The Royals may have finally made their big move for an outfield bat, and it didn’t cost Cole Ragans. It also didn’t cost Noah Cameron or even Kris Bubic.
Isaac Collins is a switch-hitter who primarily played left field with a little bit of right field and even a couple of innings at second and third last season and will be 28 years old in his sophomore season for 2026. He finished fourth in the NL Rookie of the Year voting and slashed .263/.368/.411/.779 with nine home runs and 16 stolen bases, good enough for a 122 wRC+ or a 118 OPS+, if you prefer. Thanks to passable defense and good baserunning, he was worth 2.6 fWAR and 2.1 bWAR last season.
Collins doesn’t hit the ball particularly hard, and his actual wOBA outperformed his xwOBA by 24 points, so it’s reasonable to wonder if he might regress some. But he’s only 28 and still on his initial MLB deal, so he will be very cheap and easy to walk away from if he doesn’t perform. Also, much like Lane Thomas before him, he wields an elite chase rate and walk rate. He does not have significant splits, though he hits lefties slightly better than righties.
Nick Mears is a right-handed reliever who has had an odd career. Some years he’s carried an awful ERA and elite advanced stats, other years it’s been reversed. In 2024, he struck out 11.71 batters per nine innings with a very good 19.9% K-BB%, but had a 5.93 ERA despite a 3.19 SIERA. In 2025, his strikeouts plummeted to only 7.31 per inning, but he had a much better 3.49 ERA to go with a 3.89 SIERA.
Mears is primarily a fastball/slider pitcher. As you can see in the graphic above, he gets ridiculous chase, but wasn’t able to generate much in the way of whiffs or strikeouts last year. He seems primed to be a guy that the Royals’ pitching coaching staff can help improve. Mears is entering his age-29 season and is under team control for next season and 2027.
Angel Zerpa has been the primary lefty out of the Royals’ bullpen for the last couple of years. He can reach 98 MPH with his fastball and gets tons of groundballs, but has occasional trouble with his command, and doesn’t strike out nearly as many as you would expect from someone with his stuff. Zerpa has three years of team control left.
You have to wonder how the Royals managed to get a reliever with upside and a young outfielder for only Zerpa. Clearly the Brewers have soured on both players for some reason and believe they can really polish Zerpa into some kind of gem. But even if Zerpa turns into the next Josh Hader for the Brewers, this seems like a win for Kansas City because Zerpa has had ample opportunity to prove he could do the same in KC and never managed it. A change of scenery might be all he needs.
The Royals still have plenty of opportunity to make more moves if they want, but between Thomas, projected improvement from Caglianone, and Collins, they should have an outfield at least replacement level and probably above next season. That would represent a huge improvement over what they’ve had for the last couple of seasons and all at the cost of a single left-handed reliever most fans probably seemed tired of and less than $10 million. Even if these are the only moves the Royals make this offseason – and I’d bet against that – you’d have to call it a bigger success than last offseason.
