KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) – Nearly a decade ago, international scouts from the Kansas City Royals signed a frail 16-year-old from Venezuela with athleticism, bat-to-ball skills and defensive prowess.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only thing he didn\u2019t have was strength,\u201d Royals executive vice president and general manager J.J. Picollo said. \u201cWhen that strength was coming, we started to realize we had a pretty special player.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wednesday morning inside Kauffman Stadium, the Royals made official a multi-year commitment to that now 25-year-old, Maikel Garcia, commemorating a five-year extension with a press conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a great day,\u201d said Picollo. \u201cWhen I think about a lot of the players that we sign like Maikel, the 16-year-old Latin player, they are young, they are 130 pounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c128,\u201d Garcia interjected to laughs in the room, which included his mother and agent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey sign for $30,000 and have an opportunity to play baseball and play professional baseball,\u201d Picollo continued. \u201cYou can only hope that somebody gets to the Major Leagues, let alone gets to this point.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Royals were the only team to give me the opportunity to play baseball and that was the only offer I had when I was young,\u201d Garcia recalled. \u201cI always appreciate the Royals for the opportunity and I know that I just needed an opportunity to play baseball and then I would make the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Garcia got to this point a year after the Royals began extension talks during Spring Training ahead of the 2024 season. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then \u201824 didn\u2019t quite go the way we all wanted to go,\u201d Picollo said, \u201cand luckily he understood where we were.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2025, after not being an Opening Day starter, Garcia blossomed into a surprise All-Star in the American League. Posting career bests in WAR, hits, walks, doubles, home runs and RBI, Garcia won a Gold Glove at third base and was a Silver Slugger finalist.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s exciting to know I want to play third base after winning the (Gold Glove),\u201d Garcia said. \u201cI feel like I\u2019m a natural third baseman.\u201d<\/p>\n
Garcia\u2019s deal keeps him with the Royals through at least 2030 and includes a club option for 2031. It has a base salary of $57.5 million and incentives that could result in the La Sabana, Venezuela, native making up to $85 million, according to a report from MLB.com\u2019s Anne Rogers. It also was done while the Royals still had four years of club control over Garcia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted security,\u201d Garcia said of signing the deal before the 2026 season. \u201cMy family\u2019s good. Don\u2019t worry about money. Just focus this year and play baseball and help the team to play better. And we want to bring the championship back to this city.\u201d<\/p>\n
The deal solidifies the left side of the infield along with superstar shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. for years to come, something that excites Picollo and the Royals.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur pitchers like it, because there\u2019s not a lot getting past the left side of the infield,\u201d Picollo said with Garcia and Witt Jr. each bringing home Gold Gloves in 2025. \u201cI think the way this thing has evolved, the way his bat\u2019s evolved, we\u2019re not going to move off of that right now. With Bobby and Maikel, it\u2019s pretty secure. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re going to stay young, their bodies are going to stay young. There\u2019s a lot of range there and reason to think they\u2019ll both continue to get better because they both work at it. And more than anything they love playing.\u201d<\/p>\n In consecutive offseasons, the Royals have now signed Garcia and Witt Jr. to contract extensions and pushed their payroll beyond where it has typically been for the franchise in previous decades relative to the rest of the MLB. <\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s a clear sign from ownership, the support we\u2019re getting, the belief in what we have on the field, the commitment to trying to win year in, year out,\u201d Picollo said. \u201cWhen teams make commitments like this to players, I think it\u2019s a clear indication that we\u2019re going to take care of our players. When they do things on the field, we\u2019re going to recognize it and try to keep them longer than the six years that we have them.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, Garcia sets his sights on helping the Royals reach the playoffs again in 2026 and on his goal of playing all 162 games. <\/p>\n \u201cI want to play the same way I did this year and be ready every day to help the team,\u201d Garcia said.<\/p>\n Copyright 2025 KCTV. All rights reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \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.kctv5.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) – Nearly a decade ago, international scouts from the Kansas City Royals signed a frail 16-year-old from Venezuela with athleticism, bat-to-ball skills and defensive prowess. \u201cThe only thing he didn\u2019t have was strength,\u201d Royals executive vice president and general manager J.J. Picollo said. \u201cWhen that strength was coming, we started to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":[425310,425309,425308],"class_list":["post-2203165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-royalty","tag-j-j-picollo-speaks-on-garcia-contract-extension","tag-kansas-city-royals-contract-extension","tag-maikel-garcia-extension"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203165","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=2203165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2203166,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203165\/revisions\/2203166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2203165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2203165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2203165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Kansas](\"https:\/\/gray-kctv-prod.gtv-cdn.com\/resizer\/v2\/RA25XJVMD5GHVOJGQIT74JNFNU.jpg?auth=36d770784b0ebd4439c8e8fabd3dafbfbda1957590048c477ec086e85c997f82&width=980&height=653&smart=true\")
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