KC Royals: A trio of last-minute non-tender candidates

Teams must tender contracts to certain players by tomorrow; three KC Royals are obvious “non-tender” candidates who will become free agents unless tendered.

The final out of the 2020 World Series marked the end of the most unique season in major league history. Hours later, baseball’s clock struck Midnight and the offseason began in earnest when all players eligible for free agency, including some KC Royals, officially became free agents.

Then came Nov. 1, the deadline for teams to make qualifying offers to their free agents, which had to be accepted or rejected by Nov. 11. Nine days later, 40-man rosters had to be set for Rule 5 draft purposes.

The next big deadline is 8 p.m. ET tomorrow—clubs have until then to tender (offer) one-year contracts to members of their 40-man rosters with less than six years of major league service time. Tendered players can sign immediately, negotiate, or have their 2021 salaries determined via arbitration. Non-tendered players immediately become free agents.

So, the KC Royals must soon decide whether to tender contracts to 37 of their 40-man roster players; only Danny Duffy and Salvador Perez, each with over nine years of service time, and Whit Merrifield, who has less than six years but is on a contract extension through 2023, aren’t subject to the tender rule.

The chances of the Royals tendering all other 37 players aren’t good. While the club may offer  one-year salaries it believes they’ll accept to several, or sign some to early contract extensions for the same reason and to buy out the first years of free agency, it may also have little incentive to sign, or risk unfavorable arbitration awards with, others.

There are, of course, Royals who’ll receive tenders or extensions because they’re too valuable to lose, such as Brad Keller, Adalberto Mondesi, Brady Singer, Kris Bubic, Josh Staumont, Daniel Tillo, Hunter Dozier, Nicky Lopez, and others, and some who are likely, but not assured, to get offers, including Maikel Franco and Jorge Soler.

But there are at least three Royals who may not be tendered or offered extensions. Let’s see who they are.

A pitcher who got his first shot at the majors last season with the KC Royals could be non-tendered.

Until quite late in the short 2020 season, no one would have faulted Scott Blewett for feeling like a fifth wheel, or an odd man out. He’d been invited to major league spring training three years in a row without making the Opening Day roster, and two 2020 callups to Kansas City hadn’t resulted in a single pitch.

Finally, however, and after summoning him to the big club for the third time, the Royals gave Blewett the opportunity he’d long awaited: manager Mike Matheny handed him the ball to begin the bottom of the sixth inning of a mid-September game against the Brewers. The Royals were behind 9-4, and the low-leverage, “clean” inning start made it the ideal spot for Blewett’s big league debut.

He started by inducing two groundball outs on just four pitches, then gave up two hits before ending his first inning in The Show with a strikeout. Blewett then held the Brewers down in the seventh, giving up a one-out double before retiring the Crew on a harmless infield popup and another strikeout. His work done well, Blewett gave way to Josh Staumont to start the eighth.

His next, and final, appearance of the season came five days later against St. Louis, and wasn’t as good. Although Matheny gave Blewett another low-leverage situation—the Royals led by 11 when he came in to pitch the ninth—and he struck out Paul DeJong and Matt Carpenter, Blewett gave up three hits, two runs and a walk. With the end of the season just two days away, the Royals optioned him to their alternate training site the next day to make room for Richard Lovelady. Curiously, Lovelady didn’t see any action.

Standing alone, Blewett’s small major league sample shouldn’t determine his Royal future, but six undistinguished seasons in the minors may foretell his fate. Used almost exclusively as a starter at each of his five minor league stops, he’s 33-45 with a troubling 5.00 ERA and has yet to post a full season ERA under 4.00. Those numbers aren’t the foundation for a promising career.

The much anticipated and impending major league debuts of starters like Daniel Lynch, Jackson Kowar and Jonathan Bowlan, the new but looming presence of Asa Lacy, and the bullpen’s 2020 resurgence, make Blewett an unlikely choice going forward for the rotation or the pen. Don’t be surprised if the Royals decide to spend his salary elsewhere.

His long career with the organization may be coming to an end for a KC Royals outfielder.

There isn’t much left to say about Bubba Starling. Sadly, the superbly athletic, once-promising multi-sport star has reached the point where keeping him in Kansas City makes little, if any, sense.

Chief among obstacles to Starling remaining with the Royals is hitting. His 91-game, two-season .204/.246/.298 slash just isn’t good enough and suggests his struggle with big league pitching won’t end well. And his much ballyhooed potential outweighs his actual minor league performance: Starling has a .244 career average in parts of eight minor league seasons; although various injuries robbed him of playing time, .244 doesn’t project at all, and he hasn’t come close to repeating the .310 in 72 Triple A games that convinced the Royals to promote him to the majors in 2019.

Then there’s the sheer abundance of talent in the KC Royals’ outfield. Whit Merrifield has center or right locked down for the foreseeable future. Alex Gordon’s retirement left a gap in left which Nick Heath, Franchy Cordero, Khalil Lee, Kyle Isbel, and maybe Seuly Matias if he goes unpicked in this month’s Rule 5 draft, are expected to fight hard for.

And finally, there’s the newest Royal. Michael A. Taylor, a seven-year veteran of the Washington Nationals’ outfield, signed with Kansas City Monday—it’s hard to believe General Manager Dayton Moore secured his services without giving serious thought to playing him regularly, especially given the $1.75 million (with another $1 million in incentives) he reportedly signed for.

There is the fact, of course, that the Royals immunized Starling from the Rule 5 draft by keeping him on the 40-man roster. But that really doesn’t mean that much for a player in his position. Perhaps they feared receiving only the $100,000 draft price if another club plucked him away and wanted to try striking a more lucrative trade, or decided to give him another chance in spring training and, if that goes well, on the 2021 roster. The former is unlikely, the latter a probable exercise in futility.

The notion of letting Starling go isn’t new to this space. Nor should it be for the KC Royals, which makes him a viable nontender candidate.

The Royals have until tomorrow night to tender contracts. Will they tender everyone, nontender Scott Blewett, Meibrys Viloria and Bubba Starling, or choose other players to let go?