Eric Hosmer, Greg Holland Far From Arbitration Deals with KC Royals

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The Kansas City Royals, along with the rest of baseball, exchanged arbitration offers with eligible players this week. Those initial bargaining positions show massive gaps between the team and young stars Eric Hosmer and Greg Holland.  

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According to MLB Trade Rumors, the gap between the Royals and Eric Hosmer sits at $2.35 million (4th biggest difference among MLB’s arbitration-eligible players). Meanwhile, the team is also a long way from agreement with closer Greg Holland with a $2.1 million difference (6th).

After earning the first Mariano Rivera award this season for the American League, Greg Holland wants $9.00 million in his second arbitration year, up from $4.675 million in 2014.

Eric Hosmer is asking for $6.75 million, after pulling down $3.6 million as a super-two player (high-end young player that wins arbitration after two, rather than three, full years of service).

Kansas City Royals general manager Dayton Moore did come to agreements with relievers Tim Collins and Louis Coleman to avoid arbitration on Friday. However, he has a long way to go if he wishes the keep his record of never going into an arbitration hearing since taking over the Royals in 2006.

Here is the list of arbitration-eligible players that remain unsigned for the Royals:

  1. Greg Holland
  2. Eric Hosmer
  3. Kelvin Herrera
  4. Lorenzo Cain
  5. Danny Duffy
  6. Jarrod Dyson
  7. Mike Moustakas

Those seven players form most of the Royals young core, excepting starter Yordano Ventura and catcher Salvador Perez.

Here we see why Dayton Moore emphasized short-term commitments to free-agents while filling holes this winter. If Kansas City’s arbitration-eligible players continue to progress, they will challenge the team’s budget in years to come.  

If the Royals are to keep their contention window open for multiple seasons to come, Moore will have to carefully manage his payroll. The worst thing he could do is to commit to aging free-agents that compromise his ability to keep prime producers like Eric Hosmer and Greg Holland on the roster.

That’s why James Shields became out of the question when his asking price hit $100 million. It might also explain why he passed on Ervin Santana, Yasmany Tomas, Melky Cabrera and Billy Butler.

All of those players ended up signing deals that extended beyond the two-year max that Moore limited himself to this winter, even though some of them came at near the yearly rates Moore gave to players like Edinson Volquez (2 years, $20 million) and Alex Rios (1 year, $11 million).

When you consider the bulge of arbitration-eligible players on the KC Royals roster, Dayton Moore did a decent job of addressing his club’s holes without compromising its contention window.

Next: Royals Leaders In Triples

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