Like I said when I wrote about the infielders, the free agent outfield class is really thin. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any guys worth targeting. Outfield is the more obvious concern, especially
if they decide that some combination of Adam Frazier, Jonathan India, and/or Michael Massey makes sense at second base after all. That’s not the decision I would make, but it’s possible they go that direction.
As I did last week, we’ll break the targets down into tiers. Here’s the criteria I laid out last week:
Tier S would be an amazing signing that instantly makes the Royals a strong playoff contender. Tier A would be a guy I would be perfectly content to see as the primary free agent addition this winter. Tier B includes guys I would be excited about, but wouldn’t want to see as the only addition. I will use the indicator (C) to show that the player’s current team has a club option for that player, so he might not be a free agent. Similarly, (P) will indicate that the player has an opt-out or player option. I’m not going to bother marking mutual options because those are never picked up.
Bounce-back candidates
Luis Robert Jr. (C), Tyler O’Neill (P), Lane Thomas
Of these three guys, Robert is the only one who really does much for me, and only because of the combination of a history of playing really well once upon a time, relatively young age, and what we saw happen with Andrew Vaughn once he finally got out of Chicago. It just seems like that is an exceptionally toxic place to play baseball. Tyler O’Neill was fantastic two years ago, but a below-replacement level guy last year; I don’t see any way he actually opts out of that contract. Even as a bounce-back guy, Lane Thomas’ credentials are as a lefty-masher who can play center. You can try him as a platoon partner for Kyle Isbel, but there are better options to attempt to fill that role.
Tier S
Kyle Schwarber, Kyle Tucker, Cody Bellinger (P)
As unlikely as the Royals are to be playing in the S-tier of infielders, it feels even more unlikely they’d go after any of these outfielders. For one thing, Schwarber seems incredibly likely to return to the Phillies. I’d be at least a little shocked if the Yankees didn’t bring back Bellinger, though I suppose they could choose to go after Tucker instead. They’re also all left-handed, so it’s unclear if they would really fit with how KC’s roster works. But if the team wanted to go S-Tier Outfielder, Witt, Pasquantino, Garcia, and Perez, they’d still have three righties in the top five. Actually, having said that, I’m starting to think a lefty works out just fine, no matter what the general consensus has been.
Anyway, Schwarber might be the best hitter out of these three, but he’s also easily the worst defender. He barely played in the field last year, and the Royals don’t appear to have an opening at designated hitter while trying to find playing time for Carter Jensen, Salvador Perez, Vinnie Pasquantino, and Jac Caglianone. As I noted earlier, it’s going to be really hard to pry him out of Philadelphia, too.
Kyle Tucker is a really interesting case because after a monster 2023 season with the Astros, he appeared to take a small step back with the Cubs last year. Even so, he’s got a career 138 wRC+. But he’s also struggled with injuries the last two years, missing half of 2024 due to a shin fracture and playing through a broken hand for a large chunk of 2025. I’m old enough to remember the Bone Density Wars, so I won’t get into all that, but ZiPS projects him to only play 120-130 games for the next three years. He’d be hugely valuable in that limited playing time, but does it make sense for a team with depth concerns to guarantee the second-largest contract in team history to him? If he might find himself in a bit of a 2024 Pete Alonso situation where the deal he wants doesn’t really materialize and he has to do something of a more prove-it situation, however, that could work. The Royals could potentially sneak in late in the offseason and offer him a guaranteed contract with opt-outs that convinces him to fix the outfield for a year or two to seek his maximum value while they work on more sustainable options?
Of these three, Bellinger feels like the most likely target for the Royals because he’s probably the cheapest. That said, if he’s available, it will be because he just opted out of a contract that was guaranteed to pay him more than $20 million in 2026, so cheapest doesn’t mean bargain rates. Here, I will reiterate that the Royals were offering $22 million a year to Anthony Santander with opt-outs. If they were willing to do that, perhaps that means they’d be willing to do something a little bit higher for a more proven player? Bellinger also offers a little bit more positional flexibility as he’s played every outfield spot and first base consistently throughout his career. Tucker has been almost exclusively a right fielder, while Schwarber has played left on the rare occasion he isn’t the DH.
Tier A
Trent Grisham
I want to shout out my Royals Rundown podcast co-host, Jacob Milham, because the first iteration of this tier had no one in it.* I sourced my list from MLB Trade Rumors, and either they forgot to include Trent Grisham in the version I saw or I managed to miss him, but he is also going to be a free agent, and, upon review, he’s a really enticing guy, and I think he might be the target for the Royals this offseason.
Grisham will be entering his age-29 season, so he’s not yet old, but he’s also not so young with such a dazzling history that he can expect to be paid like a stud over a long contract. He’s the same age as Tucker, but younger than Schwarber and Bellinger. Like Bellinger, though, he has positional versatility in that he can play any outfield position. Seeing a Yankee lefty crush a career-high in home runs, you might fear he’s benefiting from the infamous short porch in right field at Yankee Stadium, but according to StatCast, 25 of his 34 home runs would still have been out in Kauffman. More homer-neutral parks like Target Field in Minnesota or Wrigley in Chicago would have allowed him to still hit 27 of his bombs.
He had a lot of red on his baseball savant page last year, and he’s been a roughly 2-WAR player throughout his career; ZiPS thinks that will continue for at least the next three years. Unlike the three guys in the S-Tier above, he’s unlikely to absolutely knock anyone’s socks off, and he understandably doesn’t carry the name recognition that they do, but that also means he should be significantly more affordable than they will be while still being a huge boost to one of MLB’s worst outfields.
If the Royals signed him, I think I’d have to be pretty excited. If they signed him and someone like Gleyber Torres from last week’s article on the infielders, I think I’d have to consider them deep playoff favorites. That might be dreaming a little too hard, but wouldn’t it be cool if the Royals could snatch up a couple of former Yankees and go to the World Series the way it felt like the Yankees were doing to them for so long?
Tier B
Harrison Bader, Mike Yastrzemski, Ramón Laureano (C), Rob Refsnyder
Harrison Bader is a guy a lot of people wanted the Royals to consider in 2025, that I didn’t like, and I seemed kind of foolish for it when all was said and done. Had the Royals signed him to the deal the Twins gave him, they’d have at least been in the Wild Card round. It was also his first above-average hitting season since 2021. He’ll be 32 next year, and the glove still plays, so you can add him as a weak-side platoon partner. That said, it’s hard to see the money making sense for both sides on that after his 2025 campaign.
Yastrzemski is someone we’re all very familiar with in Kansas City now, so I don’t need to say much about him. If the Royals don’t feel comfortable spending the money on a guy who can hit all-handedness pitching every day, he makes a ton of sense (for the right price) as a strong-side platoon player.
Laureano was better in 2024 than I realized and had something of a breakout season for Baltimore and San Diego this year. He doesn’t have big splits, can play both corner outfield positions competently, and ZiPS thinks he’ll be playable for at least the next three years. The biggest problem here is that the Padres have a club option for only $6.5 million next year. It’s hard to see them not picking that up.
Rob Refsnyder is a really interesting case. He was a top prospect for the Yankees that never worked out, but the Red Sox got their hands on him a few years ago and turned him into a really valuable weak-side platoon bat. So if the Royals wanted someone to pair with Yaz, he might be the best option. Unfortunately, if KC wants to do that, both of those guys are in the mid-30s, so KC needs to be able to convince them to come on short deals, or it won’t make sense financially. And even then, you’d be betting on both of them to at least be close to who they were last year in an age range when decline can come extremely rapidly.
Free agency isn’t the only place the Royals can look for batting help, but it is the one way they can add talent to their lineup without having to sacrifice anywhere else. Despite all the talk, including from yours truly, about trading from a position of depth, they’re a team that is still working on rebuilding their farm system, and they showed us this year how quickly pitching depth can be tested. They’d be in much better shape if they didn’t sacrifice anymore.
Ultimately, I think the Royals would benefit from moving on from Jonathan India – maybe that doesn’t mean non-tendering him, they could potentially trade him before the arbitration offer deadline sometime in early December. If they move on from him, that gives them many more options in how to improve the lineup. Both because of an additional open position which would otherwise be filled by someone it would be unreasonable to rely on next year, and because they’d have an additional $8-$10 million to spend.
For that reason, I lean more towards focusing on the infield free agents – that’s why I wrote that one first – but if they want to get into the S-Tier, they could definitely look at the outfield, too. Regardless, the Royals have some really fun options to examine this offseason. It will be up to the team to make one or more of them work.
*The original Tier A text appears here
Nobody!
You might have looked at the headline and thought, “There were eight infielders and seven outfielders, so how is the outfield that much thinner?” This is why. There is not a single outfielder worth ponying up for outside the top three guys. It’s just a very feast-or-famine free agent position group.
Additionally, as you’ll see in a moment, the Tier B guys differ from the infielders in that the outfield version is almost exclusively guys who need to be platooned, which really limits roster flexibility.
