Seeking a solution to the lack of outfield offense, the Royals went out and acquired a trio of players in advance of the 2025 trade deadline. The results varied, but I admired the attempt to do … something. Those guys, the subjects of this article, are Mike Yastrzemski, Randal Grichuk, and Adam Frazier.
Yaz was obviously the best of the three. The now-35-year-old lefty played only 50 games for the Royals, but he gathered 1.3 fWAR in that short time period. He hit .237/.339/.500, providing both an
on-base spark and a power spark in the Royals lineup. He walked at a similar rate to the rest of his career – a bit better actually – and he managed to cut his strikeout rate nearly in half after joining the Royals. If only his BABIP hadn’t cratered down to .217.
On defense, he generally played right field until Jac Caglianone’s return in September, after which he shuffled around the outfield according to the daily matchups. It’s a small sample size, but I don’t remember anything notable about his performance in right field. So he was probably just fine.
Unfortunately, the Royals could not bring Yaz back for 2025, as he got a two-year, $23M deal from Atlanta to head south. The Royals gave up Yunior Marte in the trade, who remained in single-A for the rest of the season with San Francisco.
The other outfielder, Randal Grichuk, was acquired to complement Yaz. Grichuk is a righty with a little bit of power, which matched well with Yaz’s lefty ways. Grichuk was not having an amazing season or anything, with an OBP of .277, but it got much worse after joining the Royals. He hit only .206/.267/.299 in 43 games. He was very often a late-game pinch hitter and brought little offense. The Royals gave up relief pitcher Andrew Hoffmann in the deal, who was walking guys so much he could get paid on Rover or something.
Lastly, the Royals brought back Adam Frazier to fill in some sort of super utility role I guess. The multi-positional flexible guys of Mark Canha, Cavan Biggio, and Nick Loftin were not good enough. The sad thing is that in only 56 games with the team in 2025, he was 7th in fWAR among position players on the Royals. They gave up Cam Devanney, who was released by the Pirates after the season ended, in order to try his hand at overseas baseball.
Frazier hit .283/.320/.402 for a 98 wRC+, so that was definitely an improvement over those other guys I listed. He played LF, RF, 3B, and 2B, sometimes all in the same game. There were two games in which he played LF, RF, and 2B in the span of a few hours. He was just that guy that Matt Quatraro could stick in whatever lineup spot was left over. He was also seen as a veteran clubhouse leader, having spent 2024 with the team.
Ultimately, of these three guys, two were upgrades. Yaz and Frazier were definite improvements over the previous guys filling those roles. Grichuk, well, the Royals could hide him on the bench. The Royals gave up no one who figured into long-term plans. However, the magnitude of the upgrades just was not enough to make a difference in the 82-80 season. Despite that, should the Royals find themselves in a similar situation, fighting for the playoffs, I hope they do everything they can to improve again.
