What comes next for the Royals?

The 2024 season has come to an end, but that just means the pre-2025 offseason has begun!

The Royals playoff dreams died Thursday night. We could sit and mope around about the team. And, believe me, you’re going to find lots of analysis and retrospectives in excruciating detail throughout the off-season. I am kind of known for my off-topic posting in the offseason but hopefully, I’m not going to have a ton of time for that, this year, as the Royals’ expectations for 2025 have shot way up.

As I said, there will be lots of in-depth and detailed analysis to be done. But for today, I wanted to do a quick rundown of the position the Royals enter the offseason with. There has been a lot of talk about how lucky this year was and I want to try to figure out what can be reasonably expected to carry over into next season. Here’s the fun part: as I am writing these words, I don’t know the answer. I am going to use a trick I picked up from ex-fellow writer David Lesky (who runs the fantastic Inside the Crown newsletter) and I’ll write through my process as I go so we all find out the answers together.

How lucky were the Royals?

I’ve already written about how the Royals were pretty lucky when it came to injuries, so we don’t need to belabor that point. The Royals' run differential on the season, usually considered to be a stat that tells you more about the quality of a team than their win record, was tied for second in the AL and sixth in MLB. They had the misfortune of playing the one team in the AL with a better run differential than them in the ALDS. Pythagorean Record, per Baseball-Reference and also based on run differential, has the Royals as quite unlucky with five fewer wins than it would have expected, tied for the second-worst luck of any team in MLB. The Pythagorean record of 91-71 is second-best in the AL and sixth-best in MLB. Baseball-Reference’s Simple Rating System (SRS) stat, which takes into account the strength of opponents as well as run differential, again has them tied for second in the AL but tied for eighth in MLB.

A 0-WAR team would be expected to win about 52 games. The Royals won 86. If we add up the FanGraphs WAR contributions of every player who appeared for the Royals this year, we get 20 WAR from the hitters and 20.2 from the pitchers, for a total of 40.4 WAR That would have meant 92 wins. Using Baseball-Reference’s version, you get 20.3 and 21 WAR, which would have resulted in 93 wins. One-run games are another indicator of good or bad luck, as they can often be something of a coin flip. The Royals were 17-21 in such games this year.

So while they were a bit lucky in terms of health, they were fairly unlucky in terms of their actual production leading to wins. As I wrote in the article about the injuries, the Royals have a long-term goal to add much more depth to this team if they want to become consistent contenders, but they weren’t a fluke in the sense that they won a bunch of games that they shouldn’t have. Since depth largely comes from AAA players who can step up in at least short bursts, the Royals probably still won’t have much of that next year (barring some trades, which will be a subject for another day) but they’ve at least got a core to work with.

State of the roster

Speaking of the core, the roster situation immediately changes as the team enters the offseason. Here’s a list of the players they are losing to free agency:

• Michael Lorenzen
• Will Smith
• Tommy Pham
• Garrett Hampson
• Tommy Pham
• Yuli Gurriel
• Robbie Grossman
• Paul DeJong

Additionally, Adam Frazier has a mutual option that the Royals will likely decline. Michael Wacha, Chris Stratton, and Hunter Renfroe all have player options. Wacha may decline his*, but Renfroe and Stratton will almost certainly pick theirs up. That will add at least nine open spots to their 40-man roster. Josh Taylor and Kyle Wright will take two of those spots, leaving the Royals plenty of room to make moves.

*Wacha’s is an interesting case that probably deserves a whole article to itself. The summary, however, is that the Royals can probably keep him if they want to and I think they should.

The total fWAR of the departing players is 0.2, with positive contributions from Lorenzen, Hampson, and DeJong. None of those players were key contributors and while it might make sense to try to bring back those last three for the right price, the Royals should also be able to move on from them without losing any sleep.

So, looking at who remains, the Royals have most of a starting rotation, the back end of a bullpen (don’t forget Hunter Harvey should be back next year, as well), and a few guys to build a lineup around. Here are the position players who I think should have starting spots guaranteed as we head into the offseason, in order of safety.

• Bobby Witt Jr.
• Salvador Perez
• Vinnie Pasquantino
• Kyle Isbel
• Michael Massey

Everybody else suffered severe consistency issues. Massey’s injury history suggests you might want a platoon partner for him, but that might be Maikel Garcia, who may not be a starting-caliber infielder but brings enough speed and defense to be an excellent utility guy. Still, that leaves four spots in your lineup.

And here’s the honest truth: if the Royals want to make a real run at the division and get deeper into the playoffs next year, their top priority needs to be at least two bats. One on-base guy to lead off for the team, and one thumper for the middle of the order. If they can fill the remaining spots in the order with guys who bring speed and/or good gloves, that can work. We can (and will) go over exactly who those guys could/should be later, but that’s the big takeaway. For the team to be less unlucky next year, they need a more consistent offense. There are no internal options that are ready to make that happen, so they’ll have to find them externally.

Obviously, more pitching depth - especially the kind of swing depth someone like Lorenzen offers - is necessary, too, but the Royals should be prepared to spend the vast majority of whatever free agent budget they have on hitters. And if they’re serious about it, they probably need to spend at least as much in yearly salary as they did for Lugo and Wacha. Will John Sherman be able to stomach adding $30 million or more in salary on two hitters, not to mention what they’ll need to fill out the bench and the weak side of the bullpen? Only time will tell.