The 4 worst pitcher contracts in KC Royals club history

Mega-money baseball contracts don’t guarantee success. Because they reward past, and incentivize future, performance, they’re bets on the come for clubs like the KC Royals and rarely risky for players, who usually reap the benefits of their bargains regardless of how (or sometimes if) they perform. Teams bear the immediate costs of underperformance—not until bad deals expire, or teams find ways to unload disappointing players without further financial liability, can they avoid paying players to play badly.

Take the Royals, for example, who’ve been burned, or at least singed, by a few pitchers’ contracts. Ask longtime Kansas City fans to name pitchers who’ve been paid handsomely despite consistently underperforming their contracts. The wait for the answer “Gil Meche” won’t be long.

Meche, however, really shouldn’t be in the conversation.

He signed a five-year, $55 million contract in December 2006, a deal that when made tied Mike Sweeney’s for the most lucrative Royal pact ever, and preordained Meche as either a landmark acquisition or waste of money.

He went 9-13 for a bad (69-93) 2007 club, then won 14 times to help KC improve six games in 2008. But in 2009, Meche went downhill after manager Trey Hillman let him throw 132 pitches in a June 5-0 shutout of Arizona after he’d averaged almost 110 in his three previous starts. He ended the season 6-10, threw 128 and 122 pitches in two May games the following season, spent that June, July and August on the disabled list, then tried some relief work in September to ease the burden on a troublesome shoulder. He retired before 2011 spring training started.

Meche finished 29-39 and twice led the American League in starts during four Kansas City seasons, not a terrible record considering the inferior clubs (93 average losses) he pitched for and his health. But for that health, perhaps precipitated by overuse, his Royal years would certainly have been better. Injuries shouldn’t count as underperformance.

And Meche’s contract? Upon retiring, he refused to accept the $12 million it guaranteed him for 2011. As he told The New York Times: 

“Once I started to realize I wasn’t earning my money, I felt bad. I was making a crazy amount of money for not even pitching. Honestly, I didn’t feel like I deserved it. I didn’t want to have those feelings again.

So, let’s not count Meche as a bust, or his deal as one of the Royals’ worst.

A lefthander’s huge KC Royals contract was better for him than for the club.

Eleven years after signing Meche, the Royals made southpaw Danny Duffy rich with the five-season, $65 million contract he signed in January 2017. The deal came on the heels of his 12-3 2016 campaign.

That record remains the best of Duffy’s 11-year career, and therein lies the problem. Duffy didn’t win more than nine games in a season, and only 32 total, since signing his deal, and in none of the five campaigns it covered did he fulfill the promise of his 2016 season. (He was, however, 4-3 with a 2.51 ERA before injuries ended his 2021 campaign in July, and his future is clouded).

Unfortunately, Duffy’s body of Kansas City work never really lived up to his big contract.

What were the club’s other three worst pitcher deals? In no particular order, here they are.

A National League Cy Young winner didn’t bring any magic to Kansas City.

Fans more familiar with the Royals’ present than their past may think of one of the organization’s pitching coaches when they hear Mark Davis’ name. For many years a tutor of young pitchers hoping to someday pitch in Kauffman Stadium, Davis will start the 2022 season coaching for KC’s Arizona Rookie League affiliate in Surprise.

Kansas City baseball history buffs also remember Davis as the National League Cy Young Award-winning reliever who seemed destined to dominate the American League when he joined the Royals in 1990.

Paid $13 million to pitch four years for Kansas City, Davis was never what he was when he saved a major league-leading 44 games for San Diego the year before. He was ineffective after saving the Royals’ first three wins and ultimately forfeited the closer’s role to future club Hall of Famer Jeff Montgomery. His ERA exploded to 5.11 (it was 1.85 in 1989 and 2.01 in 1988) and he walked 52 batters in 68.2 innings.

Davis had started from time to time early in his career; hoping to turn him around, the Royals used him in the rotation occasionally in 1991 and ’92, but nothing they or he tried restored him to Cy Young form. Despite going 6-3 in 1991, his control problems continued and, after he stood 1-3 with a 7.13 ERA after 13 appearances in ’92, the club traded him to Atlanta.

Sadly, Davis never found success again and threw his last big league pitch in 1997.

Fortunately, however, he’s since made, and continues to make, solid contributions to the Kansas City organization.

Excitement over landing a star pitcher didn’t last long for the KC Royals.

If you’ve been a baseball fan long enough, you’ll remember the days when it seemed Storm Davis could beat anyone. By the time he came to the Royals in 1990 on a deal small by today’s standards, but big then—$6 million for three years—Davis had won 92 games since breaking in with Baltimore in 1982, including 37 for the Orioles from 1983-85 and 35 for Oakland from 1988-89. And he had postseason experience, something the Royals relished after missing the playoffs four straight times.

But coming from great baseball stock—he counted Baltimore greats Jim Palmer, Dennis Martinez, Scott McGregor, Mike Boddicker and Dennis Martinez among his colleagues during six Oriole seasons—and having almost 100 victories didn’t assure success with the Royals after he left the A’s for free agency.

And continued good fortune Davis didn’t find in Kansas City. He won only seven games and lost 10 in 1990 and was 3-9 in ’91; perhaps not coincidentally, the Royals finished next-to-last in the American League West both seasons. Not desirous of a third season with Davis, they shipped him to the Orioles before the calendar turned to 1992.

The $6 million pact Davis signed wouldn’t turn any heads today. But $6 million was a lot of money then, and turned out to be ill-spent.

Several pitchers’ contracts have backfired on Kansas City. Danny Duffy’s, Storm Davis’, Ian Kennedy’s, and Mark Davis’ are among them.