman Stadium would be a perfect place for a career revival.

Jaime Garcia

Before the Kansas City Royals ultimately decided to a six-player trade with San Diego, the club apparently looked into adding Jaime Garcia for a second-half push. According to FanRag Sports’ Jon Heyman, the veteran left-hander was a deadline target of the Royals. The Braves ended up sending him to the Twins, who in turn sent Garcia to the Yankees after just one start.

All told, the long-time St. Louis Cardinal didn’t have the kind of season that wold warrant two playoff teams adding him to their respective rotations. Garcia made 27 starts (18 with Atlanta, one with Minnesota and eight with New York) during the regular season. He had a 5-10 record and a 4.41 ERA. Somehow that earned him a spot on the Yankees’ postseason roster.

Garcia, 31, will likely command — for reasons unbeknownst to me — more than the Kansas City Royals should be willing to pay him. Spotrac, which tracks and analyzes contracts, projects his market value to be just north of the $12 million he earned in 2017. Given the Royals’ financial obligations, plus the possibility of re-signing a free agent or two, his price tag will likely be too high.

But if some moves are made to clear space, it could happen, as the front office clearly saw something in Garcia last season. Plus the departure of Vargas leaves just one left-handed pitcher, Danny Duffy, as a lock for the rotation. Just don’t expect Garcia to land a four-year, $48 million deal to be the second.

Miguel Gonzalez

This would be a case of life coming full circle. On Oct. 15, 2014, Vargas and Miguel Gonzalez engaged in an epic pitchers’ duel in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series. Vargas took the win in the series-clincher for the Kansas City Royals, while Gonzalez took a hard-luck loss for the Orioles. Now, it’s possible that Gonzalez will be signed to help replace Vargas in the Kansas City rotation.

On Oct. 15, 2014, Vargas and Miguel Gonzalez engaged in an epic pitchers’ duel in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series.

Gonzalez didn’t make it to the big leagues until he was 28 years old. After three good seasons and one bad one in Baltimore, the right-hander signed with the Chicago White Sox. The Rangers acquired him during the 2017 season, but he couldn’t replicate his moderate success with the White Sox (7-10, 4.31 ERA before the trade). In five starts with Texas, Gonzalez had a 6.45 ERA.

At this point in his career, the 33-year-old would be lucky to find a deal with a team option for a second season. Gonzalez won’t command much in a free agent class with some decent right-handed pitching depth. He’s probably never going to be the pitcher who had four sub-4.00 ERA seasons in a five-year span before 2017. However, Gonzalez is a good bet to bounce back from his awful showing in Texas and closely resemble his numbers with Chicago.

If the Kansas City Royals can ink Gonzalez for one year and a couple million dollars, that wouldn’t be the worst thing. His upside is clearly limited, but this team is likely not going to compete in 2018 anyway. A signing like Gonzalez could lessen the burden on still unproven arms such as Jake Junis and Sam Gaviglio — maybe as part of a six-man rotation.

Wade Miley

Technically, Baltimore has a team option to keep Wade Miley for 2018. Choosing to exercise that option would cost the team $12 million; declining it would lead to a $500,000 buyout. According to Eduardo A. Encina of the Baltimore Sun, the club considered keeping Miley until an atrocious September but now look likely to pay him half-a-million dollars to leave.

Miley clearly hasn’t carried over the success he had with the Diamondbacks since coming to the AL. It’s possible he would prefer a trip back to the senior circuit after difficult stops in Boston, Seattle and Baltimore. However, the Kansas City Royals, as mentioned before, could be in the market for a left-handed pitcher as a like-for-like replacement for Vargas. The options for such are limited.

In 2017, Miley made 32 starts and finished with an ugly 8-15 record. His 5.61 ERA and 1.73 WHIP are definite eyesores. The thing that hurt Miley time and again this past season was walks. He issued a league-high 93 free passes, which continuously shot his pitch count up in the opening few innings. There’s hope the walk issues were an anomaly as the 93 were almost twice as many as the 49 he had in 2016.

Despite his rough overall numbers, Miley actually got off to a great start to the season. It wasn’t until his eighth start of the year that Miley allowed more than three earned runs in a game. After a win over the Red Sox on June 1, he had a 2.82 ERA following seven innings of one-run ball. The wheels came off after that, though. He only pitched one game of at least seven innings the rest of the way.

Anibal Sanchez

If you thought the first four pitchers listed have had it rough in recent seasons, Anibal Sanchez takes the buy-low cake. To reiterate, nobody should be excited if Sanchez signs with the Kansas City Royals. He has been on a quick decline since hitting 30, but Sanchez represents the sort of no-risk move Dayton Moore could make it hopes of bringing in some competition — at the very least for spring training.

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It’s quite stunning how far Sanchez, now 33, has fallen since his incredible 2013 season when he finished fourth in Cy Young voting. The right-hander went 14-8 while leading the league in ERA (2.57), FIP (2.39), ERA+ (162) and lowest home run rate (0.4).

He regressed to the mean the following year with an 8-5 mark and 3.43 ERA. Then came a 10-10 campaign with an unsightly 4.99 ERA. It’s somehow only gotten worse from there. In 2016, Sanchez finished 7-13 with a 5.87 ERA. Last year? A 3-7 record and 6.41 ERA. He allowed an average of 2.2 home runs per nine innings. That’s almost hard to fathom.

However, it wasn’t all bad. He stuck out 8.9 batters per nine innings, while walking just 2.5. The strikeout-to-walk ratio of 3.59:1 was the third best of his career. According to the aforementioned MLB Trade Rumors article, Sanchez had the lowest walk rate and sixth-highest strikeout rate of the free agent starting pitchers available this winter.

Next: Handing Out Royals End-of-Season Awards

Sanchez will be pitching somewhere in 2018, as will the other players mentioned in this article. It could be with the Kansas City Royals. That doesn’t mean it’s a smart decision for the organization, but a move to bring in one of these low-risk options would fit the organization’s longstanding model.

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