Kansas City Royals: John Sherman’s first moves as owner are most important

As the new owner of the Kansas City Royals, John Sherman’s first moves will be the most important to win over the fanbase.

Soon-to-be former owner of the Kansas City Royals, Davis Glass, expedited the sale of this team to a hand-picked John Sherman, who is currently serving as the vice-chairman of the Cleveland Indians. Glass has agreed to sell the team to Sherman for $1 billion, but Sherman will need to divest himself from the 30 percent ownership he currently has with the Indians.

It seems like this sale happened awfully fast, with reports coming out on Tuesday that Glass was in discussions to sell the team to having agreed to a deal on Friday. Obviously, there were a lot of discussions going on behind the scenes before this came to light, but needless to say, Sherman’s first moves will be under the watchful eyes of the Royals fanbase.

When Glass became the CEO of the Royals in 1993, his first move was to slash payroll from $41 million down to just $19 million. He’s generally pinched pennies wherever he could but only recently has he began to open the pocketbooks. Next season, the Royals are projected to have an Opening Day payroll just under $80 million, but Sherman will need to do something in the offseason to avoid three straight 100 loss seasons.

The pitching staff this season has been terrible and twice last week, Alex Gordon who had never pitched in relief, did so twice in blowout losses. It can’t go on for much longer otherwise people will simply stop paying to go to games. There’s really no reason that Glenn Sparkman or Eric Skoglund should be starting once every five days.

Add to this an anemic offense with only a couple of power bats in Jorge Soler and Hunter Dozier. It certainly didn’t help that the team lost Salvador Perez in Spring Training, but he should be back to start the 2020 season fresh and ready to go. He, alone, will not prevent another 100 loss season, so Sherman will need to be proactive in free agency to improve this roster.

Dayton Moore was on 610 Sports Radio earlier this week discussing the sale and he indicated that he feels good about 6 of the position players with opportunities for others to step up. I would argue that the number should be closer to 3.

Sherman will be under the microscope with what exactly his first set of moves will be. I like to believe that because he is a fan and from Kansas City that he won’t slash payroll like his predecessor, but I can’t 100 percent say for sure that won’t happen. Outside of declining Alex Gordon’s 2020 mutual option, cutting the cord on Ian Kennedy and trading Danny Duffy, there really is not a lot of payroll to shed anyways.

Again, what Sherman does first as the new owner of the Royals will either win over the fanbase or get people thinking he’s David Glass 2.0.