The Royals need at least one big bat this offseason. Sure, the playoffs are still happening, but the Royals missed out, and I am antsy to talk about what comes next. I barely resisted the urge to predict next season’s Opening Day roster instead of doing this. It does, unfortunately, seem like the outfield class is extremely thin (which won’t prevent me from discussing it next), but the infield free agent class is much more interesting than one might assume.
The Royals thought they had solved their infield issues last offseason by adding Jonathan India to a team that already featured Bobby Witt Jr., Michael Massey, and Vinnie Pasquantino. Maikel Garcia had a breakout campaign, but India was pretty much a disaster and averages out to something like replacement level between a slightly positive bWAR and slightly negative fWAR. Even though Massey looked much better after returning from the IL (.375/.412/.484/.896, 151 wRC+), it seems foolish to rely on him until he provides at least one entirely healthy season at a high level of production. And, even if Massey is good next year, he looked fine in left, so the Royals can absolutely still make that work. The Royals, therefore, have just as big a hole at second as they do in the outfield. That said, they could also potentially do the reverse of what many of us were discussing last year, and sign a third baseman and then move someone from there to second.
Below, I have broken the players down into the tiers I would consider them for. Tier S would be an amazing signing that instantly makes the Royals a strong playoff contender. Tier A would be a guy I would be perfectly content to see as the primary free agent addition this winter. Tier B includes guys I would be excited about, but wouldn’t want to see as the only addition. I will use the indicator (C) to show that the player’s current team has a club option for that player, so he might not be a free agent. Similarly, (P) will indicate that the player has an opt-out or player option. I’m not going to bother marking mutual options because those are never picked up.
Before we get to the tiers, let’s talk about guys the Royals shouldn’t sign, or at least shouldn’t sign as the primary or even secondary addition to the team.
Pete Alonso, Josh Bell, Ryan O’Hearn, Rhys Hoskins, Marcell Ozuna
With the seeming September breakout of catcher Carter Jensen, the Royals suddenly have no spare room at first base/designated hitter, as he, Salvador Perez, and Vinnie Pasquantino should be expected to man those positions for almost every game. That means that these hitters simply don’t have anywhere to play for the Royals, no matter how much fun it might be to imagine Alonso crushing balls into the fountains on a regular basis.
Luis Rengifo, Ozzie Albies (C), Amed Rosario
These three hitters have all been decent in the past, and if the Royals signed them to fill some sort of utility role – probably instead of Adam Frazier, who feels like a lock to return in KC blue next season – it would be an interesting play. But none of them are remotely guaranteed to be useful players next season, and the Royals cannot afford to pay or promise to play them as if they are starters.
Rengifo, alongside Taylor Ward, is someone who has constantly been tied to the Royals for the last couple of years, but he had a very down 2025. Ozzie Albies has really struggled with injuries over the same timespan, and they seem to have sapped his power. If he could tap back into it, though, he would be huge. Amed Rosario is less a bounce-back player and more a guy who guarantees something above replacement-level production as much as any player can. He didn’t make sense to include anywhere else, though, and I wanted to mention him.
OK, now let’s talk about the guys they should be targeting.
Bo Bichette, Max Muncy (C), Brandon Lowe (C)
Bo Bichette is one of the premier free agents available in this class. He would be difficult for the Royals to obtain because he’s a shortstop and is going to want to be paid like one, but the Royals already have the best shortstop in the sport, so he’d have to move to second or third. He’s considered a good fielder, so such a move seems like it should come easily, but it just doesn’t always work out that way. The angles are simply different, and not everyone can make that adjustment, even fewer can make it quickly.
That said, he’s one of the best hitters at any position to hit the free agent market; he would have easily led MLB in hits without the late-season injury. If the Royals could successfully sign and transition him to another infield position, they could easily have one of, if not the best-hitting infields in all of baseball.
Max Muncy has primarily been a third baseman in his career, but he’s played some second, so if the Royals had to ask him to move there, it wouldn’t be as wild as having India try left field. The biggest roadblock to adding Muncy, other than the fact that he primarily bats left-handed, is that the Dodgers hold a $10M club option for him; he has been worth at least two fWAR for the past five years, and ZiPS projects him to be at least that good again next season, so the Dodgers could just hang on to him.
Brandon Lowe also hits left-handed, and the Rays also hold a club option for him for $11.5 million. But we all know how the Rays love to move on from guys once they start making any kind of money at all. He is also the only player in this tier who actually calls second base his primary position. ZiPS projects him to be almost as valuable as Bichette over the next three years, too.
Jorge Polanco, Alex Bregman (P), Gleyber Torres, Eugenio Suárez
Polanco was a guy I wanted the Royals to consider as a bounce-back option late last offseason before he returned to Seattle on a cheap one-year deal. He had a bit of a Vinnie-esque season in that he started off horribly, but once he got going, he was so good that his overall season numbers are still quite good. He’s been an above-average hitter for most of his career, and in 2025, he recovered the power stroke he’d been missing for the past few years. He’d be S-tier if not for a down 2024 and a poor start to this season. He’s a switch-hitter who has been a bit better against righties in his career, but perfectly playable against lefties. This year, he flipped those splits in a big way, too. He still crushed lefties, but he crushed righties even more.
Alex Bregman might stick around in Boston, but he got that player option written into his contract for a reason, and he was excellent in Beantown after leaving his longtime home in Space City. The fly in the ointment here might be that Bregman is a third bagger, but he claimed a willingness to move to second when the Red Sox first signed him, so there’s that. There’s also the fact that he would be one of only a handful of options at third who should be able to match Garcia defensively at the hot corner if the Royals chose to move Maikel instead. He’d likely be very expensive, but the Royals already announced they’re not making significant changes to the coaching staff, so they need to spend to improve the talent.
Torres was a guy that a lot of rumor mongers thought made a ton of sense in KC last offseason after a slightly down year in his final season for the Yankees. He rebounded to be his normal self for Detroit after signing a one-year deal. He makes even more sense for KC this year than he did last year as a right-handed bat with a little pop who walks a ton and rarely strikes out, but now with the keystone position open instead of third.
Suárez was the apple of everyone’s eye at the trade deadline this year, but really fell off a cliff once he moved back to Seattle. He’ll turn 35 next season, and ZiPS doesn’t paint a particularly rosy outlook for him. I almost moved him to B-tier, but he’s had four straight seasons averaging more than 30 home runs and almost four fWAR, so it’s hard to bet against him. We know the power works in Kauffman, too.
Moncada was another guy I wanted the Royals to consider buying low on entering the season, but the Angels took the chance instead. If he could stay healthy, he’d easily be A-tier, but he can’t. He was a second baseman early in his career, but it’s been a long time since he played there, and he wasn’t good at it. Even with those caveats, if the Royals could grab him cheap and add players from other tiers/positions, he could be a sneaky-good find.
It’s not that there are no outfield options (like I said earlier, we’ll get to those later), but there is a much greater variety of infielders that should be available if the Royals are interested in spending in free agency rather than making a trade. I know we’ve all said they could trade from their pitching depth to get that bat, but considering how their depth was tested this season, I’d rather keep all of those guys in KC to insure against a repeat of such issues next year.
A major concern on that front will be whether the Royals are willing to pony up the dollars to make it happen. Picollo said that the team wouldn’t necessarily spend much more next year than it did this year, but we also know they tried to spend significantly more with offers they made to Anthony Santander and Jurickson Profar, so perhaps he’s just trying to temper expectations in case the Royals once again can’t find a match.
That said, if the Royals begin a third straight season with an outfield that is full of question marks – no, not even question marks, but black holes sucking the life out of the rest of a talented roster – Royals fans will get antsy. Many got antsy this year. And they should be antsy about the direction of their team if the Royals screw it up again. But even beyond that, the team needs to follow through on promises made to Bobby Witt Jr. if they want to keep him in Kansas City for his entire career. They also might still want or need support for that stadium trying to build. I assume they are, at least; we certainly haven’t heard anything about it for a while. Maybe they found the cure for concrete cancer?
Regardless, the expectations should be that the Royals address this problem somehow, some way. They’ve already indicated a refusal to do it one way by making more significant changes to the hitting coaching staff; adding talented players would appear to be the only option left. Hopefully, they’ll get the job done early in the offseason so we can all bask in the glow of positive predictions while we wait out the cold winter months leading to Spring Training.
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