Kansas City Royals: Evaluating the 2017 Payroll

The Kansas City Royals Have Key Players Arbitration Eligible

The Royals are now backed into a corner. They want to cut payroll, but they have several key players eligible for arbitration. Some of these may come with a hefty raise.

First, the easy decisions – the Royals are not going to pay Tony Cruz a million dollars, so he is probably gone. Tim Collins was a nice story for awhile, but even at $1.5 or $1.6 million, he is too big of a question mark.

Eric Hosmer is due a big raise, and it may be as high as $11 or $12 million. Herrera could easily get a bump to $3.5 or $4 million. Just these two could be as much as $16 million combined.

Eric Hosmer is due a big raise, and it may be as high as $11 or $12 million.

Then you have Danny Duffy who just had a career year and could see an offer of $6 or $7 million. This payroll is quickly climbing.

Jarrod Dyson is a nice player to have around, but he could be in line for a raise to around $3 million. To cut costs, the club may decide to go with the much cheaper option on Billy Burns as the fourth outfielder.

Dillon Gee could go either way. He offers value as a long reliever/spot starter and probably won’t cost more than $3 million max. He is undergoing the same surgery as Hochevar had, so the Royals may not want to take the chace he won’t be ready by Spring Training.

The interesting player is Daniel Nava. If Morales leaves, Nava could be a cheap option as someone who can be the fifth outfielder and be in the DH mix. He probably wouldn’t cost much more than maybe $1.5 million or a little more.

So, if the Royals make offers to those we think they will, it could add about $24 million to the committed payroll.

Yikes!

Now let’s break down the payroll and see where the Royals sit with the speculated payroll.