“Our Job Is to Put People in the Seats”
Talking to Royals general manager J.J. Picollo about the future, the present and trying to win NOW.
There’s a certain excitement that comes with watching your team go for it. Well, actually, wait, I’m not sure “excitement” is the right word—what’s the opposite of frustration? Joy? No, not quite. Thrill? No, that’s not it. Satisfaction?
Yeah, maybe satisfaction is right. There’s a certain satisfaction that comes with watching your team go for it.
Which is to say you feel exactly the opposite of the frustration that comes when you watch your team most definitely NOT go for it.
The Kansas City Royals are going for it. This is a team that lost 106 games last year and then, crazily, spent the offseason DOING STUFF to get better. It wasn’t big headline stuff; almost nobody outside of Kansas City paid much attention. But they signed veteran reliever Will Smith, who led the World Series-winning Rangers in saves. Smith was not great in doing so, but he had been an effective reliever for more than a decade, and so the Royals threw him $5 million and figured he’d help out in the bullpen. He led directly to them signing Chris Stratton four days later.
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In between, they signed another veteran pitcher, this time a starter, Seth Lugo, for $30 million. Lugo had pitched pretty well in San Diego in 2023, and the Royals badly needed pitching. It was a moonshot, sure, but sometimes those work, and Lugo has been one of the best starters in the American League.
They signed veteran Michael Wacha with the same hopes… he hasn’t been quite as good as Lugo, but he’s been effective (118 ERA+ in 101 innings). They brought in Hunter Renfroe in the hope that he could give them a little pop. They traded for reliever John Schreiber, who gave them some decent innings coming out of the pen. before he got hurt.
They locked in their breathtaking young superstar, Bobby Witt Jr., for the next decade. That was their big headline move.
And they tried a bunch of other things, too, throwing spaghetti at walls. Some of the moves have worked better than expected. Some have not worked at all. That’s how it goes in baseball and in life. But the point here is