Kansas City Royals: Evaluating the 2017 Payroll
By Joel Wagler
The Kansas City Royals Possible Pitching Staff
The Royals starting rotation for 2017 is about 60 percent locked down. After that, it is a crapshoot. While I think they would like to keep Volquez, they cannot afford the $10 million price tag.
If Volquez wanted to give the club a friendly break, maybe they would be willing to bring him back for next season. Still, don’t count on that.
- Ian Kennedy – $13.5 million
- Yordano Ventura – $3.4 million
- Danny Duffy – $7 million (estimate)
- Jason Vargas – $8 million
- Mike Minor – $4 million
- Dillon Gee – $3 million (estimate)
- Chris Young – $5.75 million
- Wade Davis – $10 million
- Kelvin Herrera – $4 million (estimate)
- Joakim Soria – $8 million
- Matt Strahm – $507,500 (minimum)
- Peter Moylan or similar free agent – $2 million (estimate)
- Total – $69 million (estimate)
There is not a lot of places to cut here. They are locked into most of these contracts, and the ones they aren’t locked into are relative bargains.
No one knows what they will get out of Minor or Vargas, and the team will continue to wait for Ventura to mature.
The Soria and Young contracts are albatrosses, weighing down the payroll significantly. Both would need to perform significantly better in 2017, or retire, for their contracts to be considered anything less than disastrous.