Predicting contract terms for Kansas City Royals free agents

The 2017 Kansas City Royals have some of the top free agents on the market. Here’s a look at the number of years and dollars those players could sign for this offseason.

There’s going to be a lot of money thrown at former Kansas City Royals players this winter. Teams from coast to coast will be vying for the respective signatures of Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas and Lorenzo Cain, among others. It’s possible the Royals re-sign one or two players, but those possibilities are more than likely limited to Hosmer, Alcides Escobar and Peter Moylan.

The team’s other six free agents are almost guaranteed to be elsewhere in 2018. And that’s fine, because the Kansas City Royals — thanks to some previous poor financial decisions — don’t have the capacity to bring the whole group back. Fans would love to see it, no doubt. But David Glass would just as soon rebuild than ink two $70-plus million contract this offseason.

Doing so — say for Moustakas and Hosmer — would give the team four players on contracts totaling $70-plus million. Although, two of those deals, for Alex Gordon and Ian Kennedy, would be partly finished. Regardless, it’s looking each and every day like the market itself will decide what the future holds in Kansas City.

A couple of years ago, the market for Gordon never materialized — and for good reason. It led to a player many fans thought never would come back re-signing on a four-year deal. Pundits have consistently boasted about the amount of money the Royals’ top three free agents will get this offseason. But those same people are starting to question how much of a bidding war there will be for Hosmer, Cain and Moustakas.

It makes the following exercise a lot more fun but also more challenging: What will the contract terms be for the free agents who suited up for Kansas City in 2017?