The Kansas City Royals are a good team in baseball, and not just because they're a small team competing for a postseason berth or because Bobby Witt Jr. is one of the brightest young stars in baseball.
No, the Royals are a good team for baseball because they are a shining example of what every organization in professional baseball should do: work hard.
You'll remember that the Royals spent nearly $110 million on free agents this winter, a move that was well-received but didn't make national headlines. They didn't just spend $500 million on two players. Like the Texas Rangers Something they did before 2022. They didn't win the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes.
After losing 106 games last year, the Royals wanted to improve quickly. Realizing that player development and amateur scouting wasn't enough, they filled in through free agency, aggressively adding more than a half-dozen players. Now, they're already enjoying a winning season and on the brink of clinching a postseason berth as early as this week.
Revolutionary? Hardly. Unusual? Very rare in today's game.
““Sometimes you just need to get smacked over the head, right?” Royals owner John Sherman, who approved the spending, asked reporters this spring. “I don't know what's going to happen, but I can't put up with this again for the sake of our fans.”
Any owner can afford to have an offseason like the Royals did — they were proactive and didn't do anything stupid, reinforcing their roster at the trade deadline and again via the waiver wire last month — but few have done so.
MLB has taken steps to combat the spread of slack in the sport, but getting teams to keep working hard, front offices to take risks and owners to loosen the purse strings has been an entirely different matter.
Royals executive vice president and general manager JJ Picolo runs the team differently than other teams. (Mark J. Rebillas/Imagun Images)
Witt's otherworldly season (he'll easily top 10 fWAR) would have almost certainly earned him the AL MVP award if not for Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees, and this spring Sherman approved an 11-year, $288.8 million contract extension with the Royals' young star that could be worth as much as $377 million over 14 years if the deal is completed — the most lucrative contract in franchise history.
Then again, if Kansas City, one of baseball's smallest markets, can do it, why can't other teams?
While other teams have downsized departments and cut staff (six teams in the last week alone have cut scouting and player development or “reorganized” with constant talk of front-office efficiencies, according to league sources), the Royals have beefed up their infrastructure. In the two years since executive vice president of baseball operations JJ Piccollo took the helm, Kansas City has restructured all three scouting departments under new leadership, modernizing the organization and changing the culture. The Royals have placed a premium on data, adding six new people to their research and development team, including a new director. They've built that in by hiring people with traditional baseball backgrounds but with an open mind.
Picolo, who was promoted internally when Dayton Moore was fired, hasn't been shy about hiring outsiders, even those with no previous ties, like manager Matt Quatraro. Like Picolo, Quatraro is widely credited with turning around a team and bringing curiosity and a willingness to innovate. This team isn't led by a pair of blue-chip Ivy League graduates, but by two guys in their 50s who both played in the minor leagues.
Perhaps new market efficiencies are doing things just a little differently, if not always into new territory, to zig when others zag. These royals, for all their successful efforts to modernize, are also masters of the basics.
Only the San Diego Padres' lineup has a lower strikeout rate, and Kansas City boasts one of the best defenses in the league, further strengthening an already solid pitching staff.
From day one of last season's offseason, the Royals targeted pitchers Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha, not because they were the best available players (they weren't) or even because they were dominant pitchers (neither has yet to strike out 200), but because they fit certain beliefs: Lugo is an All-Star this year and, despite an unusually tough outing on Monday, a likely Cy Young candidate, while Wacha is 9-1 with a 2.67 ERA and a 71-20 strikeout-to-walk ratio since the beginning of July.
Down 52-45 at the start of the second half, Picolo and company didn't wait to see which route teams would take, like many teams not at the top of their division. Instead, they weren't afraid to double down and moved quickly again after their offseason relief options didn't work out. Kansas City acquired Hunter Harvey from Washington two weeks before the deadline, along with Lucas Erceg, swingman Michael Lorenzen and infielder Paul DeJong from Oakland.
When first baseman Vinny Pasquantino was injured, Picolo acquired three players on waivers to fill the vacancy: Yuli Gurriel, Tommy Pham and Robbie Grossman. The cost was cash, but the payoff was immediate. The Royals had pursued Pham and Grossman at the deadline but were unable to acquire either. This group could have helped several teams higher than Kansas City on the waiver list. No one else was willing to jump ship.
Not every move the Royals have made has worked out, but like their lineup, the Royals front office has a pretty low strikeout rate, and the Kansas City model has proven to be a good one as they chase the Baltimore Orioles for the top wild-card spot.
That's a good thing for a city that hasn't had a team in the playoffs since winning the World Series in 2015. And it's even better for baseball.
(Top photo of Bobby Witt Jr. celebrating with his teammates: Jay Biggerstaff / Imagn Images)
