After signing extension, Royals’ Danny Duffy opens up about his days away from baseball
On a spring day in 2010, Danny Duffy sank into a chair in a baseball office in Arizona and prepared to open up to the men in front of him. He needed to let it out. So he did.
It was March, another spring training at the Royals’ facility in Surprise, and Duffy had come to a meeting with general manager Dayton Moore and two of his assistants, Scott Sharp and J.J. Picollo. Duffy intended to tell them he was leaving baseball, that his mind needed a break from the game, that he was going home to Lompoc, Calif.
“I kind of just poured my heart out to them,” Duffy says now.
In that moment, nobody knew quite how to react. Nobody knew how long Duffy would be gone, or if he’d ever play baseball again. But Moore listened to Duffy, then a 21-year-old left-hander, and decided the decision was easy: he would offer unconditional support.
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There was little else they could do, of course. Duffy, a top prospect in the Kansas City system, had made up his mind. But Moore, Picollo and Sharp wanted to be clear. When — and if — Duffy was ready to return, there would be a spot in the Royals’ organization. He was part of the family. And they would treat him as such.
Duffy did return, of course, finding his way back to the game just a few months later. But as his baseball life continued, on a course that would take him to the big leagues and the mound at Kauffman Stadium, those months away always hung over his career. He rarely spoke about the sabbatical in public. He loathed the stigma it affixed to his performance. He was a young baseball player who needed a break, and he could never quite figure out why that mattered to outsiders so much.
“I went home,” Duffy said. “I needed to.”
Which is why this moment Tuesday afternoon on the bottom floor of Kauffman Stadium offered a window into the evolution of Duffy. He had come for a news conference to officially announce his five-year, $65 million extension with the Royals, signed on Monday afternoon and hailed around the industry as a cost-efficient victory for the organization.
Duffy wore a Royal blue suit and navy tie. He talked for close to five minutes about the contract, thanking God, his wife, Sara, owner David Glass and the team’s front office. Then came a question about the early days of his career, a journey that was threatened before it even began.
“I’ve never really spoken about it,” Duffy said.
And so he began. He talked about the meeting with Moore, Sharp and Picollo. He talked about his months at home, spent hanging out with his parents in Lompoc and decompressing. He remembered the anxious kid, searching for his identity outside of baseball. In those days, Duffy says, he was wound so tight he was often a mess in the days between starts. And he remembered how Moore and Royals officials handled the moment.
“That’s another huge reason why I wanted to stay,” Duffy said. “Because (Moore) was somebody that cared about the person and not just the player.
“I went home. I needed to. All this good stuff is happening, and if you don’t have any kind of foundation, a lot of things are going to fall off.
“I went home, hung out with my parents, got right with God. And the rest is history. I had the confidence to come back. I feel like that wouldn’t have been the same scenario in a lot of different organizations.”
Seven years later, the spring of 2010 remains a pivotal point in Duffy’s career. He’s 28 now. He will spend at least the next five seasons in Kansas City. He will earn more money than he ever dreamed as a boy in Lompoc. But in some ways, Duffy says, the spring of 2010 was when he finally realized that he wanted to be a Royal for life.
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“At the time, we just listened to Danny,” Moore said. “We made a commitment to him and his family that we were going to be here and support him.”
Duffy’s emotion defined the news conference on Tuesday, a happy occasion for a franchise attempting to return to the playoffs in 2017 before a cast of stars hits free agency. In the hours after his signing became official, Duffy said he received congratulations from former teammates Wade Davis and James Shields. He heard from current teammates on a group text chain. He was also clear: While the makeup of the Royals roster could evolve in the coming years, that reality didn’t factor much into his decision to remain in Kansas City.
“In the perfect world, the boys stay together until we’re 50,” Duffy said. “But the fact of the matter is baseball is just not that way. It’s a business, too.
“I’m sure everybody in this organization would like to keep the core group together — all the guys that we played with. It just doesn’t happen. Hopefully we can. Hopefully this sparks some kind of interest.”
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At the least, the Royals now control Duffy through 2021, possessing an emerging left-handed starter through his prime years. A year ago, Duffy began the season in the bullpen before posting a 3.51 ERA with a career-high 188 strikeouts in 179 2/3 innings, the heaviest workload of his career. He set a career high with 9.4 strikeouts per nine innings, while shaving his walk rate to a career-low 2.1 per nine. When the season begins in April, he will sit atop the Royals’ rotation alongside Ian Kennedy.
The Royals believe Duffy’s best pitching is ahead of him, and as he sat inside Kauffman Stadium on Tuesday, the left-hander concurred. Seven years ago, he says, the Royals remained supportive while he went home to find himself. Now, he said, he was ready to repay the loyalty.
“My entire adulthood I’ve been a Royal,” Duffy said. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
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Rustin Dodd: 816-234-4937, @rustindodd. Download True Blue, The Star’s free Royals app.
This story was originally published January 17, 2017 at 8:01 PM with the headline "After signing extension, Royals’ Danny Duffy opens up about his days away from baseball."