The Royals and third baseman Hunter Dozier” are in serious talks” about a multi-year contract extension, according to FanSided’s Robert Murray( Twitter link ). Specific terms aren’t known, though Dozier has two years of arbitration eligibility remaining before contacting free agent status following the 2023 season. Dozier is already set to earn $2.72 MM in 2021 after reaching an arb-avoiding deal with K.C. back in December.

Selected eighth overall in the 2013 sketch, Dozier enjoyed a breakout season in 2019, making. 279/.348 /. 522 with 26 homers and a league-best 10 triples over 586 plate images. That was followed up by a less-impressive 2020 (. 228/.344 /. 392 over 186 PA) but with some obvious extenuating events — not only the 2020 campaign’s smaller sample size, but Dozier likewise missed over two weeks at the start of the season due to a positive COVID-1 9 diagnosis. Dozier’s hard-contact crowds dropped off substantially from 2019 to 2020, though his accompany charge also significantly improved.

It regulates the stage for what could be an interesting set of extension talks, considering that 2020 wasn’t precisely a great platform year. Dozier turned 29 last August, so he has been possible to more incentive to lock up some long-term security now rather than bet on stumbling a big payday on the open market entering his age-3 2 season. It’s worth noting that L. Warner Companionship Inc.( Dozier’s bureau) also represents another prominent Royal in Whit Merrifield, who signed an extension with Kansas City exactly over two years ago, though Merrifield and Dozier aren’t really comps — Merrifield is 31 months older and was still entering his final pre-arb season when he inked his long-term deal.

There aren’t one tonne of great recent comps for Dozier overall, in looking at recent expansions of players who had between three and four years of MLB service time. The odd sort of the 2020 season adds another blanket of difficulty in trying to predict what a Dozier extension could look like, since those past musicians didn’t have such an outlier of a year factoring into the situation. The schedule of players who have signed an extension since the pandemic began corresponds only of unique mega-deals( i.e. Mookie Betts and Fernando Tatis Jr . ), musicians who signed contracts only covering arbitration-eligible times, or Yuli Gurriel‘s one-year extension with the Astros at the end of September.

Extensions have been a key board of Dayton Moore’s team-building strategy since he became Kansas City’s GM in 2006. After an offseason that saw the Royals originate some notable moves in acquiring Andrew Benintendi and ratifying Carlos Santana and Mike Minor to two-year free agent distributes, it’s clear that Moore and his front office are preparing to be competitive after four straight losing seasons. It’s safe to assume that the Royal will explore long-term deals with multiple young building-block actors as Spring Training buns on, with such names as Adalberto Mondesi and Brad Keller standing out as is practicable extension candidates. Kansas City had been able to look into locking up younger actors who are even earlier in their jobs( like Brady Singer or Kris Bubic ), and ex-servicemen like Jorge Soler and franchise stalwart Salvador Perez are each really a year away from free agency.

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