{"id":2197722,"date":"2025-12-13T15:00:37","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T15:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2197722"},"modified":"2025-12-13T15:00:37","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T15:00:37","slug":"royals-maikel-garcia-extension-comes-with-virtually-no-downside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/royals-maikel-garcia-extension-comes-with-virtually-no-downside\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals’ Maikel Garcia Extension Comes With Virtually No Downside"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“Extend Maikel Garcia” will no longer be the refrain of Kansas City Royals. <\/p>\n

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Garcia, the Royals’ 25-year-old third baseman, enjoyed a breakout season in 2025. He upped his OPS by 186 points, made his first All-Star team, and racked up 5.8 bWAR, tying Jos\u00e9 Ram\u00edrez for the top mark among all third basemen in Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n

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Keeping Garcia locked in as the starting third baseman alongside shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. was a worthy objective as the Royals looked to prove their championship window is open. Not only has that objective now been accomplished, but there’s a chance Kansas City could be saving itself serious money. <\/p>\n

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If you like our content,\u00a0<\/em>choose Sports Illustrated as a preferred source on Google<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Garcia’s extension buys out at least one free-agent year<\/h2>\n

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Sep 10, 2025; Cleveland, Ohio, USA; Kansas City Royals third baseman Maikel Garcia (11) celebrates his RBI double in the seventh inning against the Cleveland Guardians at Progressive Field. Mandatory Credit: David Richard-Imagn Images | David Richard-Imagn Images<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

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On Friday, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that the Royals and Garcia were in agreement<\/a> on a five-year extension with a club option for a sixth year, which would be the 2031 season. <\/p>\n

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As Garcia was entering his first year of arbitration eligibility as a “super two” player, this deal buys out at least one free-agent year, with the Royals holding the keys to a second if they decide to exercise that club option.<\/p>\n

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At the time of publication, the monetary value of Garcia\u2019s extension was not yet known. But there\u2019s virtually no scenario in which buying out his age-30 season comes back to haunt Kansas City, and in reality, the chances are much higher that they save money compared to the market value of not only that season, but the season or two before.<\/p>\n

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Plus, Garcia now can rest assured that no matter what happens in his career, he\u2019s got life-changing money secured for himself and his family. That sort of peace of mind is designed to help a player achieve his maximum potential.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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A strong left side of the infield has been a hallmark of countless championship baseball teams in years past. The Royals have arguably the strongest left side in the game already, and both players are young enough to still be on their parents\u2019 health insurance.<\/p>\n

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Buying out one year of free agency might not sound game-changing to some, but the Royals are also sending a message here that they believe in the bones of this roster, and while locking in the core, the implication is that they\u2019ll supplement the roster with the pieces necessary to put them over the top.<\/p>\n

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More MLB: <\/strong><\/em>Royals Insider Confirms What Fans Already Knew About Lane Thomas Signing<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.si.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Extend Maikel Garcia” will no longer be the refrain of Kansas City Royals. Garcia, the Royals’ 25-year-old third baseman, enjoyed a breakout season in 2025. He upped his OPS by 186 points, made his first All-Star team, and racked up 5.8 bWAR, tying Jos\u00e9 Ram\u00edrez for the top mark among all third basemen in Major […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2197723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2197722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Royals-Maikel-Garcia-Extension-Comes-With-Virtually-No-Downside.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2197722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2197722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2197722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2197724,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2197722\/revisions\/2197724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2197723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2197722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2197722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2197722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}