Opening baseball’s vaults

Dalton Vitt

It’s 2016, the New York Yankees are constructing their roster in a way that mirrors the Kansas City Royals and, meanwhile, KC itself is handing out gunnysacks of cash like Dayton Moore is the man in a ski mask behind the teller’s desk.

As baseball continues growing and changing in the 21st century, the one constant over the last 15 years has been the influx of big-money spending from nearly every club in the game. No longer do we assume every looming free agent will board a plane to New York or Los Angeles — though that’s still a decent bet.

Sure, the Red Sox and Cubs landed two of the three largest contracts this offseason, so there’s no surprise there. But Arizona swooped in to steal Zack Greinke from re-upping with the Dodgers, and Baltimore swatted away competitors in order to bring slugger Chris Davis back for the next seven years. (All it took was $161 million — chump change!)

But two of the most peculiar signings of the offseason took place right here, the land of the cheap and home of the financially savvy Royals.

In a classic chicken-or-the-egg example, what comes first: Paying big money to keep/sign players and then win championships, or prove that you’re a contending team so ownership will open the pocketbook? In Kansas City’s case, Moore assembled an incredible farm system, allowed those players to prove their merit at the big league level, and then slowly pried open David Glass’ wallet over the span of two or three offseasons.

That wallet is ripped to shreds now.

While KC fans enjoyed the first surprising and then fateful World Series runs in 2014 and 2015, it was in the back of every diehard’s mind that this core and its window would likely shut after 2017. A monster crop of the Royals’ most productive players are set to hit the open market before the 2018 season, including Lorenzo Cain, Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Alcides Escobar, Wade Davis, and several others.

In moves that both support that all-too-true fact and point toward Kansas City doing everything it can to jam that window open, Moore brought back Alex Gordon and reeled in Ian Kennedy with franchise-record contracts.

First, Gordon re-signed for his four-year, $72 million deal that snapped the previous Royals free agent record deal of $55 million to Gil Meche and Mike Sweeney. Destiny, right? Kansas City’s front office was just making an exception for the organization’s Golden Boy, right?

Eh, kind of. Less than two weeks later, reports surfaced on a Saturday morning that Ian Kennedy would sign a five-year, $70 million contract with the Royals to help shore up a shallow rotation. If you’re keeping score at home, this signing would’ve been the largest free agent splash in franchise history had Gordon not hopped back on board. (Let’s hope the Chiefs loss that came later that same Saturday of Kennedy’s signing isn’t a bad omen.)

Plenty of smart baseball people refused to believe Kansas City had deep enough pockets to match Gordon’s market value. But absolutely no one outside the front office foresaw this team committing $140 million to two players this winter.

But this is where the baseball world finds itself. With record amounts of money flooding in from TV contracts (although the Royals’ local one is pitiful) and gargantuan dollar figures exponentially increasing with revenue sharing, even the small fish like Kansas City can make a big splash.

Whether or not you like the Royals or Rays or Twins or any other small market franchise shouldn’t matter. Millions of people watch the NFL every Sunday in part because any team can win on any given day with the parity that comes with a hard salary cap and other tools that level the field.

That’s where baseball has been and still is heading. We, as fans, are no longer relegated to the sorrow certainty of an annual Yankees trip to the World Series. New York, to stick with the example, has backed off its money-dumping binge spending of the 1990s and 2000s to the delight of non-Evil Empire fans around baseball. Couple this with the fact that teams like Arizona, Kansas City, Toronto, and Seattle are forking over larger sums of money than ever before, and you get a much less predictable product on the field.

Influxes of cash to every corner of the baseball landscape means there’s more to go around, and although small market teams will always operate on slightly smaller budgets (it’s still a business, you know) at least the Royals, for now, don’t have to suffer through the same fates as they did with Jermaine Dye, Johnny Damon, or Carlos Beltran.

So debate whether or not Kennedy is worth $70 million all you want, but know that if nothing else, it’s the ultimate test of faith in a front office that’s done nothing but press the right buttons and now has the finances to operate an even larger control board.

Even though Kansas City’s championship window appears to have two seasons left before it slams shut, don’t fret. With what appears to be a genius front office coupled with a growing budget, another one could open soon after.