12 Days of Royals: Wishing for a “big” free agent signing

While the KC Royals aren’t typically big noisemakers in free agency, it would be nice for them to at least make an attempt at a well-known player.

Welcome back to the 12 Days of Royals here at Kings of Kauffman where we continue to spell out our wishes to Santa for our beloved team. We will continue up until December 25th and have already put some big requests on our list. This time lets focus on free agents.

The team has made a few moves so far this offseason, but they have not been anything to really write home about. They have acquired a few players on minor league contracts and resigned some players they DFA’d, Jesse Hahn being the only player signed to a major league contract at this point.

It’s always wishful thinking to hope the Royals will make a big signing during the free agency. They rarely do, especially when they are in the midst of a rebuild. The problem is that they continue to spend money on players that likely won’t help the rebuild in any way, instead of players that are more likely to stick around or turn a profit at the trade deadline.

The Royals couldn’t afford Gerrit Cole this year, that’s understood. As nice as it would be, the Royals just don’t spend that kind of money. There have been some other options though, even this year in free agency.

Of course, with just about any player, you always take a risk. Maybe their age is a concern, or maybe they had a bad year in 2019, but for the Royals, these issues are usually what drives their free-agent picks as it drives the prices down.

First, lets put some perspective on the money the Royals threw around last year. For Billy Hamilton, Chris Owings, Brad Boxberger, and Lucas Duda cumulatively, the Royals gave out contracts equalling over $11 million according to spotrac.com. There were some other signings, but those included above brought little or no return, while the few left out at least brought another player or prospect through trade.

If the team sticks with their usual game plan signing players with some risks, they could have raked in the possibilities to start off the offseason. Wade Miley went to the Reds for $15 million over 2, Michael Wacha went for just $3 million, and Brad Brach is with the Mets at just over $2 million over 2 years.

If you do the math on those contracts, that’ll bring you to a healthy $11,550,000. Yet, it’s often believed that the Royals just don’t have the money to go out and bring in some quality, lower risk that Chris Owings, free agents.

Those three players are just examples from this year and while they come with their own issues, it would be a breath of fresh air to see the Royals going after players who have had good pasts and established themselves, rather than players who seemed to be last-minute thoughts.

The fact remains that the free agents are available, the Royals just have to be aggressive enough to try and get them, and start the conversations in the first place.

So, as long as decent free agents remain available, we will continue to wish for the signing of at least one bigger named player, *cough* Dallas Keuchel is still available *cough*, and hope they can help the Royals finally put these 100 loss seasons in the past.

Here’s to hoping for some free agent news from the Royals in the near future. Continue to follow along as we work our way through the 12 days of Royals until December 25th.