<\/p>\n
The Royals and right-hander Aaron Sanchez<\/a><\/strong> are in agreement on a minor league contract, reports Robert Murray of Fansided<\/a>. The former Blue Jays All-Star will be in big league camp as a non-roster invitee. Sanchez would earn $1.5MM on the big league roster and has another $1.35MM available to him via incentives, a source tells MLBTR. The contract contains opt-out\/release dates on April 15 and May 15, per Murray\u2019s report. Sanchez is represented by Smooth Baseball.<\/p>\n Sanchez hasn\u2019t pitched in the majors since 2022 and was out of baseball entirely in 2025. The 33-year-old set his sights on a comeback effort this winter though and more than earned a look with a big league club while pitching in the Dominican Winter League. He started eight games, pitched 46 1\/3 innings and recorded a pristine 1.55 earned run average. Sanchez\u2019s 19.1% strikeout rate isn\u2019t much to look at, but he also walked only 5% of his opponents and has always been more of a ground-ball pitcher than a premium strikeout arm anyhow (career 52.7% grounder rate).<\/p>\n A former top prospect and No. 34 overall draft pick with the Blue Jays, Sanchez looked like a budding star in 2016. He paced the American League with a flat 3.00 ERA in 192 innings, finished seventh in Cy Young voting and made his lone All-Star team that year. Injuries have derailed him since. In addition to recurring blister troubles on his pitching hand, Sanchez has been plagued by a lat strain, a biceps strain and a torn capsule in his right shoulder.<\/p>\n Since that brilliant 2016 showing, Sanchez has managed only 367 2\/3 innings in the majors. He\u2019s pitched to a 5.29 ERA with a 17.5% strikeout rate, 10.6% walk rate and 49% ground-ball rate in that time, bouncing between five major league clubs along the way.<\/p>\n The Royals have a strong rotation, but clubs are always on the hunt for low-cost depth starting pitching depth. Cole Ragans<\/a><\/strong>, Kris Bubic<\/a><\/strong>, Seth Lugo<\/a><\/strong>, Michael Wacha<\/a><\/strong> and Noah Cameron<\/a><\/strong> give the club five quality arms to carry into the season. Right-handers Alec Marsh<\/a><\/strong>, Ryan Bergert<\/a><\/strong>, Stephen Kolek<\/a><\/strong> and Mason Black<\/a><\/strong> are on the 40-man roster and all have starting experience in the majors, as does out-of-options left-hander Bailey Falter<\/a><\/strong>, who seems ticketed for a swingman role.<\/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.mlbtraderumors.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Royals and right-hander Aaron Sanchez are in agreement on a minor league contract, reports Robert Murray of Fansided. The former Blue Jays All-Star will be in big league camp as a non-roster invitee. Sanchez would earn $1.5MM on the big league roster and has another $1.35MM available to him via incentives, a source tells […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2256040,"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":[436414],"class_list":["post-2256039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-aaron-sanchez"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Royals-Aaron-Sanchez-Agree-To-Minor-League-Deal.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256039","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=2256039"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2256041,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256039\/revisions\/2256041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2256040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2256039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2256039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2256039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}