Kansas City Royals: Mike Montgomery returns to franchise that drafted him

The Kansas City Royals and Chicago Cubs came to terms on a trade that sent veteran catcher Martin Maldonado to the Cubs in exchange for 30-year-old left-handed relief pitcher Mike Montgomery.

As a result of the trade, Mike Montgomery reunites with the Kansas City Royals organization. Back in 2008, with pick 36 of the Major League Baseball Draft, the Royals selected Montgomery out of William S. Hart High School in Santa Clarita, California.

After spending five years in the organization’s farm system, he was part of the huge deal Kansas City swung with the Tampa Bay, heading to the Rays along with fellow prospects Wil Myers, Jake Odorizzi and Patrick Leonard in exchange for veteran pitchers James Shields and Wade Davis and minor leaguer Elliot Johnson.

Montgomery, however, didn’t stick with the Rays. In 2015, he was traded again, this time to the Seattle Mariners, for whom he finally made his Major League debut in 2015. But in July of 2016, the Mariners sent him to the Cubs as part of a four-player deal.

He excelled for the Cubs out of the bullpen en route to the team’s World Series victory that season. During the regular season, he appeared in 17 games, five of them starts, going 1-1 with a 2.82 ERA, 1.304 WHIP, and 149 ERA+.

In the playoffs that season, he pitched well in both the Division Series and World Series. In the latter, against the Cleveland Indians, he appeared five times, throwing 4.2 innings with a 1.93 ERA.

In an historic moment, Montgomery was on the mound when the Cubs won their first World Series since 1908.

But that’s not the pitcher the Kansas City Royals are acquiring.

Montgomery followed up 2016 with two decent seasons for the Cubs as a swing pitcher, making a total of 33 starts between 2017 and 2018 while appearing another 49 times out of the bullpen. His numbers were fine, nothing extraordinary, but he did hold his ERA under 4.00 in both seasons.

This season, though, Mike Montgomery’s production plummeted. He’s made zero starts and only appeared out of the bullpen 20 times. His ERA ballooned 5.67, his WHIP jumped to 1.778, and his FIP soured to 6.21. Those numbers are all career worsts.

Maybe this is what general manager Dayton Moore was looking at with this deal:

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• In exchange for Martin Maldonado, a catcher with an expiring deal who wouldn’t be back next year with the return of Salvador Perez, the Royals get three years of control of Montgomery, who’s arbitration-eligible after the season, but won’t hit the free market until after the 2021 season.

The Royals appear to be banking on “fixing” Montgomery, getting him back to his 2016-2017 form. Moore evidently chose that option instead of dealing Maldonado, a solid back-up catcher that appeared to be coveted by several other teams, for a young fringe prospect with some upside, like what happened with him last year when he went from the Angels to the Astros.

Overall, acquiring Montgomery achieves the goal of improving the bullpen this year, and possibly for the next two seasons.

So what?

This is not a team that appears anywhere close to competing in the near future. Moore, after landing a respectable prospect for pitcher Homer Bailey, whiffed on this deal.