Royals Authority

You’ve surely heard by now, the Royals and Alex Gordon have agreed to a four-year contract, valued at around $72 million.

Yes.

It was a drama played out longer than any sane Royals fan would have hoped for, but in the end, the only thing that really matters is that Gordon will remain in Kansas City for the foreseeable future.

The key takeaway from this is the Royals will have their core together for another two years. This is great news. Nothing is certain, but they are in a great place to stay in the mix for the upcoming season and 2017 as well. Remember, after 2017 Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Lorenzo Cain and Alcides Escobar will be eligible for free agency. There’s a tendency among the sabermetrically inclined to dismiss the idea of competitive windows, but with limited reinforcements coming from the minor league pipeline, this feels very much like the Royals have one wide open. That’s one reason why this Gordon deal is so important to the Royals. It maintains there competitiveness at an optimal time.

It’s worth noting that Gordon now becomes the highest paid player in franchise history in terms of total dollars on a contract and average annual value. Despite all the protestations we heard at the opening of the Hot Stove season the Royals would maintain a payroll close to their 2015 level, if they wish to remain competitive, they have to keep spending. It’s just simple economics. The cost of wins increases each season. Teams serious about competing make the appropriate adjustments. The Royals have done this going back to 2012 and The Wade Davis Trade.

As of this writing, the dollar breakdown isn’t known for certain. There are rumblings the contract is backloaded, which gives the team freedom to pursue another arm for the rotation. Again, with uncertainty surrounding the starting pitching, the flexibility to add another candidate for the rotation is massive for this team. It allows them to continue to build around the core.

Without knowing the actual dollar amount for the 2016 season, I still feel comfortable currently projecting a payroll between $120 and $125 million. That’s pretty close to the number I felt it should be when we started the offseason. Remember, that’s a rough estimate as we don’t know the details on the Gordon contract, nor do we know how the arbitration cases of Cain, Moustakas, Danny Duffy and others will conclude. We do know the Royals have seven players eligible and estimates project them to collect around $21 million. Cot’s Contracts has the Royals on the books for $85 million right now, so if you project $15 million for Gordon in 2016, the math is pretty straightforward. Either way, the Royals have outspent their previous Opening Day payroll record and still seem to have some room to maneuver.

Following back to back AL pennants and a World Championship, Dayton Moore has given this generation of Royals fans the final piece - an icon. As fans, we love this team and we desperately want the players to love us back. I cannot tell you how cool it was at the parade to see the Royals wearing t-shirts emblazoned with “Thank You, Kansas City.” Are you kidding? No. Thank you!

In the glory years of the early days of the franchise, the Royals had a pair of icons. George Brett and Frank White won titles and played their whole careers in Kansas City. They created a legacy that remains to this day. It I s something I’m certain the younger generation tired of hearing about, but there presence has been vitally important to the team and the city.

Now, we have a new generation that has been privileged to celebrate winning a title. We just needed to find an icon to make it complete. To give this team it’s forever identity. To build a legacy. Today, Alex Gordon is truly Forever Royal.

What a great day to be a Royals fan. Again.

Happy Hall of Fame day. Over on my personal blog, I wrote about why I care about the Hall and offer a half-hearted solution to the problem there seems to be with the ballots. The post was published over the weekend, so I wasn’t able to reference the ballots that have been released in the last couple of days.

That’s probably a good thing, because they’ve been batshit crazy.

The controversy is never going away, and that’s too bad. But I still enjoy a good (civil) Hall of Fame debate. I figured since the Royals have shut down operations, why not offer my picks if I was fortunate enough to have a ballot. It’s navel gazing, but what the hell else is there to discuss?

Jeff Bagwell

I’ve heard a lot over the last couple days where some writers like to ask something along the lines of, “When I saw this guy, did I think to myself, there goes a Hall of Famer?” It makes me think of Bagwell, because I’m pretty certain I never thought of him as a Hall of Famer when he was putting up monster numbers with the Astros. But what the hell does that matter? By the end of his career he had a .948 OPS, a 149 OPS+, close to a 1:1 strikeout to walk ratio and finished with 449 home runs. Bagwell snuck up on you. Those are Hall of Fame numbers.

Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens

These two are a pair. They both used PEDs and they are both among the best to ever play the game. I’ve never gotten too wrapped up in the PED debate mainly because I figure a large percentage of players have done something meant to enhance performance at some point. Not painting with a broad brush because I don’t know and I don’t really care. It’s an era of the game that the commissioner’s office and the team’s allowed. Some players took advantage. The end.

Ken Griffey, Jr.

Duh.

Billy Wagner

I get the backlash against closers. Seriously. I have a personalized pitchfork. However, like the DH, the closer role is very much a part of the game today. Wagner was one of the best. He has an 11.9 SO/9 and a 187 ERA+. While numbers are great when evaluating closers, one thing that I would look at is consistency. From the time he entered the league in 1996 until he retired, save for 2000, Wagner was among the top of the game.

Mike Piazza

I heard Marty Noble (a writer from New York who cast a ballot with only Griffey, Jr. And Jeff Kent checked) give an interview where he said he was “pretty sure” Piazza did PEDs given he had a ton of hair on his back and had mood swings. Noble just described nearly every blogger I’ve ever met. Piazza’s defense gets a bad rap, but he was adequate behind the plate, but his arm was below average. The bat played, though.

Edgar Martinez

The feeling here is the Hall is a reflection of the game and it’s players. That means the DH is a legit position. Martinez was so good for so long with the bad, position is rendered irrelevant. He walked more than he whiffed, posted a 147 OPS+ and finished with .312/.418/.515. Even when you factor in his era, that’s damn impressive.

Mike Mussina
Curt Schilling

This duo strikes me as another pair where if you vote for one, you are obligated to cast a vote for the other. Schilling finished with a 3.46 ERA and 127 ERA+. Mussina had a 3.68 ERA and 123 ERA+. In their respective careers, Schilling had more notable postseason success, which while isn’t a requirement for my pseudo Hall vote, it’s certainly worth some bonus points. Mussina was simply a paragon of consistency and an exceptional defender.

Tim Raines

I’ve been on the Raines bandwagon for quite some time. He presents an interesting litmus test for voters. He was amazing from his rookie season in ’81 until around ’87. He was really good in ’88 and ’89, but the decline had begun. By the time the ’90’s rolled around, he still had a couple of solid seasons but was past his prime. So do you go for the guy who was consistently great for the majority of his career? Or do you go for the guy who was all-world for the five to seven seasons that constituted his prime? For me, I’ll go for the all-world guy with the outstanding peak. That was Raines.

So you’ve read this far and are thinking, if he votes for Wagner, why not Hoffman? I would, but I’m at the 10 vote limit. Hoffman would get my vote next year for sure. Saves don’t matter to me since they are the ultimate gimmick stat, but like Wagner, he was damn consistent. I just liked Wagner’s ERA and strikeout totals enough to give him the edge. Wagner also had a better walk rate.

Larry Walker is another player I considered. Same for Alan Trammell. It’s a stacked ballot. It’s just too bad that there’s a voting limit.

As for former Royals, this ballot had three: Mike Sweeney, Mark Grudzielanek, and Jason Kendall. None of those guys will get the required five percent to remain on future ballots. I know this is a Royals blog and we are contractually obligated to mock friend of The Cartoonist, Kendall, but the guy deserves more than just a glance and a “no” vote. He was at the end of the line when he arrived in Kansas City, but he finished with a .366 on base percentage. Based on Jay Jaffe’s JAWS system, he ranks 18th among catchers, just behind Ernie Lombardi. I’m not saying he’s a Hall of Famer, and I can’t imagine he would get a vote on a ballot with as many deserving candidates, simply he’s someone who deserves a little more attention than he’s going to get.

Now, prediction time. I predict that Griffey will get in with around 98 percent of the vote. Maybe 99 percent. It won’t be unanimous. Piazza gets in with around 80 percent of the vote. Bagwell and Raines fall just short, I’m thinking somewhere between 70 and the 75 percent threshold needed for induction. If they don’t get in this year, they’ll make it on the next ballot.

In an ideal world, we would have at least four inducted to clear the logjam and perhaps get some consideration for other deserving candidates. Maybe next year.