Royals Sign Starling Marte To One-Year Deal

After 14 seasons in the majors, Starling Marte has signed with the Royals on a one-year contract for $2 million. The 37-year-old Marte brings a proven bat to an outfield that should look at least a little bit different than it has in recent years. Between one-year deals for Marte and Lane Thomas and trades for Isaac Collins and Kameron Misner, Kansas City has now added more than an entire outfield to its roster, even though the team has two returning incumbents in Kyle Isbel and Jac Caglianone.

Marte’s career is maybe too easy to overlook; after being a core member of three Pirates playoff teams during his first three full seasons, both he and his team faded into obscurity until he was traded three times between the start of 2020 and the end of July 2021. Then, for the past four years, he was a role player on a star-studded Mets roster. For that reason, let’s make sure we appreciate just how great he’s been. He has a career wRC+ of 115, 361 stolen bases, and 35.9 WAR to his name. He’s had eight different seasons of at least 3.0 WAR and earned a couple of Gold Gloves, a couple of All-Star nods, and even an MVP vote. You might be surprised to learn that JAWS ranks him 46th among left fielders. He’s not in Hall of Fame territory, but he’s a lot closer than you might think.

From 2021 to 2022, in his age-32 and -33 seasons, Marte ran a 133 wRC+ with great baserunning numbers. His 8.7 WAR made him a top-30 position player in the game, but injuries were starting to pile up. In the past five seasons, he’s injured his head, shoulder, lat, ribs, finger, quad, and knee, dealt with migraines, and needed surgery on both groins. He hasn’t reached 100 games played since 2022, and he was almost exclusively a DH in 2025. He put up a wRC+ of 103 wRC+ in 2024 and 112 in 2025, but DRC+ is a bit more skeptical, grading him between 88 and 94 in each of the last three seasons.

While Marte’s average exit velocity dropped in 2025, his hard-hit rate was above his career average, and he also put up the best 90th-percentile exit velocity of his entire career. Doing so while clearly hampered by injuries is a feat in itself, and if Marte is healthy in Kansas City, he may well be capable of more. Obviously, it’s pretty unlikely that Marte suddenly gets and stays healthy at 37. The Royals are making a low-risk gamble for upside here. Presumably, they liked what they saw in Marte’s medicals, and they hope they can get the best he has to offer, which may well look something like the 112 wRC+ he put up last year.

The addition of Thomas is intended to raise the team’s floor in the outfield. He’s coming off a disastrous 2025 season in which injuries limited him to just 39 games, and he put up a dismal 48 wRC+. Thomas’ outfield defense has graded out poorly for a while now, and at his best, he runs a batting line right around the league average. Still, he’s only 30, and until his abortive 2025 season, he’d never had a wRC+ below 98 in a full season. He’s a safe bet to put up a bit over 1.0 WAR, and should he bounce back in a bigger way, he could be an above-average contributor. More importantly, Thomas possesses serious platoon splits, with a career wRC+ of 135 wRC+ against lefties and 84 against righties. He seems like a natural platoon partner for the lefty-hitting Isbel in center.

Collins is the only addition who will jump into the lineup as an everyday player. The switch-hitter just put up 2.6 WAR in a breakout rookie campaign that earned him fourth place in the NL Rookie of the Year voting. He’ll presumably man left field, with the Isbel-Thomas platoon in center, and Caglianone returning in right field. Caglianone is raking and putting up jaw-dropping exit velocities during spring training, and our projections forecast him for a wRC+ around 110 despite his brutal debut campaign in 2025. Marte can platoon at DH and serve as outfield depth. For what it’s worth, Thomas and Misner are off to hot starts this spring, too. Unfortunately, the projections still don’t think the Royals have a complete outfield.

In 2025, the Royals got a shocking -1.1 WAR from their outfield. They were the only team in baseball below zero. This is not exactly a new development either. From 2019 to 2025, the Royals have gotten a combined 13.5 WAR from their outfield. The only teams that have been worse are – say it with me now – the White Sox and the Rockies.

If your team’s outfield as a whole had just put up negative value, you might also be inclined to bring in a bunch of new players. The thing is, even with all the additions, and with Caglianone projected to be 3.0 WAR better than he was last year (the gory math here is a Depth Charts prediction of 1.4 WAR minus his actual -1.6 from 2025), the numbers still don’t add up. Put it all together, and our Depth Charts expect the Royals to get 4.7 WAR from their outfield. That’s a whopping 5.8 WAR better than it was in 2025 – the fifth-biggest projected improvement of any outfield in baseball – but it’s still the fifth-worst projection in the game.

It all makes sense. Caglianone batted .157 in his debut and played bad defense. Isbel is a great defender, but he doesn’t hit. Thomas is (probably) still a decent hitter, but his defense and baserunning are no longer helping him out. Collins was a surprise last year, and the projections see him as something like a one-win player. The projections don’t love Marte either, both because his production has declined and because he’s old enough to remember the lyrics of “Colors of the Wind.”

Still, you can see what the Royals are doing here. Caglianone is young and exciting, and despite the ugly numbers, he ran a .321 xwOBA last year, miles above his .239 wOBA. If he learns some plate discipline and breaks out, he’ll break out in a big way, and his ugly outfield defense is likely to improve regardless. If Collins can play at something approaching his 2025 level, if Thomas can raise the meager offensive bar in center, if Marte can chip in some above-average hitting, this outfield could be good. Like, actually good. None of this is guaranteed. Some of it is unlikely. But it’s possible, and it creates a lot more margin for error than the Kansas City outfield has had in a long time.