Kansas City Royals: Two Years or Three Months
By Paul York
The window of opportunity is talked about a lot in sports. How much longer are the Kansas City Royals in that window of contention?
As sad as it is to think about this, Mike Moustakas signing a new 2-year/$14.3 million deal with the Kansas City Royals further illustrates the belief that the window of opportunity for the Royals is rapidly closing.
By now we’ve all heard it. The belief in and around baseball is that the Royals believe 2016 and 2017 are their best chances at continued success, but after that a re-build is almost a certainty. The Royals have taken measures to make sure their core group is together through 2017.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at who is scheduled to come off the books after 2017: Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, Alcides Escobar, Lorenzo Cain, and Wade Davis. Those are just the key pieces.
Other names that likely won’t be around after 2017: Omar Infante, Ian Kennedy, and Jason Vargas.
If you’re holding out hope that the KC Royals will somehow convince guys like Hosmer and/or Moustakas to truly be “Forever Royal”, you should stop.
Before that, the Royals stand to lose some key pieces after 2016. Both Kendrys Morales and Edinson Volquez have mutual options written into their contract for 2017, which makes it far from a slam dunk that they’d exercise those options and stay around for another year.
If Volquez or Morales have solid performances in 2016 like they did in 2015, they will quite likely decline those options, and seek out longer-term commitments elsewhere.
If you’re holding out hope that the KC Royals will somehow convince guys like Hosmer and/or Moustakas to truly be “Forever Royal”, you should stop. Both are clients of agent Scott Boras. Boras clients almost always test the free agent market, especially so at the peak of their respective careers.
If/when these guys all seek greener pastures, the cupboard is going to be pretty bare. Alex Gordon, Salvador Perez, Danny Duffy, Kelvin Herrera and Yordano Ventura will be what’s left to lead the charge.
Next: Farm system