KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Royals cut ties with Hunter Dozier on Monday, which in even more simple terms means they will be paying someone $15 million to do anything but play baseball for them over the next year-plus.
And that is somehow clearly better value than they got when he was on the field — Fangraphs estimated Dozier’s worth at negative-$18.1 million over the last three seasons.
Apparently he should’ve been paying them to play.
He very much was not. The sting, in fact, drove deeper knowing that Dozier’s struggles coincided with a 4-year, $25 million contract extension that overrode his final arbitration years and one year of free agency.
The story of Hunter Dozier ought to stay primarily there — with Hunter Dozier.
Primarily.
It would be easy to look at all that has gone wrong, chapter by chapter, and easier still to trace back to the prologue of that contract extension. Should the Royals have just let him play out his arbitration years and only then analyzed whether he would be worthy of a contract extension?
In retrospect? Obviously.
As a lesson for their future? Well, not quite.
The Royals are facing similar decisions every day, more than most, in what they’re considering an evaluation year. Lock up the future? Or wait and see?
They picked the wrong door with Dozier. But that won’t scare them off from opening another for a pre-arbitration or arbitration-eligible player, I’m told.
But what has stopped them with the current group?
To date: more data. Or at least more consistent data.
It’s a case-by-case basis, no doubt, but let’s clear up any ideas that the Royals have not at least considered securing the futures of some of their hopeful core players. To the contrary, they talk internally about the concept frequently, down to the details of hatching up contract numbers.
It just hasn’t birthed an actual agreement.
Every contract comes with at least some risk, and it is a team’s job to minimize that risk as much as possible, especially when that team operates in a small market and isn’t afforded the mistakes of its big-market peers. One way to do that is by committing as few dollars as possible. Another, though, is to be as certain as possible that those dollars are being spent wisely.
This is where the Royals are, and where they figure to be for the time being. They’re having the same discussions that you and I are having on this topic. They’ve concluded with the decision to wait for more data, knowing that too can come with risk. The price of poker can increase. In a stroke of irony, they’re basically hoping it does.
They’ve acted in the past. With Salvador Perez, Alex Gordon and Whit Merrifield, to name a few.
But this current spot — opting for patience — says more about where their young core is than where the Royals stand on all of the issue. I’m not entirely sure how that’s gotten lost in the back-and-forth of it. Because that’s where some frustration should lie: the lack of these key pieces forcing this negotiation to the table, day after day.
The Royals were 14-35 heading into Tuesday. They are not the Braves, who locked up several pieces of a young core that helped them qualify for a fifth straight postseason a year ago. The Braves have reasons to be sure. Their young core provides them. That certainty comes with a price tag of three-quarters of a billion dollars tied into seven players.
The Royals are not in that market. Not financially. And not with the same degree of certainty. And I hope that’s not construed as doubt, because general manager J.J. Picollo went on the record once more Monday and said he’s interested in prolonging conversations with the representatives of their young players, though he plans to keep those discussions private.
Keep in mind, this is a team we have all expected to be more transactional — a buzzword, sure, but also a necessity thrown onto a small-market team. It’s a bit harder to be transactional with a player locked into an overpaid contract. The Royals tried to trade Dozier before having to designate him for assignment instead. Those aren’t the preferred kinds of transactions.
An extension would be the preferable outcome. A collection of players providing the production to demand that extension would be even better.
Bobby Witt, the most intriguing player on the field every night, has a career on-base percentage of .288. You could point out that, hey, what better time for the Royals to get a discount price. But, come on, I don’t think I have to tell you he isn’t rushing the table to set his market value right now.
Brady Singer, the most intriguing young pitcher on the staff, had a 3.23 earned run average a year ago but an ERA above 5 in his other three seasons combined, including at 7.48 through 10 starts in 2023.
MJ Melendez has been moved off the position that would make his bat the most valuable and therefore expensive. You can’t pay him like a power-hitting catcher if he’s not going to catch.
Vinnie Pasquantino, the guy on this list I’d be most compelled to start such a negotiation, is a month shy of the one-year anniversary of his MLB debut.
These aren’t prohibitive reasons for reaching extensions years before free agency. They do, however, add risk. Those are my words, but we’re connecting some pretty obvious dots, no?
The sport inherently breeds risk. The Royals made the wrong leap with Dozier. They’ve been right, too.
Ideally, as we have these conversations about potential extensions over and over again, a young core could do something else to that risk.
Subtract it.
