Plainly stated, the Kansas City Royals need a huge boost to their offense.
If the Royals had even a league-average offense this past season, they would have had a great shot at an American League playoff berth. As it was, the league’s fifth-lowest-scoring team managed an 82-80 record, which was four games back of the wild-card cutoff.
However, the Royals aren’t known for spending hundreds of millions of dollars in free agency, which makes it doubtful that they’ll be able to hang in the bidding war for players like Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman. Who can they realistically acquire?
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Royals’ projected opening day lineup includes Marcell Ozuna
On Monday, Bleacher Report’s Joel Reuter projected the opening day lineups for all 30 teams, and in the exercise, he predicted that the Royals would acquire longtime Atlanta Braves designated hitter Marcell Ozuna to provide some middle-of-the-order thump.
“The Royals need to add some pop to a lineup that ranked near the bottom of the league in runs scored (651, 26th) and home runs (159, 26th),” Reuter wrote. “Marcell Ozuna could provide some significant punch with a short-term commitment.”
Ozuna will be 35 this season, and he’s coming off a fairly drastic dip in most offensive stats from 2024 (.925 OPS) to 2025 (.756 OPS). However, he was nagged by a hip injury for most of the season, so if a team believes he’s fully restored physically, he might reward that team with a bounceback campaign.
Reuter also predicted that the Royals would re-sign Mike Yastrzemski, who was great in the two months he played in Kansas City after coming over at the trade deadline. Such a move would fill the hole in left field if second-year man Jac Caglianone could reach some of his potential and lock down right field.
In terms of the dollars and cents, Ozuna was recently projected to land a one-year, $14 million contract by Tim Britton of The Athletic.
All things considered, the Royals can probably afford one contract of roughly that magnitude this winter, so the question could become whether Ozuna is the guy they want to target.
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