Not thinking past this season, Shields has postseason plans for Royals

Two winters ago, James Shields drove from his temporary home in Clearwater, Fla., to Tropicana Field. After he completed a workout with former teammate David Price, he walked into the only home clubhouse he had ever known.

Scattered inside were fellow rotation-mates like Alex Cobb and Matt Moore. A few attendants were packing up boxes before the Rays departed for their spring-training home in Port Charlotte, Fla. Shields bid them farewell. Then he prepared to fly to Arizona for his first spring training as a Royal.

“It was a family to me,” Shields said about those Rays teams, the ones that forged him. In Tampa Bay, he learned the importance of atmosphere and the mechanics of chemistry. The Royals mortgaged a piece of their future to obtain him, in part, because they felt he could infuse their own clubhouse with similar qualities.

After the Royals won 86 games in 2013, their best season since 1989, the front office showered plaudits upon Shields for his consistency on the field and his influence off it. This may be his final season as a Royal. But for now, he represents their finest player and their most critical in-house component. He even speaks their language.

“We’re right there,” Shields said last week as the Royals prepared to leave Surprise, Ariz. “We’re here. There’s nowhere to go but up from now. Everyone has bought into the process.”

In 2014, a season which begins Monday afternoon when Shields duels with Tigers ace Justin Verlander, The Process of general manager Dayton Moore faces its greatest challenge. Shields becomes a free agent after this season. Rival executives consider slim the team’s chances to retain him. Shields could fetch a nine-figure contract.

The Royals did not approach Shields to discuss an extension during the spring, according to several people familiar with the situation. Shields himself has vowed to not address his free agency after the season begins.

During multiple conversations with The Star last week, Shields made sure to reinforce that his first choice was to remain with the Royals. After that, he portrayed himself as a blank canvas. From a financial perspective, he said, “I just want to be definitely compensated fairly for what I’ve done in the past.”

If the Royals do not present a package that meets his standard, he lacks a preference for his future destination. He laughed when a reporter asked if he preferred pitching in Yankee Stadium or Dodger Stadium.

“It doesn’t really matter to me,” he said. “I’ve been on the East Coast. I’ve been on the West Coast. And I just want to win ballgames. I want to be on a winning team.”

In Tampa Bay, Shields watched teammates like Carl Crawford and B.J. Upton as they approached their walk years. He did not bother them at the time. But he soaked up a few lessons about the business in other ways.

After the 2011 season, when Shields finished third in the American League Cy Young award ballot, Rays general manager Andrew Friedman first spoke with him about the possibility of a trade. Shields understood the reality of the Rays’ situation. As his salary rose, his position there became less tenable.

Thus, the trade did not surprise him. He thought he might be dealt at the trade deadline the previous summer. In the end, the Royals shipped a package that included vaunted prospect Wil Myers and pitchers Mike Montgomery and Jake Odorizzi for Shields and pitcher Wade Davis.

Upon their arrival, Davis said he encouraged Shields to flaunt his credentials. As a joke, he referred to him as the team captain. Still, Davis believed Shields possessed the stature and the personality to connect with his younger teammates.

“You’re talking about a guy who had a 5 ERA in 2010,” Davis said. “And almost won the Cy Young the next year. That completely goes against all of what statistics and writers and everybody thinks. So when you can say to a team that won 70-some guys the year before, ‘So what? We may be projected to win 77 games. But we can still win 100.’ ”

To Davis, that 2011 season was instructive in a variety of ways. The Rays went winless on their first road trip. On the flight home, manager Joe Maddon opened a bottle of whiskey and toasted “the best 0-6 in the history of baseball.” A few days later, the team was still 1-8. After a defeat, veteran Johnny Damon sat down in his chair and cracked a beer, Davis recalled.

“Guys,” Damon said, “let’s go have some fun.”

Those Rays won 91 games and made the playoffs. The trick is not learning how to win, Davis continued. It is learning how to lose. Last season was instructive in that regard.

To hear team officials tell it, the Royals turned a corner in the second half of 2013. They survived the miseries of last May, and emerged sharpened by the experience. Shields did his part: He logged 228 2/3 innings, the most in the American League, with a 3.15 ERA, the second-best of his career.

Yet certain things still aggravated him. He walked a career-high 68 batters, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio, a statistic he considers critical, fell to 2.88, his worst mark since his rookie season. Shields blamed mechanical malfunctions for the lack of command.

Once in Surprise, pitching coach Dave Eiland counseled Shields on a pair of keys to maintain his delivery: Ensuring his legs do not drift out ahead of his upper body, and making sure his hands do not raise above his shoulders in the set position.

“We jumped on that from day one,” Eiland said.

The result is Shields feels mechanically sound as he begins 2014. His stature in this clubhouse is unquestioned. His importance for this season is unparalleled. And he refuses to appear fretful as he approaches the uncertainty of the future, or grapples with the heft of expectations.

“I’m not one of those guys that takes that responsibility and puts pressure on myself,” Shields said. “I feel like I can only do so much, and do what I do. I feel like I’ll just be myself. And if that’s contagious, and people latch on, then so be it.”

This story was originally published March 30, 2014 at 7:42 PM with the headline "Not thinking past this season, Shields has postseason plans for Royals."