Royals GM addresses offseason following surprising 2024 season

Royals brass held their end-of-season press conference Monday, with general manager J.J. Picollo and manager Matt Quatraro fielding questions from reporters, including MLB.com’s Anne Rogers, about the club’s successful 2024 campaign and some of their plans for the coming offseason.

While Picollo described the Royals’ offense as “acceptable” overall, the team is looking for bookends around the powerful 2-3-4 lineup combination of Bobby Witt Jr., Vinnie Pasquantino and Salvador Perez. The Royals relied heavily on that trio for most of their offense, and thus finding a more consistent leadoff hitter and No. 5 hitter are the first steps in increasing production.

Picollo noted that impending free agent Tommy Pham did a good job in stabilizing the leadoff spot after he was claimed off waivers from the Cardinals at the end of August, but noted the general struggles of the lineup throughout the season.

"...that leadoff spot, we were circulating guys all year long, trying to find the right person….Every lineup, and the better lineups that we faced, they’re deep,” Picollo said. “The more you can push guys down, the better our lineup will be.You start with a leadoff man, and then you try to find somebody in the middle of the lineup, as well. The deeper you get, the more explosive you can be as an offense.”

Kansas City batters had a collective .306 on-base percentage this season, ranking 19th of 30 teams. Witt’s .389 OBP did a lot of the heavy lifting on that cumulative total, as Yuli Gurriel (in only 65 plate appearances) ranked second on the team with a .338 OBP, followed by Perez at .330.  Maikel Garcia had the majority of at-bats out of the leadoff spot and his strong third base defense kept him in the lineup, but he hit only .231/.281/.332 over 626 PA.  Garcia’s 69 wRC+ was the lowest of any qualified hitter in baseball this season.

Despite Garcia’s lack of production, Picollo said Garcia and left fielder MJ Melendez (who also struggled) will be counted to improve at the plate as they head into their fourth Major League campaigns. However, Picollo singled out the outfield as an area where the Royals could add some power and more offense in general, as only the Pirates and White Sox got less production from their outfielders in 2024 than the 79 wRC+ posted by Kansas City’s outfield mix.

“Generally speaking, when you’re looking at left field, right field, that’s where you’re thinking about power guys,” Picollo said. “And we know this ballpark doesn’t lend itself to homers, but it does lend itself to slug. So we’ve got to be more productive there. And that’s where being optimistic about some of the guys that we have and looking at the experience they had, I think that’s fine.”

Right field is the most logical target area if Hunter Renfroe declines his $7.5M player option for 2025, though Picollo said he hadn’t yet spoken to Renfroe about his upcoming decision. Renfroe can take a $1M buyout and return to free agency, but it probably seems likelier that he will take the larger $7.5M payday after a sub-replacement season. Renfroe had a -0.1 fWAR over 120 games with Kansas City, hitting .229/.297/.392 with 15 home runs, and he sandwiched a red-hot stretch in June and July between ice-cold performances in the first two and final two months of the regular season.

Kyle Isbel was also a below-average hitter but at least played some solid defense in center field, so he might have the most job security of all Royals outfielders heading into 2025. If K.C. did indeed pick up a new corner outfielder or two, Renfroe, Melendez, Dairon Blanco and Nelson Velazquez could all be vying for part-time or bench duty, or the Royals could look to move any to create roster space.

On the pitching end, Michael Wacha will have to decide on his $16M player option for the 2025 season. Wacha’s excellent changeup powered his 3.35 ERA over 166 2/3 innings in his first season with the Royals, and induced a ton of soft contact while posting an above-average 6.6% walk rate. Though his lack of strikeouts and velocity will always limit his market to some extent, Wacha has now posted very solid results in each of the last three seasons, and should certainly find a multi-year pact again on the open market this year.

Even if the likelihood is that Wacha does pass on his option, Picollo said “there’s no question we’d like to have him back. How we go about that, I’m not sure just yet…He’s going to have opportunities with other clubs.  So we’ll work on that.”

The Royals will aim to add more pitching with or without Wacha still in the rotation, though obviously it will be a more glaring need if Wacha heads elsewhere. Cole Ragans, Seth Lugo and Brady Singer still combine for a nice top three and Alec Marsh earned himself a rotation job, so on paper Kansas City would have plenty of internal candidates to compete for just one open starting job. But as Picollo noted, “we were remarkably healthy this year,” so the club expects to need more pitching in the likely even that the Royals aren’t as lucky in avoiding the injury bug.

As to how much the Royals will have to spend for any upgrade, Picollo was naturally unspecific on the topic, but he felt owner John Sherman would have as much “flexibility” with the payroll as last winter. 

“I would suspect it would be very similar,” the GM said. “Not necessarily in, ’We’re going to spend $100 million,’ but more so his flexibility, him being open-minded to what our team’s needs are.”

RosterResource estimates that the Royals finished the year with a payroll of slightly more than $113.5M, which represents the franchise’s biggest spend since its $122.2M payroll on Opening Day 2018. An increase in attendance and two playoff games should boost revenue, but the Royals are also one of the teams whose broadcast deals with Diamond Sports Group will be severed as part of DSG’s ongoing bankruptcy proceedings.

It remains to be seen if the Royals could work out a new deal with DSG/Bally Sports for the 2025 season or if the team might seek out another broadcast partner, or pursue an agreement with Major League Baseball itself to broadcast games (as six other clubs have done). While a lot of uncertainty exists here, it should be noted that the Royals’ previous deal with Bally was already up after the 2025 season, and the team still went ahead and had a relatively big spending splurge last winter even with the looming questions about its broadcast future.

In some injury updates, Hunter Harvey, James McArthur and Chris Stratton should all be ready for the start of spring training after finishing the season on the injured list. Some health uncertainty awaits Adam Frazier, who will be undergoing some type of procedure on his right thumb.

Frazier had a minimal 10-day IL stint in late June/early July due to a sprain in that same thumb, and an injury could explain his rough hitting numbers, as the veteran batted only .202/.282/.294 in 294 PA. Kansas City is likely to decline its end of an $8.5M mutual option on Frazier for 2025, which would trigger a $2.5M buyout. Between his down year and perhaps this surgery impacting his readiness, Frazier may have to settle for a minor league pact in free agency.