Word broke late Friday afternoon that the Royals and 28-year-old left fielder Alex Gordon reached a contract extension. The skinny on the contract is that it’s a four-year deal worth $37.5 million, with a player option for 2016 that can bring the total value to $50 million even. The contract buys out two years of team control and an additional two of free agency, and breaks down to $6/$9/$10/$12.5, and negates the $4.775 midpoint, arbitration-avoiding deal the two parties agreed to in early February. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the methodology behind the ratings here. Remember that the grading scale is 20-80, with 50 representing league average.

2012 Organizational Rankings

#30 – Baltimore
#29 – Houston
#28 – Oakland
#27 – Pittsburgh
#26 – San Diego
#25 – Minnesota
#24 – Chicago White Sox
#23 – Seattle

Kansas City’s 2011 Ranking: 25th

2012 Outlook: 45 (20th)

For the first time in a while, the Royals’ hitting pre-season hitting projects to be pretty good. The offense was quietly above average in 2011 (102 wRC+), and while regression is to be expected from player like Alex Gordon and Jeff Francoeur, one can also expect improvement from exciting young players like Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas.

The loss of Salvador Perez for a large chunk of the season will probably hurt defensively as well as offensively, but if Hosmer can start living up to his reputation in the field to go along with the strong defensive work expected from Alcides Escobar and Lorenzo Cain, the fielding should also good on balance.

So is Kansas City ready to take a shot at Detroit in 2012?

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Since the 2011 season ended and the offseason began, people largely assumed that Johnny Giavotella would break camp as the starting second baseman for the Kansas City Royals. He mashed Triple-A last year to the tune of .338/.390/.481 and was named player of the year in the Royals’ minor league system. Furthermore, the organization benched starter Chris Getz late last year in favor of Giavotella in hopes of grooming the 24-year-old for extensive big league action in 2012.

Despite those facts, the Royals optioned Giavotella to Triple-A Omaha yesterday and will begin the season with some combination of Chris Getz and Yuniesky Betancourt at second base.

You read that correctly. On Sunday afternoon, the Kansas City Royals actively chose a pair of players who both compiled an identical wOBA of .278 last season (average wOBA for an American League second baseman was .312) to split time at second base over a young player who posted a .390 and .381 wOBA in his past two minor league stops, respectively.

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On the heels of news that Joakim Soria will need Tommy John surgery, the Royals’ bullpen is a state of flux. Luckily, unlike most bullpens around the majors, the Royals have excellent options to fill the role. Jonathan Broxton may be the frontrunner for the job, given his history as a stud with the Dodgers. But the closer of the future is already in the Royals’ bullpen, and even if he doesn’t become the closer of the present, Greg Holland is already making hitters take notice.

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On Tuesday, the Kansas City Royals acquired Jason Bourgeois and Humberto Quintero from the Houston Astros in exchange for minor league reliever Kevin Chapman and a player to be named later (whom Jeff Luhnow told Brian McTaggart will be a key component of the deal). The acquisition of Quintero serves a clear purpose for the Royals, who are short on catching depth with Salvador Perez out up to three months with a knee injury. Royalty and the bourgeoisie have been a fantastic fit throughout history; does this continue with Jason Bourgeois and the Royals?

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Royals closer Joakim Soria left a spring training game on Sunday with a sore right elbow, a frustrating development for a player looking to rebound from a sub-par 2012. As of this writing, there is no word on whether the issue will cause Soria to miss any time to start the season. If Soria does miss time, it may not have that much of an impact on Kansas City because the team has a deep bullpen. However, this raises a further question regarding whether Soria should have been traded a year or two ago to maximize the return.

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You can try to dispense of these notes on the Alcides Escobar extension, but you won’t be able to: as the title of this post suggests, they’re indispensable.

Regarding Alcides Escobar, The Extension He Signed
The 25-year-old shortstop Escobar and the Royals agreed Thursday to a four-year, $10.5 million extension that includes a pair of club options that could bring the overall value of the contract to $21.75 million. Per the Associated Press, “Escobar will make $1 million this season and $3 million each of the next three seasons. The options are for $5.25 million in 2016 and $6.5 million in 2017 with $500,000 buyouts each year.”

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Salvador Perez won’t be ready for Opening Day.

Less than a month after the Kansas City Royals rewarded him with a five-year, $7 million contract, Perez now has a meniscus tear — an injury serious enough that the Royals decided to send its starting catcher back to Kansas City for surgery. Now that there’s some uncertainty surrounding Perez, it’s unclear how the Royals will respond.

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With disabled list information available going back 10 years, I have decided to examine some league wide and team trends.

League Trends

To begin with, here are the league values for trips, days and average days lost to the DL over the past 10 years.

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Salvador Perez just joined a very exclusive club. By signing a five year, $7 million guaranteed contract — which includes three additional option years — with the Kansas City Royals, the 21-year-old catcher joins Evan Longoria and Matt Moore as players who have signed significant extensions before accumulating a year of major-league service time. While Longoria’s and Moore’s contracts are considered major steals for the Tampa Bay Rays, the Perez deal is a bit more uncertain. With the Royals starting their build a competitive team, they need to be sure they’re extending the right players.
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