No team has more conspicuously made us look silly than the Royals. Not in the last few years, for all the reasons you already know. Not many things more visible than consecutive trips to the World Series, and when you look at what the Royals did against what the Royals were expected to do, statistically, it’s natural to wonder what’s up. It’s normal to find comments like this one, left earlier today:

Dave, if the Royals once again reach the post season, or even the world series, is it time to re-calibrate the predictive model? In other words weight some of the production measures differently? 4 years in a row isn’t luck.

For some, “projection” is a dirty word, and for others there’s just a certain skepticism. The Royals are the “face” of this feeling, if that makes any sense, because after all, they’re the defending champs, and they were projected to not be very good. There’s absolutely no question the Royals have exceeded statistical expectations the last few years. What might surprise you is another team has done that even more.

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You could say the market has agreed upon a price for mid-level innings-eaters around 30 years of age. The Kansas City Royals reportedly agreed on Saturday morning to sign right-handed starter Ian Kennedy to a five-year deal worth $70 million.

It’s a big contract, a surprising contract, but one that falls right in line with similar deals inked by Mike Leake (5/80), Wei-Yin Chen (5/80) and Jeff Samardzija (5/90). Looking back at our crowdsourced contract estimates, it’s clear that nobody expected this class of durable, mid-rotation starters to get paid the way they did:

It’s not the biggest “overpay,” relative to the what the crowd expected, but it’s close. Samardzija, Leake, Chen, and now Kennedy all received an extra year or two, and an extra few million dollars per year more than the crowd expected, adding up to each starter receiving between $20 and $30 million more than what folks thought.

But Kennedy’s contract leads the way, in terms of surprise. Thought was, Kennedy would get something like three years and $36 million. He got an extra two years, opposed to the extra one that the rest of the group received, and a larger AAV. When the crowdsourcing took place, an extra question was included, asking the crowd whether it thought Kennedy would accept the qualifying offer, a one-year deal worth just over $15 million. Nearly 40% of the crowd expected Kennedy to take the qualifying offer, more than double the number of people who thought Leake or Chen might accept. If Kennedy rejected the qualifying offer, there was fear among many that no team would be willing to concede a draft pick to sign Kennedy, even at the terms of 3/36.

Reason being, Kennedy simply hasn’t been as good as his peers. Last season, he allowed the highest OPS among any qualified starter, and whether you go back more years, or look toward the future, it’s tough to find any way to include Kennedy in the same class as Samardzija, Leake or Chen:

Last year, Kennedy was a replacement-level pitcher. In 2013, Kennedy was a replacement-level pitcher. He should be expected to do better than that, but odds are that Kennedy’s true-talent level lies a bit above a +1 WAR starter, with the most optimistic of projections putting him around +2 WAR, in the present. The contract runs for five years. Even if you start with Steamer’s more optimistic 2.2 WAR projections, it’s hard to justify, in a vacuum, Kennedy being worth $70 million:

The estimate comes in $20 million shy of the actual contract, and that’s not including the loss of a late first-round draft pick, likely valued somewhere around $10 million, and the fact that there’s an opt-out for Kennedy after two years, which shifts the needle even more towards Kennedy’s side. If he’s good, he’s gone after two years, and if he’s bad, the Royals are saddled with his salary for the duration.

Of course, moves are to be evaluated in context, and each team’s situation is unique, as well as each player’s situation. There’s more to every deal than the dollars and years.

For instance, maybe the Royals just aren’t too concerned about the loss of the 24th overall pick in the draft? The window of contention might not be open for too much longer with this roster. Lorenzo Cain, Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Wade Davis, Alcides Escobar, Edinson Volquez and more will all be free agents by 2018, the same year in which Kennedy’s opt-out resides, and so perhaps they just care more about maximizing their chances of winning again during that two-year window, rather than maybe winning down the road. It’s a reasonable thought to have, and you’ve got to applaud the World Series champs, a team that’s always been ran on the tightest of budgets under owner David Glass, for opening up the pocketbook in an effort to continue Going For It. Kansas City’s Opening Day payroll is going to be something like $130 million dollars, up $20 million from last year and up $100 million from five years ago.

At the same time, if Kennedy is bad, as he’s been in two of the most recent three seasons, then Kansas City might have a replacement-level albatross on their hands in the very near future, and it’s the kind of move that might keep the Royals from retaining one of their star players in a couple years, when the franchise isn’t coming off the high of a World Series victory and swimming in extra postseason revenue.

The Royals needed a pitcher. They needed a pitcher who was likely to give them plenty of innings. Banking on the health of Kris Medlen, Danny Duffy and, to an extent, Yordano Ventura, is a frightening proposition, and the Royals wanted to mix in some certainty. In terms of innings, Kennedy will give them that certainty, but at one point due the value of a pitcher’s ceiling, and his floor, outweigh his durability?

Kennedy has thrown plenty of innings lately, but most of them haven’t been good innings. The big problem, for Kennedy, has been the fly balls. He doesn’t induce any grounders, and way too many of the flies have been leaving the park. True, Kaufman Stadium has a massive outfield that suppresses homers, and true, Kansas City has an incredible outfield defense that turns would-be fly ball hits into outs. But Kennedy recently pitched his home games in PETCO Park, a stadium just as pitcher-friendly as Kaufman, against teams that batted with a pitcher in their lineup, and even the greatest outfield defense in the world can’t turn fly balls that land halfway up the bleachers into outs.

Jeff recenty ran through all the pros and cons of Kennedy as a pitcher, and while it’s hard to be overly pessimistic, it’s equally difficult to come away feeling encouraged, and that was before we knew the terms of the deal. On the surface, it seems like an overpay. Kennedy isn’t Samardzija, or Leake, or Chen, and yet he gone Samardzija/Leake/Chen money. But the Royals needed a pitcher, and Kennedy’s a pitcher, and the Royals are better today than they were yesterday. Is the rotation good enough to contend again? Only time will tell, and maybe Dave Eiland can work his magic again, reuniting with Kennedy from their days with the Yankees. It sure looks like an overpay, but maybe that isn’t the point. We always want to see teams boost up their payroll after a World Series run, and the Royals have done just that. They’ve got another two years until things could get ugly again, and doing everything they can to keep this run going. It’s hard not to like the decision to commit to that, and to spend some money. It’s just a little harder to like where the money went.

Phase II of the 2015-16 free agent and trade markets has begun, with Alex Gordon re-upping with the Royals, and the rumor mill is again beginning to churn after a brief holiday-related respite. The elite and upper-middle-class arms have already secured their positions for 2016 and beyond, but some of the other middle class arms remain on the market.

The three free agent pitchers who are subject to draft pick compensation but are still likely to sign long-term deals are lefty Wei-Yin Chen and righties Yovani Gallardo and Ian Kennedy. At this stage in the game, it is likely that all three will need to settle for terms below consensus projections. Earlier this week, we took a look at Chen’s situation; today, we’ll dig a little bit deeper into Yovani Gallardo’s true value.

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Two weeks. Two weeks is all it took. Shortly before Christmas, it looked like there was almost no chance Alex Gordon would return to Kansas City. He had too big of a market, and the Royals were sticking with too small of an offer. The Royals themselves were thinking about alternatives, more affordable replacement outfielders, but they made sure to stay in touch. Gordon remained the top priority, and the Royals were willing to be patient. Now it’s safe to say it worked out for all parties involved.

According to sources, Alex Gordon and the #Royals have agreed to a mult-year deal, pending physical. Announcement likely today

— Jeffrey Flanagan (@FlannyMLB) January 6, 2016

The terms: four years, reportedly, worth $72 million. There’s no opt-out clause, and the contract is said to be somewhat backloaded, to give the current Royals a bit of additional flexibility. Now that we’ve gotten here, this appears to be a tremendous deal for the team. And I suspect Alex Gordon knows that. I also suspect he doesn’t care, because this one’s about more than just money.

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Yesterday, I ran an exercise on this site that required some audience participation. The premise was simple enough: the Royals, for the third consecutive year, haven’t looked like an elite team based on the third-party projection systems we host here on the site. The Royals, of course, have been an elite team, despite what the projections say, so there’s been some understandable hesitation in taking those projections at face value.

I simply asked everyone to take a look at each individual player projection, and either take the over, the under, or push. The idea is that, through crowdsourcing, we might be able to spot the individual places where the community thinks the projections are missing on guys, and then manually adjust the team projection from there.

And now for the seemingly ever-necessary reminder: The projections are not meant to be taken as gospel. They’re to be used as a guide. Anyone who reasonably understands what we do here on FanGraphs should get that, by now. We — we being the authors of FanGraphs — have no say in the projections. Just because the numbers say one thing doesn’t mean that every author has to agree. I can’t change the fact that the projections say what they do. I’m just here to report, and analyze, and think, and discuss.

The numbers are calling the current Royals roster a 78-win roster. That seems sort of silly. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find too many folks who’d think that sounds right. I’d certainly take the over, at least. Let’s see what the crowdsourcing results say. You should be able to click this image to view a larger version:

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Back in November, the Kansas City Royals were crowned champions of the baseball world, and rightfully so; they won all the necessary games! The Royals are the champions, and they’ll continue to be the champions until a new team is crowned champions in the upcoming October. Could be that the new champions are just a different Royals team, but that seems unlikely. Mostly, it seems unlikely because it’s really hard to repeat World Series titles. That hasn’t happened in 15 years. But also, it seems unlikely for another reason.

See, we’ve got player and team projections here on the site, and when looking toward the future, it’s usually better to rely on the projections than to rely on whatever subjective beliefs we can quickly work up in our own heads. The projections, by and large, are pretty darn good, and those pretty darn good projections thinks the Royals roster, as currently constructed, is the opposite of pretty darn good. Right now, at this very second, the Royals, the world champion Royals, are being given MLB’s sixth-worst team projection, a little worse than the Twins and Orioles and a little better than the Padres and the Rockies.

I know, I know. The projections didn’t much like the Royals in 2014, either, and they were one game away from being the champions. The projections didn’t much like the Royals in 2015, either, and now they are the champions. The projections have a two-year history of whiffing on the Royals, and plenty of Kansas City fans have scoffed at the forecasted 2016 numbers listed here on this site.

But this Royals roster, at this very second, is quite a bit different than the roster that won the World Series. The roster that won the World Series had a Johnny Cueto in the rotation, but this one doesn’t. The roster that won the World Series had an Alex Gordon and a Ben Zobrist in the lineup and the field, but this one doesn’t. The roster that won the World Series had a right fielder with more than 86 career games played, but this one doesn’t. The Royals have lost a lot — Cueto, Gordon and Zobrist were worth about nine wins last year (not all to the Royals, of course) — yet they’ve gained very little.

Of course, they’re going to gain some, but they’re not getting Cueto or Zobrist back, and it sure doesn’t look like they’re getting Gordon back. Looks like Omar Infante might again be the Opening Day second baseman, and the best starting pitcher they could hope to land looks like Scott Kazmir right now. Plenty of big-name outfielders are still out there, but the Royals don’t figure to be players for them. More than likely, the Royals pick up a veteran, mid-tier outfielder for one corner, and run a platoon in the other.

While the Royals seem likely to add some projected wins through the end of the offseason, it doesn’t figure to be many. Even if they were to pick up, say, five projected wins through the rest of their offseason moves, a figure that feels high, their team projection would still fall below league average, pitting them between the Rangers and the White Sox.

Point is: no matter what happens, the 2016 Royals aren’t going to project well, by the numbers we currently have, and that’s fascinating. More likely than not, the World Champions will project as something like a .500 team, at best, on Opening Day, and people aren’t sure how to feel about that, especially given the last couple years. Rightfully so. I’m not sure how to feel about it either, which brings us to the second half of this post.

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You have a choice. I’ll give you $100 right now, or you can let me flip a coin. If it lands on heads, I’ll give you $250. But if it lands on tails, I’ll give you $20. I’m using a fair coin, so the expected value of flipping the coin is $135 based on the 50/50 odds it lands on heads or tails. If you like risk or are a risk-neutral person, it’s an easy decision to take your chances with the coin because the odds are strongly in your favor. If you’re a risk-averse person, however, you’re more likely to take the sure thing because $135 isn’t a whole lot more than $100, and $100 is a whole lot more than $20.

Let’s add another wrinkle. It’s the same choice, but if you choose the coin flip, you have to wait a month. The dollar amounts are the same, but now there’s a time component. To get the value of the coin flip, you need to apply a discount factor to the $135. For some people, that discount factor is pretty close to one, but it might be much lower if you’re strapped for cash and the $100 would dramatically improve your life in the present.

Major league players face a much higher stakes version of this decision when their club comes to them with a contract extension. Do they take a sure thing now, or do they wait and gamble on themselves? While we’re focusing a lot on the 2015-2016 free-agent class this month, there are eight players who could have been free agents for the first time this year but instead chose to cash out early by signing extensions. Did they make the right decision?

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If you’d made your way over to the “relief pitchers” tab of our team depth charts section lately, there’s something peculiar that may have caught your eye. It didn’t seem to get past Twitter user Brad Shapiro, operating under the moniker @Big_Hebrew:

@BtBScore HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, that’s hilarious. Best bullpen in baseball last 2 season means nothing, got it

— Brad Shapiro (@Big_Hebrew) December 6, 2015

To whom is Brad referring? A quick perusal of Brad’s Twitter profile reveals a Royals “Took the Crown” avatar, a “Royalty” header, and tweets like “CRYING LIKE A BABY RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” posted minutes after the Royals won the World Series. Using these context clues, I’ve drawn the conclusion that Brad is a Royals fan, and that Brad’s tweet was in reference to the Royals bullpen being ranked 25th by our projected depth charts.

Now, I understand that sounds a little silly, given what you know about the Royals bullpen. But here’s the thing about the projections that doesn’t need repeating but probably needs repeating: the projections aren’t perfect, and under certain unique circumstances, they’re going to miss. Also: bullpens, in particular, are hard to project, because relievers are notoriously volatile.

So when you look at Wade Davis‘ Steamer projection for 2015 — the 2.74 ERA, the 3.04 FIP, the 1.4 WAR that’s the same as or lower than Brett Cecil‘s and Will Smith’s — you have to understand that these projections come with error bars. You have to understand that Wade Davis used to be a starter, a bad starter, and that the projection systems can’t make individual player exceptions. And you have to understand that the difference between 25th place and sixth place on the reliever depth chart projections is 1.0 WAR, and that if you just project Wade Davis as a 2.4 WAR reliever — still probably low — rather than a 1.4 WAR reliever, the Royals are right back near the top where they belong.

But about that Royals bullpen, which has, in fact, probably been the best in baseball the last two seasons (h/t Brad). It doesn’t have Greg Holland anymore, lost for the season to Tommy John surgery, and Holland’s been a key part those last two years. It doesn’t have Ryan Madson anymore, signed by the A’s, and Madson was a key part last year. It doesn’t have Franklin Morales anymore, currently a free agent, and Morales was a key part last year.

Even with incumbents Davis and Kelvin Herrera, the Royals bullpen, when Brad composed his tweet, looked a little vulnerable. The next-best option was Luke Hochevar, and while he’s a nice comeback story, his ERA and FIP were both near or at 4.00 last season, he’s now 32 years old, and remember that thing about relievers being notoriously volatile? No telling whether Hochevar returns to being anything more than a middle relief option at this point in his career. Teams could do worse than having Luke Hochevar throw high-leverage innings for them, but the Royals are World Champions with high expectations who have built this sort of bullpen model, and that model doesn’t include Luke Hochevar throwing high-leverage innings.

What it does include, though — and boy have I done some kind of job burying the lede here — is Joakim Soria throwing high leverage innings, because the Royals signed the 31-year-old reliever to a three-year, $25 million contract with a fourth-year mutual option.

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After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Kansas City Royals. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta.

Batters
If the depth chart below seems to depict a more dismal situation than one might expect from a club that’s appeared in each of the last two World Series, note that it excludes at least one player (Alex Gordon) who’s been instrumental to the team’s recent success and another (Ben Zobrist) who benefited the 2015 edition of the club after arriving at the July trade deadline.

It’s not surprising, in light of Gordon and Zobrist’s respective departures, that corner outfield and second base are the team’s two weakest positions according to ZiPS. One assumes that the front office regards these as priorities for the offseason.

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Alex Gordon has been a really good, perhaps slightly underrated, player over the last five seasons for the Kansas City Royals. An untimely injury limited his role during this most recent regular season, but he was a big part of the club’s playoff runs each of the past two seasons and played a major role in Kansas City’s first World Series title in 30 years. Thanks to a team-friendly contract extension after his breakout 2011 season, the Royals have paid him just $37.5 million over the last four years, including two potential years of free agency. Although Gordon, heading into his age-32 season, is not reaching free agency at an ideal age, given his production he is still likely to receive a deal totaling around $100 million. The question for the Royals and the rest of the league is, will he be worth that kind of money into his mid-30s?

Gordon has hardly gone unnoticed as one of the best, if not the best, player on the two-time American League champion and reigning World Series titleholder. However, due to the way he’s produced his value — including above-average defense in an outfield corner — it’s possible that Gordon is slightly underrated heading into free agency. Over the last five seasons, he has been one of the very best players in baseball, as evidenced by the WAR leader chart below.

The next five players on that list are Josh Donaldson, Dustin Pedroia, Jason Heyward, Evan Longoria, and Giancarlo Stanton. Gordon has put up a well-above average 123 wRC+ during that time after struggling from 2007 to 2010 as he adjusted to major league pitching following just one full season in the minors. Alex Gordon and Jason Heyward’s name have come up together this offseason as similar players for good reason.

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