Royals protect two players ahead of next month's Rule 5 draft

The GM Meetings are in the past. The Winter Meetings are ahead. In between, there’s a bit of space where teams start executing their offseason plan.

Tuesday was the deadline for teams to add players to their 40-man roster who would otherwise be eligible for next month’s Rule 5 draft. As a quick reminder, a player is eligible for the Rule 5 draft if he hasn’t been added to the 40-man roster and has been in the organization for five years if they signed at 18 or younger, or for four years if signed at 19 or older. Basically, players drafted out of high school get an extra year to rumble around the minor leagues.

As usual, the Royals had a plethora of minor league dudes they would need to add to their 40-man roster if they wanted to prevent another team from poaching them. Javier Baz, Peyton Wilson, Gavin Cross, Ben Kudrna, Chandler Champlain, Steven Zobac and Frank Mozzicato were among the players who are eligible for the Rule 5.

Late Tuesday afternoon the announcement was made that the Royals added only Kudrna and Zobac to the 40-man roster.

I don’t normally get geeked up about the Rule 5 draft and players who need to be protected. Teams have a solid idea of guys they could potenially lose and act accordingly so it’s rare there are surprises. In this case though, the players the Royals didn’t protect…man, it just underscores that there were some massive whiffs in the draft at the end of Dayton Moore’s tenure as General Manager. That tenure coincided with Lonnie Goldberg as scouting director. Goldberg oversaw the Royals’ drafts from 2011 to 2022.

To recap, here are the guys the Royals took in the top five of the draft who they decided not to protect this year:

Gavin Cross - 1st round pick, 2022
Hunter Patteson - 5th round pick, 2022
Frank Mozzicato - 1st round pick, 2021
Peyton Wilson - 2nd round pick, 2021
Shane Panzini - 4th round pick, 2021
Asa Lacy - 1st round pick, 2020
Christian Chamberlain - 4th round pick, 2020

You didn’t think I’d drop Lacy there, did you? Cold blooded!

Starting in 2020, the Royals whiffed—and whiffed badly—on three consecutive first round draft picks. There’s a reason the Royals minor league system was ranked 27th by Baseball America at the start of last year. Hell, that represented an improvement as the year before they ranked 30th. And the year prior to that…29th. I’m sure they’ll rise up a few rungs in the next edition of the Prospect Handbook, but damn can a string of poor drafts set a franchise back.

As for the two the Royals protected, neither were a surprise. Both could throw some innings for the major league club in 2026. Kudrna, a second-round pick from Blue Valley Southwest in 2021, posted a 5.30 ERA between stops in Double-A and Triple-A this year, with a 22.9 percent strikeout rate to go along with a 10.8 percent walk rate. He had a rough go of things at Omaha, but has generally needed a bit of time to adjust to new levels.

Zobac, a fourth-round selection in 2022, struggled this year with a 7.25 ERA over 44.2 innings as he dealt with a knee injury. His season was bookended by stints on the Injured List. The last time he appeared in a game was August 7. Last year, as a healthy starter, the right-hander finished with a 3.64 ERA and a 24.8 percent strikeout rate and 5.6 percent walk rate. It’s easy to see the upside there.

The 40-man roster currently stands at 39.

The Hall of Fame ballot for the class of 2026 was released on Monday and Alex Gordon is among those up for election.

Look, I’m under no illusion that Gordon will get elected to the Hall. He is not, by any measure, a Baseball Hall of Famer. Looking at Jay Jaffe’s JAWS system, Gordon falls between Pedro Guerrero and Dusty Baker among left fielders and well behind Starling Marte and Brett Gardner, to name two who are not yet eligible. That in no way discounts the phenominal career Gordon had for the Royals. He was, in his prime, an exceptional ballplayer, a lynchpin of the championship teams.

It’s cool that he’s on the ballot and his career will be discussed. Even in a year with a weak overall ballot without a standout newcomer, I am certain he will not make the five percent threshold to remain on the ballot.

Of players returning to the ballot, Carlos Beltrán has the best shot of election this round. He’s made double-digit percentage gains in each of the last two years and finished just above 70 percent last year. (Reminder that a player needs 75 percent to earn election.) I would be shocked that, in a year with an overall weak ballot, Beltrán doesn’t get over the finish line. And while I am sure that he will go into the Hall as a Met, it will still be very cool to get a second player in who spent a large portion of his career in Kansas City.

Tuesday was the deadline for free agents to make a decision if they were tagged with a qualifying offer. In this space, it’s only notable for those who accepted the $22.05 million contract for next year. Among the four who accepted: potential Royals free agent targets Detroit Tigers second baseman Gleyber Torres and New York Yankees outfielder Trent Grisham.

Torres stumbled in the second half of 2025, and failed to reach the heights he experienced just two seasons ago, but overall was a valuable signing for the Tigers, finishing at .256/.358/.387 with a 113 wRC+. That was good for 2.6 fWAR. Had Torres hit the open market, industry consensus had him looking at a three-year deal around $50 million. At a rough average annual value of around $17 million, I have to believe that’s within the Royals range should they be looking to upgrade at second base. Hard to say, as the Royals continue to rebuild their farm system, if they would’ve been willing to surrender a draft pick by signing a player tagged with a QO.

Grisham was probably looking at a similar deal in free agency, but the QO was probably going to depress that market a bit. After a few mediocre years for San Diego and then New York, the two-time former Gold Glove winner broke out in a big way offensively last year, hitting .235/.348/.464 with a 129 wRC+ and a 3.2 fWAR.

If the Royals were deciding between the two, I would’ve preferred Torres, who, at 29 next year, has a much better offensive track record of success. Now both are off the market which makes the thin free agent options at second and in the outfield even less appealing.

I suspect that some deals will be made next month at the Winter Meetings.