As such, the Royals have several talented veterans, none of whom are remotely likely to be in Kansas City the next time the team is good. It’s not a great sign for a rebuilding club when the offensive players with the most projected WAR remaining in their careers are largely the oldest ones. Adalberto Mondesi is the exception at age-25, at the top of the team with 19.6 estimated wins remaining, followed by Whit Merrifield, Jorge Soler, Salvador Perez, and Franchy Cordero. If you’re keeping score, that’s a 32-year-old outfielder, a 31-year-old injury-prone catcher, a late-20s designated hitter, and a player who last had 200 plate appearances in a season in 2017. Bobby Witt Jr. is the only position player under 25 with a mean projection of five wins in the majors in his entire career. Only Lucius Fox and MJ Melendez even project above replacement level.

Merrifield is a durable and flexible player and if the Royals aren’t an enjoyable franchise, you can least enjoy him in his last few years with the team. To suggest the Royals trade him is probably a lost cause at this point; they wouldn’t trade him for the offers of two years ago and he has a lot less trade value now. And while his 2020 wasn’t anything notable, Jorge Soler’s power is great fun to watch and when he’s both healthy and “on,” as he was in 2019, he can pile up as many homers as I do tweets involving tacos. ZiPS is more bullish on Soler than Steamer is, so he’s one of the points to watch in Projection Thunderdome.

While it doesn’t affect the trajectory of the team, it was nice to see Salvador Perez’s comeback in 2020. After missing 2019 with Tommy John surgery resulting from a spring workout elbow tear, Perez returned to crush 11 round-trippers in just 37 games, finishing at 1.9 WAR, his highest total since 2014. His caught-stealing rate behind the plate was one of the lowest of his career at 27%, but it’s a ludicrously small sample with only 11 attempts; just catching one more runner would have landed him at 36%, slightly above his career-average. No, Perez didn’t return as a highly-disciplined, Joey Votto-esque hitting professor or anything — he is what he is at this point in his career — but watching him attack every pitcher and occasionally come out ahead is fun. If the Royals aren’t going to be good, at least they can be fun.

Pitchers

I wouldn’t describe the rotation as contention-ready or even good, but it might be…goodish? Goodishish? ZiPS doesn’t see much upside in the rotation, but does think the five starters the Royals are likely to field are both best candidates for the job and likely to be above replacement level. There are two places here I’m more bullish than the computer. The first is Danny Duffy; I might just be overly sentimental, but I still have this feeling that he has an ace-like season left in the tank. The other is Carlos Hernandez. I’m not offended that the computer doesn’t know what to make of him; after never pitching above the Sally League, Hernandez and his 96-97 mph fastball were not completely overmatched in his short stint in the majors. This season presented less-than-ideal circumstances to throw a young, talented pitcher into, but I give the Royals a lot of credit for being forward-thinking. They were never going to be good this season and there just wasn’t an opportunity to pitch guys like Hernandez against appropriate-level minor league pitching in 2020.