KC Royals: A look back at success and a vision for the future
By Gage Stagner
The one thing we have learned from this 2019 Royals team, however, is we don’ t know what to make of it.
Whit Merrifield is a star with a great contract, but he’s already in his age 30 season; Jorge Soler has monstrous power, but can he hit consistently for average?; Adalberto Mondesi is a stud, but he’s made of glass it seems like.
There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the team and it’s safe to assume no one knows where it might be headed. Let’s shake our magic-8 ball and predict when the Royals could realistically get back to where they were in 2014-15.
Amidst another embarrassing sub-.500 season for the Royals franchise, not all is lost. Hunter Dozier has broken out this year, surprisingly, and he’s only 27. After being drafted eighth overall from Stephen F. Austin in 2013, Dozier has been a disappointment until this season.
He’s hitting .284 with 22 homers and 66 RBIs and while he was drafted as a corner infielder, he’s tried out for right field on and off throughout his career. He will not be eligible for arbitration until 2021 and will be under team control for the foreseeable future.
The MLB has a salary arbitration system best defined by Justin Sievert of Sporting News. Sievert explains it as a system dividing up players into three different categories, if you will. There are pre-arbitration players, players eligible for salary arbitration, and free agents.
A player must have three years of service time to become arbitration-eligible, in which the club and player can “exchange salary offers by January 16,” (Sievert). If the two sides do not come to an agreement by the deadline, an arbitration panel will determine the salary given to the player. This will be important to understand when evaluating the contract situations on the current Royals roster.
The only actual player that will be a free agent this offseason is the beloved Alex Gordon if bought out. Gordon has a $4 million buyout. That leaves Kansas City fans rooting for Merrifield, Mondesi, Dozier, Salvy, Soler, and Brad Keller for sure. Depending on how guys like Danny Duffy and Ian Kennedy pitch next year, they could be trade targets for contending teams and the Royals could capitalize on that.