The Sunday Ramble

After a slow couple of weeks on the Royals beat, we got a classic Friday news dump. Technically, that’s not correct as a Friday news dump is used to bury bad news. This was anything but. And just in time for the Royals Rally!

The news I’m writing about, of course, is the announcement the Royals signed first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino to a two-year deal. It avoids an arbitration hearing and gives the Royals some payroll certainty for 2027.

Am I allowed to say I told you so? Of course I am! From January 9:

I wonder if the failure to reach an agreement with Pasquantino is a prelude to an extension. Both sides were also some distance off from the MLB Trade Rumors estimate, which has me wondering if something is afoot. I’m not thinking it’s anything like the Garcia deal that buys out a year (or potentially two) of free agency. You don’t do that with first basemen like the Pasquatch. However, they could do something like where they reach a two-year deal. That locks in some payroll certainty for the team and gives Pasquantino an opportunity to snag a large raise in his third and final season of arbitration eligibility before he hits the free agent market. That can be something of a win for both sides.

Something like this just made too much sense. The details remain sketchy, some 36 hours after the news broke, but Anne Rogers reported that it’s more than $11 million guaranteed.

An additional $5 million, give or take, in incentives is not something we usually see in a contract for a guy in his arbitration years. Again, as of this writing we don’t know the specifics of the incentives, so it’s difficult to react to how easy they would be to attain.

I speculated in the January 9th edition quoted above that Pasquantino could get around $12 million in a two-year extension. It looks like he’s set to get a bit more if he can hit on some of those incentives. This is a good deal for the Royals, and it also gives Pasquantino some security for his second year of arbitration eligibility. If he strings together a couple of quality seasons, he will set himself up for a nice raise going into year three of arbitration which could serve as a nice springboard for him to hit the free agent market after the 2028 season.

Plus, Pasquantino is an absolute gem of a human. It’s nice when good things happen to good people.

TV news! FanDuel is inhaling the death vapors. Again.

According to Tom Friend at Sports Business Journal, Main Street Sports Group could file Chapter 7 bankruptcy as early as next week, which would mean the liquidation of the company. Barring any last-minute cash infusion, that now looks like the most likely ending to the RSN saga.

The last domino that needs to fall is the decision of the nine MLB teams still linked with the FanDuel RSNs to permanently opt-out of their deals, potentially bringing their local rights back in-house with the league as many others have already done. Given the FanDuel RSNs are teetering on the brink of extinction, it’s hard to project any other outcome at this point.

Royals President of Business Operations Cullen Maxey told Anne Rogers at Royals Rally that the team would prefer to stay with Main Street. I’m not sure that’s the best course of business at this point as Main Street clearly seems to be teetering on the brink of total collapse. I only took Intro to Economics in college (and I give my work away for free!) so it’s safe to say my business acumen is a bit lacking, but I just don’t understand how it benefits the Royals to tie themselves to a group that is so clearly on life support. Yes, they could probably make more money in the short-term, but it sure feels like the long-term play is to get in-house with MLB. There’s just no security with Main Street.

Having written that, it looks like the Royals aren’t acting alone in this play. I’m sure they’re talking to the other nine teams in this situation and there will probably be some sort of consensus reached among said teams on how to move forward. It sounds like this will get resolved in one way or another in a week or so. It just feels incredibly messy and the concern should be that it will negatively impact how fans are able to watch the games once the season starts. The NBA and NHL are worried that Main Street could go dark while their respective seasons are still under way. MLB should work hard to avoid having to scramble mid-season.

Time is running short. The word is, the Royals are looking to get some of their spring training games on television. This feels like an appropriate place to write stay tuned.

Dan Szymborski at FanGraphs posted what he calls “the state of the preseason” team standing projections based off of ZiPS. It’s mostly what you would expect as we head into February…The Jays are looking good in the AL East. Likewise the Mariners out West. The Cubs and Brewers will battle for supremacy in the NL Central and the Dodgers are…the Dodgers.

Meanwhile, in the AL Central, things are looking tight. Here is how ZiPS sees the win totals for each club:

Royals - 83
Tigers - 83
Guardians - 79
Twins - 77
White Sox - 69

Examining this group another way, here are the odds of each team reaching the postseason according to ZiPS:

Tigers - 49.3%
Royals - 44.9%
Guardians - 30.9%
Twins - 19%
White Sox - 3%

At this moment in time, the difference in the AL Central looks to be down to the margin of error. A good move—say, the Royals acquiring another bat to improve their outfield—or a negative type of move—say, removing Tarik Skubal from the Tigers rotation in a trade—would tip the scales in favor of Kansas City. Of course, there could be movement in the other direction as well.

This is just one set of projections, but I like it because it confirms my bias. It has the Yankees fourth in the AL East, which is a bonus.

All that to say we once again find ourselves in a familiar space of where the Royals are going to be good, but are they going to be good enough?

When I perused the ZiPS team standing projections when they were released on Wednesday, my other reaction on the AL Central was that the Twins place and win total felt a tad optimistic.

On Friday, this bombshell dropped:

Derek Falvey is out as Minnesota Twins president after the sides “mutually agreed to part ways,” the team announced Friday morning.

…

Named team president in March 2025, the move ends a tenure that began when Falvey was named the team’s head of baseball operations in 2016. After making the postseason in 2017, 2019. and 2020, but failing to win a game, the Twins swept the Toronto Blue Jays in the 2023 AL Wild Card Series. But the good times would be short-lived, with the Twins slashing their budget in 2024 and trading 10 players ahead of the deadline last July, all while ownership explored selling the franchise but settled on a partial transaction.

Yeah…this doesn’t pass the smell test. “Mutually” agreeing to part ways less than two weeks before camps open? What you do smell is disarray and desperation. And probably a disagreement on how to move forward between Falvey and new executive chair Tom Pohlad. There does not seem to be a concept of a plan here.

It shouldn’t be like this. The Twins still have Byron Buxton and Royce Lewis—when they’re not on the IL. And on the pitching side the rotation looks strong upfront with Pablo López and Joe Ryan and possibly Bailey Ober. The Twins should be better, but they chose to self-sabotage at the trade deadline last summer and have yet to recover. The foundation remains, but they refuse to add the necessary pieces to complete the team. Instead, they operate like a poor man’s Pirates.

That’s actually an insult to the Pirates.

We should be forever thankful that when the time came for the David Glass to get out of the baseball business, he was able to actually sell the club and didn’t just pass it along to his offspring. What a mess they have in Minnesota.