Brock Beauchamp

The 2026 MLB season is right around the corner, and we're looking to expand our video coverage. Have you ever considered being on-camera and talking about the Royals? If yes, we'd love to talk to you about it. Our videos are typically in a wide variety of styles: breaking news, analysis, and historical study. We're open to any and all ideas as long as they're centered around the Kansas City Royals. We're looking for serious baseball talk, so leave the hot takes at home. If you'd like to learn more about this cool little side gig, please email Brock Beauchamp at brock.beauchamp@royalskeep.com. Here is an example of a recent Royals video from us: View full rumor

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I'd be cautious with expectations of Collins. He was out over his skis last season. He might be a good player going forward, but I don't feel 2025 was indicative of his talent level.

The Royals are still looking to be active in the trade market, and two new names have been added to their interest list, writes Jeff Passan of ESPN. The Royals have been linked to the Red Sox's Jarren Duran for months, but are now apparently interested in the Nationals' infielder CJ Abrams and, more surprisingly, their young starting pitcher MacKenzie Gore. To read about potential matchups in a trade for Jarren Duran, click here to read our in-depth piece on scenarios. MacKenzie Gore: The 26-year-old left-hander is arbitration-eligible, with club control through 2028. In 2024, he made 32 starts and logged 166 1/3 innings with a 24.8% K%, 8.9% BB%, 3.53 FIP, and 3.2 fWAR. In 2025, he started 30 games and threw 159 2/3 innings with a 27.2% K%, 9.4% BB%, 3.74 FIP, and 2.9 fWAR. CJ Abrams: Abrams is 25 and arbitration-eligible, also with club control through 2028. In 2024, he logged 602 plate appearances with 20 homers, 31 steals, a .246/.314/.433 line, .322 wOBA, 106 wRC+, and 1.9 fWAR, plus -18 OAA at shortstop. He's brutal defensively at short, which makes a position switch likely. In 2025, he reached 635 plate appearances with 19 homers, 31 steals, .257/.315/.433, .324 wOBA, 107 wRC+, 3.1 fWAR, and -11 OAA, with a 5.8% BB% and 19.7% K%. View full rumor

Katie Woo and Fabian A, writing for The Athletic, reported that the Royals are interested in slugging Dodgers outfielder Teoscar Hernandez. Interested in learning more about Hernandez? Read our in-depth write-up on him as a trade candidate. Before the 2024 season, Hernandez signed a one-year, $23.5 million contract with Los Angeles. After the season, he declined the club’s qualifying offer and became a free agent. In early January 2025, he rejoined the Dodgers on a three-year, $66 million contract that runs through 2027, with a $15 million club option for 2028. In 2024, with the Dodgers, he appeared in 154 games and logged 652 plate appearances, hitting .272/.339/.501 with 33 home runs. In 2025, he played 134 games and collected 546 plate appearances, hitting .247/.284/.454 with 25 home runs, a 4.8 percent walk rate, a 24.5 percent strikeout rate, an .207 isolated power, and a .315 wOBA with a 102 wRC+. View full rumor

Anne Rogers, in her latest rundown from the Winter Meetings, mentioned that the Kansas City Royals are receiving interest in several of their young players. Noah Cameron, Ryan Bergert, and Stephen Kolek all finished 2025 on the big-league pitching staff. Cameron worked 138 1/3 innings with a 2.99 ERA, 109 hits allowed, 46 earned runs, 43 walks, and 114 strikeouts. His line included a FIP of 4.18, with 7.4 strikeouts and 2.8 walks per 9 innings. Bergert split his debut season between San Diego and Kansas City, totaling 76 1/3 innings with a 3.66 ERA, 4.00 FIP, 61 hits allowed, 35 walks, and 73 strikeouts. Kolek also pitched for both clubs in 2025 and finished with 112 2/3 innings, 98 hits allowed, 44 earned runs, 31 walks, and 77 strikeouts, producing a 3.51 ERA (3.82 FIP). From a team control and expense standpoint, all three are pre-arbitration. Players do not become arbitration-eligible until roughly three years of service, and do not reach free agency until about six years. As recent rookies with less than two years of service time, Cameron, Bergert, and Kolek are projected to remain under club control for at least half a decade. View full rumor

This is an excellent article on seam-shifted wake from Brewer Fanatic. Really detailed, fascinating stuff about pitching. https://brewerfanatic.com/news-rumors/milwaukee-brewers/the-most-impactful-pitching-advancement-of-this-decade-understanding-seam-shifted-wake-r3992/

Oh, I'm almost certain it's way under 50%.

Shoot me an email, and we'll keep talking there! brock.beauchamp@royalskeep.com

Welcome to Royals Keep!

Has there been any information about what the Royals expect to have in payroll this year? I haven't seen anything. I assume it's going up, but is that a wrong assertion?

We're looking for contributors to write Royals content over the offseason! First, feel free to reach out via email at brock.beauchamp@royalskeep.com or reply to this article. Writing Articles If you’ve ever wanted an audience for your Royals takes, this is the perfect place. While we generally lean into analytics and analysis, we also take a “come as you are” approach to baseball and give writers a lot of leeway to write about the game in a way that interests them. That could manifest in historical pieces, previews, or regular series. It’s a matter of finding your niche in the fandom and carving out a space for it. Making Videos We're also looking for videographers! Most of our content is on the shorter side (3-7 minutes), though we have space for plenty of different formats and ideas. Like the writing side of the site, we usually lean into analytics, but it's not the only path we're open to exploring. It is also noteworthy that we pay our content creators. It’s certainly not enough to quit your day job. So don’t do that. However, it might be enough to show that we value your time, talent, and effort. If you know someone who might be interested in creating Royals content as a side job, please share this with them! View full rumor

Welcome to Royals Keep!

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images Every offseason, we offer our You’re The GM! tool to build your ideal Royals roster. This year, we’ve updated and streamlined the tool a bit to improve the experience. The idea behind this feature is to give fans a chance to play the role of General Manager (or CBO or PoBO… you get the idea) for their favorite team, the Kansas City Royals. It’s meant to give fans the opportunity to discuss (and, let’s be honest, argue) how they would approach the long, dark MLB offseason. This tool is intended to be informal and fun, so we’ve left it as open as possible. There is a payroll “budget” that loosely resembles the Royals' 2025 payroll, but there is no penalty for going over that number. It’s a guideline, nothing more. Second, you can submit as many blueprints as you like throughout the offseason. As the offseason landscape changes, users often return multiple times over the winter and create new blueprints. Before we get into the breakdown of the tool, you can save your blueprint and come back to it at any time. The only restriction is that you must register an account on the site to create a blueprint (so we can save a draft for you and also post the blueprint for others to discuss). Let’s get into the tool itself. It has four quadrants that work best if addressed in a counter-clockwise order (this tool works much better on a desktop due to its complexity, but it will work on mobile devices if need be). Top Left: The 26-Man Roster We have created a rough guideline for the Royals' 26-man roster today. The roster is flexible; you can add or remove players as you see fit. We’ve also included either guaranteed salaries or, in the case of arbitration and contract options, the recommendations of MLB Trade Rumors. This section is where you build your roster and make changes based on the following two sections. As you make changes to players and salaries, the total payroll number (right side of the screen) will change, allowing you to track your budget on the fly. The bottom field in both columns is for any dead money you assume during the course of your offseason. Acquiring dead money should be uncommon, but we want to give users the option to take on dead salary if it suits their purposes. Bottom Left: Arbitration & Trade Decisions Here, you will find a selection of arbitration options and internal options (usually from the 40-man roster or minor leagues) to assist in building your offseason roster. On the right-hand side of this column, you will see Trade Candidates, a list of the 40 players most likely to be traded this offseason, per MLB Trade Rumors. To help you get up to speed with these candidates, we offer a direct link to the MLBTR write-up on trade candidates. Bottom Right: Free Agents Here, you will find the top 50 free agents, again per MLB Trade Rumors. These are sorted by position to facilitate quickly finding your desired free agent and include the recommended salary for that player. Because this is a blueprint for a single year, we only include their projected salary for the coming season, not the number of years or anything else. To help you get up to speed with these free agents, we offer a direct link to the MLBTR write-up on the best 50 free agents available this winter. Top Right: Dead Money, Your Total Payroll, & Commentary The only unalterable field on the page is Dead Money; it is players to whom the team has committed money but has no reasonable way to get out of the contract. Below that, you will see the recommended budget, your current total, and the percentage you are over or under that budget. Again, keep in mind the budget is only a guideline, and you can go above it as much as you like… But defend your choices, coward! The following field is Title, which gives other users an idea of what to expect with your blueprint (e.g., Be Unreasonable, Sign Kyle Tucker!). When your blueprint posts for other users, it will read “Your Username’s 2025 Payroll Blueprint: Be Unreasonable, Sign Kyle Tucker!”. The following field is Your Comments & Explanation, a long-form field meant to type out the rationale behind your decisions. Here is the place to fully explain your trades (including which players are leaving the Royals to bring in new players), why you targeted specific free agents, and any promotions from the minors you advocate or any options you declined to extend to a specific player. This is often multiple paragraphs; you can write up as much detail as you desire. That’s it, you’re done! At this point, you can either publish your blueprint to the forums or save it for later if you feel it’s incomplete. Thank you for joining us at Royals Keep. I hope you enjoy playing the role of general manager, at least for a moment! Start Your Payroll Blueprint Now View full article

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