Royals’ Dayton Moore welcomes hectic days as MLB lockout ends, spring camp starts
Major League Baseball is back. The lockout has ended. Players have begun to arrive at their respective spring training sites. Transactions, which had been put on a deep freeze, have started to heat up. Camps will start any minute now, and the regular season is a little less than a month away.
It’s all happening, and it’s all happening at once.
So Kansas City Royals president of baseball operations Dayton Moore likely was a little sleep deprived when he spoke with reporters on Saturday afternoon via video conference from the club’s facility in Surprise, Arizona.
“It’s been really, really busy,” Moore said of the last few days. “Early mornings. Late nights. Which is pretty routine, as we all know, for spring training, but it’s just a different level of intensity just because of all of the discussions that opened up with the 29 other teams and certainly [with] possible free-agent signs whether it be at the major-league level, the minor-league level. It has really intensified.”
On Thursday, MLB and the Players Association reached an agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement that will govern the league for the next five years.
That ended 99 days of strife as the owners had locked out the players.
During that span, all players on their clubs’ 40-man roster — including minor-league players — were cut off from all contact with their organizations. They were prohibited from having any contact with club personnel or using their facilities.
But as of Thursday night, the floodgates opened for teams to open the doors to their players once again and to resume the business of shaping their major-league rosters for the upcoming season.
Players will continue to arrive throughout the weekend. Moore said the club expects all of its players invited to big-league camp to be in Arizona by Sunday night.
They’re expecting 61 players in camp on top of the group of minor-league players who’ve already been on site at the facility, including top prospects such as shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. and pitchers Asa Lacy and Alec Marsh.
Royals roster is largely set
Since the late fall, both Moore and general manager J.J. Picollo have said the club planned to lean heavily on their returning players and those players on the cusp of making the jump to the majors in shaping the roster.
On Saturday, Moore referred to the “importance of staying disciplined with this current group of players.”
“That doesn’t mean that we won’t look for ways to supplement our talent,” Moore added. “We will. But as you know, our roster is at 40. It’s a very young and talented roster with more players and pitchers on the horizon. So we’re going to be very disciplined with who we bring in and what we add.”
The Royals return projected starters at every position on the field except third base.
Even without an established returning starter at third base, they’ll have an infield logjam with shortstop Adalberto Mondesi presumably healthy again after having played only 35 games last season and the likely addition of Witt.
The designated hitter spot could play a role in how the Royals alleviate the infield overflow as well as keep All-star catcher Salvador Perez’s bat in the lineup on days when he’s not behind the plate.
The pitching staff features as many as nine returning internal candidates who made starts in the majors last season, though only four have made at least 30 starts in their major-league careers (Mike Minor, Brad Keller, Brady Singer, Kris Bubic).
“We’re comfortable with who we have in camp,” Moore said. “We’re comfortable with the level of talent.”
Always looking for pitching
Many of the Royals offseason additions have come in the form of minor-league free agent pitchers, both as bullpen candidates such as Colten Brewer and Arodys Vizcaino, as well as veterans who’ve started regularly in the majors such as recent signings Brad Peacock and Daniel Mengden.
However, that the 61-player group set for big-league camp, which Moore noted is the fewest the club has had in several years, indicates that there’s room for a handful of additions.
Moore said the Royals likely wouldn’t be involved in the discussions for the high-priced free agents still on the market.
Still, it wouldn’t be a shock for them to continue to add pitching depth or veteran role players in the coming days.
Depth and handling of the pitching staff has always been a primary focus of the front office as well as the coaching staff, but roster rules may put even more pressure on that this season.
“I’m not sure we’re going to be able to have the flexibility to have a 14-man staff to start the season,” Moore said. “I have not heard, officially, one way or the other what’s going to happen there. So we’ve got to be prepared for 13 and 13.”
Moore also mentioned the newly-implemented limit on the number of times a player can be optioned to the minors and still recalled by the team in the same season. As part of the new CBA, that limit will be five times.
“If you’re going through a particularly difficult time and you’re trying to nurse a pitcher or two through without putting them on the IL or sending them down for development reasons or what have you or just protecting the integrity of the relationship, it can put you in a tough spot,” Moore said. “So it’s important to have as much depth as we possibly can.”
This story was originally published March 12, 2022 at 4:16 PM.
