The reliever returns

Did you notice last week when former Royals Brad Keller and Luke Weaver both signed for two years and $22 million? Perhaps there is a reliever tree planted somewhere around the Kauffman Stadium bullpen.

Another former Royal reliever who has found success since departing Kansas City, is returning home. The Royals swung a deal with the Phillies last week, sending right-hander Jonathan Bowlan to Philadelphia while bringing lefty reliever Matt Strahm back to KC.

Strahm, drafted by the Royals in the 21st round of the 2012 draft, was part of that ill-fated trade with the Padres as the Royals chased a return to the postseason in 2016. While with the Padres, Strahm bounced around between the bullpen and the rotation and had a couple of decent years. The Padres cut him loose after the 2021 season and he landed in Boston. With the Red Sox, Strahm threw 44 innings, and after years of declining strikeout rates, found his mojo by whiffing 27 percent of the batters he faced. He parlayed that, along with a 3.83 ERA and 3.34 xERA into a four-year deal with the Phillies. As he heads to KC, Strahm has one year left on that deal. He will make $7.5 million next summer.

It was with the Phillies that Strahm really hit his stride as a reliever. His strikeout rate bumped over 30 percent, bouyed by a sharp increase in chase rate as he routinely tempted batters to go outside the zone about 30 percent of the time.

Strahm’s chase rate last season was 33.3 percent, which put him in the 93rd percentile among pitchers. He added a slider when he was with the Red Sox, and now it’s his second-most common offering and it’s a good one. Opposing hitters posted a .120 batting average with a .240 slugging percentage against the pitch last year. It’s one he will throw to both lefties and right-handed hitters.

He doesn’t get a lot of ground balls—just 24 percent of all batted balls against Strahm last year were on the ground—but he keeps the ball in the yard because he’s so difficult to effectively square up. It will also help that he’s moving back to The K in that regard.

The Royals, after shipping Angel Zerpa to Milwaukee earlier this month, were in need of a lefty in the bullpen. Strahm fills this need and should create a nifty trio along with Lucas Erceg and Carlos Estévez in the back of the bullpen.

Plus, the Royals desperately needed to add chase to their bullpen. Last year, Royals relievers got a swing on a pitch outside of the strike zone on 29.7 percent of those pitches. That was third-lowest in baseball. By adding Strahm, and before him, Nick Mears and Alex Lange, the Royals and JJ Picollo have addressed a massive need this winter.

Shortly after the trade was consummated, this nugget was dropped by Phillies beat writer Matt Gelb in The Athletic:

The Phillies fielded calls on all three of their lefty relievers — José Alvarado and Tanner Banks included — but were intent on moving Strahm, team sources said. Strahm clashed with coaches and team officials; he was never afraid to voice his opinion on how the bullpen was managed and clubhouse dynamics. A productive three-year relationship had run its course with the growing friction between the two sides.

I’m always a bit skeptical when I see things like this after a player moves on. Besides, you’re going to tell me Strahm was a problem in that clubhouse? When Nick Castellanos was benched for doing basically what that article says about Strahm and when you have a star player who undergoes bizarre blood transfusions while gulping gallons of raw milk? Sure thing.

Anyway, Strahm seems like a solid dude who is able to connect with his community. He’s also a big time card collector.

It’s been almost 10 years since Strahm suited up in Kansas City, but it seems like those who are still around don’t have an issue. And given how the Royals value their clubhouse culture, it seems like if there had been serious red flags flying around Strahm, they wouldn’t have pursued him.

The comment button comes a little early in this edition. That’s just in case the next couple of notes aren’t of particular interest. Warning: Stadium talk ahead.

There was stadium news on Monday. Finally! Just not from the Royals.

The Kansas City Chiefs’ plan to abandon their current stadium and move to Kansas sent shockwaves across the team’s home state of Missouri on Monday.

The seismic move, which the team announced Monday afternoon, left Missouri officials stunned after they spent the last six months touting an incentives package they felt was enough to keep the team inside state lines.

As the Chiefs secured close to $2 billion in STAR bond commitments from the state of Kansas to move to the other intersection of Interstates 70 and 435 at The Legends in Kansas City, Kansas (along with a practice facility in Olathe, Kansas), this always felt like the most likely outcome. The Hunt family has always wanted Arrowhead Stadium to be a year-round, multi-sport attraction. That requires a roof. It also requires a $3 billion price tag and people in government in the state of Kansas willing to bend the knee to a multi-billionaire. The total amount the Chiefs could receive from the state could creep as high as $2.76 billion.

(The last sentence is bolded because…holy crap, Kansas.)

The new Arrowhead—or whatever the will call the home of the Kansas Chiefs—will probably host a Super Bowl shortly after opening. It’s not difficult to imagine a Final Four there as well. Clark Hunt dazzled lawmakers—as much as Clark Hunt can dazzle anyone—with the lure of the crown jewels of at least two sporting entities.

The Hunt family—who technically own the Chiefs—have a family fortune valued at $24.8 billion. They are the second-wealthiest ownership group in the NFL. Yet they need tax dollars from the state of Kansas to build a playground. Congrats to lawmakers for giving billions in state funding to…a billionaire.

Perhaps on the positive side, having secured the big boys (and make no mistake, the Chiefs were always the most attractive of this couple), there now may not be the stomach on the part of Kansas lawmakers to make another billion dollar-plus commitment to a baseball team. If my memory is correct—who knows on that count because this stadium saga has dragged on forever—the Royals were the impetus behind the push to vacate the Truman Sports Complex. The Chiefs were more than willing participants, but as the Royals prattled on about concrete cancer, the football team seemed more than happy to let the Royals continually shoot themselves in the foot, biding their time until Kansas came to their rescue.

The latest from the Royals is…who the hell knows? There were indications that it would be the baseball team that would be in front of the Kansas LLC getting a STAR bond commitment this month. That would be a prelude to a move to the Overland Park area at 119th and Nall. Once that seemed to be gaining momentum, there was some serious blowback from communities and businesses and the Royals were off the agenda. With good reason. The Overland Park site would be a dreadful location for a major league baseball team.

The Royals and CEO John Sherman want to model their new yard after The Battery in Cobb County, Georgia, which is more of a suburban mixed-use development than downtown stadium. Fine. Except the location they’ve identified in Overland Park lacks the highway access that The Battery has. It also comes up well short on infrastructure required to host 35,000 or so people 81 nights a year. Oh, and there’s the Jewish Community Center that has been a vital part of that area for close to 40 years that would be negatively impacted. And T-Mobile with 3,500 employees. Along with hospitals, schools and other small businesses and other nearby communities. Nobody in that area seems to want the Royals there. If the Royals want to make a mistake (and at this point, who the hell knows what they want), they’ll move to Overland Park. A ballpark at 119th and Nall would be a highly flawed, difficult-to-reach location that is disruptive to the larger community just so a group of billionaires could have their parking garages and a ballpark village to rake in even more income.

Maybe that escape hatch shifts back over to the Missouri side of the state line? Perhaps without a strong option in Kansas, the Chiefs announcement would bode well for Missouri and Kansas City to keep the Royals, right? Man, I kind of wonder. Mayor Quinton Lucas and Interim Jackson County Commissioner Phil LeVota don’t seem up for the challenge.

No conclusive plan has been formed to either engage in talks with another professional sports team or repurpose the current site of Arrowhead Stadium – though Lucas and LeVota, respectively, said the city and county could explore both in the next five years.

Lucas said that Kansas City’s next move will be to double down on its discussions with the Kansas City Royals about potentially remaining in Kauffman Stadium in 2031. The baseball team has expressed interest in multiple new sites on both sides of the state line.

Lucas was the guy who guaranteed the Royals and Chiefs would be in Kansas City, Missouri, for a generation to come. LeVota is picking up the pieces left behind from Frank White, who was an absolute abysmal Executive and lost a recall election last summer. With Monday’s announcement, coming just a few days after Lockton Insurance announced they’d be leaving the Plaza area for Leawood, Lucas in particular is having a rough holiday season.

So here we are: The Chiefs have funding for a plan. The Royals have…a disturbing lack of transparency and direction. Maybe they have a location. Maybe they don’t. Maybe they have financing. They probably don’t. Maybe we will hear something by the end of the year. Or perhaps it will be in April.

Nobody comes off looking good in this mess. Not a soul. Even now, everyone seems to be stumbling around, hoping that someone will approach the other with an offering of interest. It’s middle school dance awkward at this point.

More business news…Hooray!

Main Street Sports Group, the owner of the FanDuel-branded regional sports networks, is reportedly on its death bed.

According to a report by Tom Friend in Sports Business Journal, the FanDuel Sports Networks are at serious risk of dissolving unless a previously reported sale to sports streaming platform DAZN closes by January. The news comes as Main Street missed a December rights payment to the St. Louis Cardinals. The company’s 29 combined franchises between the NBA, NHL, and MLB are similarly at-risk of missing rights payments in the coming months.

The Royals, as you will recall, announced they would be on cable and streaming at FanDuel Sports next summer. Except now, it appears that is in some jeopardy.

It appears a plan is in place for Main Street Sports Group to get the NBA and NHL seasons across the regular season finish line. If they can’t make payments to the MLB teams they have on their roster, I would assume those rights would revert back to the league and the games would be streamed on MLB.tv, like the league has done with the San Diego Padres and a couple of other teams.

Let us not forget MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred out-maneuvered himself when he gave up control of the MLB.tv platform to ESPN. Somehow it’s ESPN who could come out the winner in all of this?

What a mess. As usual, the loser in all of this will be the fans.