Royals sign starter Ryan Yarbrough to one-year, $3M deal

Yarbrough worked 80 innings, his lowest workload in a 162-game season since debuting. He put up a 4.50 ERA, allowing 1.35 homers per nine innings. The former fourth-round draftee continued to demonstrate strong control, walking only 6.2% of batters faced. His 17.2% strikeout rate was a career low but not drastically below his previous marks, as he’s never been one to miss many bats.

Without a power arsenal, Yarbrough has succeeded on deception and an ability to avoid hard contact. He hasn’t been quite so effective at avoiding barrels in recent seasons as he was for his first three years, perhaps thanks to a dip in velocity. Yarbrough has never averaged even 90 MPH on his fastball, but he’d been in the 87-89 MPH range early in his career. For the past two seasons, his average fastball has checked in below 86 MPH. The cutter, which he uses as his primary pitch, has dipped into the low-80s after previously sitting as high as 86.9 MPH in 2018.

The Rays moved on from Yarbrough in lieu of an arbitration salary that’d been projected by MLBTR contributor at $4.2M. He’ll move to the spacious Kauffman Stadium in hopes of getting the longball back in check in 2023. Yarbourgh reunites there with first-year skipper Matt Quatraro, who’d spent the last four seasons on the Tampa Bay staff as bench coach. With between four and five years of MLB service, he’ll be eligible for arbitration again next offseason. If Yarbrough rights the ship, the Royals can keep him around through the end of 2024 despite only guaranteeing him one year.

It’s a modest price point for K.C., whose projected payroll now sits around $78M, per Roster Resource. The Royals opened this past season at around $95M in player spending. Nevertheless, GM J.J. Picollo suggested earlier this offseason the team wasn’t operating with much spending capacity. An affordable roll of the dice on Yarbrough makes plenty of sense, particularly given the new skipper’s ties to the southpaw.

The Royals could plug Yarbrough into either the rotation or long relief. Brady Singer has one rotation spot sewn up, but the rest of the staff seems open. Daniel Lynch will likely be back in the front five after starting 27 games in 2022, with Yarbrough joining Kris Bubic, Brad Keller, Carlos Hernández, Max Castillo, Jonathan Bowlan and Angel Zerpa among those who could jostle for starts. Adding another starter this winter seems likely, and the Royals could certainly look to bring back Zack Greinke on another one-year free agent deal.

Mills joined the Royals last summer in the deal with the Mariners that offloaded some of the money owed to Carlos Santana. He made 19 MLB appearances in Kansas City, working to a 4.79 ERA across 20 2/3 innings. The righty posted slightly worse than average strikeout and walk numbers (21.3% and 10.6%, respectively) over that stretch. He punched out a massive 39.7% of batters faced in 13 outings for Triple-A Omaha, but he also walked more than 17% of opponents in that look.

Kansas City will now have a week to trade the 27-year-old (28 next month) or place him on waivers. Mills has a minor league option year remaining, so a team that acquires him would be able to move him between MLB and Triple-A next season.