KC Royals: 3 arbitration players that won't be back for the 2024 season

Change is coming to Kansas City. It has to. The KC Royals are below .500 for the seventh season in a row and last in a woeful AL Central. Faces are changing in the front office, experienced ballplayers may be on the move, but more change is needed at 1 Royal Way.

The KC Royals need pitching help, but not from these three.

The MLB roster shifts in many different ways through the offseason. One way that the Royals and other teams retain players is through arbitration. The gritty of that process is this: players under team control negotiate with the team and determine their salary for the upcoming season. Third parties and counsel can get involved with the negotiations later on down the road, but it boils down to players talking salary with the team who own their playing rights.

In some cases, a team can non-tender a player if they think his arbitration raise is greater than his worth in the coming season. For example, the Royals non-tendered Jake Brentz and Nate Webb last offseason. That opened two spots on the 40-man roster and made them free agents.

Looking at the pitching side of the house, there are some clear non-tender candidates in Kansas City. General Manager J.J. Picollo said that both the bullpen and rotation needed improvements ahead of the 2024 season. The idea of addition by subtraction exists everywhere, even in the MLB. MLB Trade Rumors published their projected arbitration salaries, thanks to Matt Swartz's formula. Who are some players the Royals will be better without paying in 2024?

Taylor Hearn

Projected arbitration salary: $1,700,000

Let's get this one out of the way. There was no positive way to slice reliever Taylor Hearn's time in Kansas City. It started with the Royals acquiring him shortly after he was designated for assignment by sending away fan-favorite Nicky Lopez. That trade happened nearly three months ago, but fans have not forgiven the Royals for that move still.

Hearn had a deep hole to dig out of with Royals fans. He only dug deeper once he took the mound. He made his Royals debut on August 10 in a losing effort against the Boston Red Sox. He allowed his first run two days later against the St. Louis Cardinals, then the wheels fell off a week after he made his debut. All told, Hearn was a net negative pitcher in a Royals uniform.

FanGraphs has a statistic called shutdowns and meltdowns. Shutdowns are good for pitchers when they increase their team's winning percentage by a certain amount. The opposite is meltdowns, where the pitcher is a negative contributor. In Hearn's eight appearances, he had no shutdowns and three meltdowns. That is hardly a positive look.

How can the Royals justify paying him nearly $2 million next season? They can't. He was a below-replacement pitcher with no peripheral metrics to say he would turn things around. Kansas City was his third organization this season for a reason.

The Royals bullpen is bad, but Hearn only made it worse in his limited time.

Josh Staumont

Projected arbitration salary: $1,200,000

Another member of that reliever group who started the season in Omaha was surprisingly Josh Staumont. The Royals selected Staumont in the second round of the 2015 MLB draft and he had lived up to expectations through the 2021 season. But a down 2022 changed his trajectory and the 2023 season did little to correct it.

I was high on Staumont's return. He came back to the team two weeks after Opening Day with a good reason behind his minor-league stint.

“A lot of it was just kind of tweaking little things here and there, trying to make sure that we’re being as consistent as possible,” Staumont said about his return. “And some of that just comes with extra reps and stuff like that. It’s good. So we’re just happy to kind of keep the ball rolling. I’ve been throwing really well through spring training all the way up to here. So we just got to kick it up a notch and do it up here basically.”

He had a successful return and those good feelings lasted all of a month. From April 18 to May 23, Staumont pitched 14 1/3 innings with an impressive 2.84 FIP and 3.14 ERA. He struck out 18 batters to walking 8, an acceptable ratio. The fastball velocity was down by far, but a new-look slider offered potential. Building a formidable arsenal is key for any pitcher to extend their career, and Staumont needed another great pitch.

Then things turned for the worse quicker than a hiccup. His next five appearances saw Satumont give up seven earned runs, while his strikeout-to-walk ratio plummeted to one for one. A 13.50 ERA and 7.11 FIP signaled something was wrong with the veteran, especially because of how ineffective any pitch was against opposing batters.

Staumont landed on the IL after his June 5 appearance with a neck strain. He suffered a setback later that month, inducing more testing from professionals. When it was all said and done, the Royals sent the 29-year-old pitcher to the 60-day IL on July 14 ahead of him needing thoracic outlet syndrome surgery. There is no timetable for his return, unfortunately, casting his MLB future into doubt.

The Royals faced a similar issue with Brentz last season. Instead of paying Staumont an MLB contract for possibly minimal production, the team should consider non-tendering him in favor of a minor-league contract that keeps him in the system past his recovery timeline.