{"id":562928,"date":"2026-02-09T20:41:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T20:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/562928\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T20:41:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T20:41:18","slug":"are-the-royals-actually-trying-to-contend-or-are-they-just-pretending-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/562928\/","title":{"rendered":"Are the Royals actually trying to contend or are they just pretending?"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re trying a new series at Royals Review, a daily mid-day question of the day to hear about your opinions on a fun or pressing question affecting the Royals or baseball in general. Chime in and drop your answers below!<\/p>\n

The Royals made a surprise postseason appearance in 2024, a 30-win improvement. But last year they regressed and it was easy to find a culprit – an outfield that couldn\u2019t hit. So far this offseason, the only upgrades the team has made have been trading for Isaac Collins from the Brewers and signing free agent Lane Thomas. The club is certainly banking on Jac Caglianone to bust out, but is it enough?<\/p>\n

With the Tigers signing Framber Valdez, the standard in the division has been raised. The Royals are projected by Cot\u2019s Contracts<\/a> to have a $142 million payroll, 18th-largest in baseball. That number is up from the $126 million payroll last year and would mark the largest team payroll since 2017. They have one of the best players in the game in Bobby Witt Jr., and two 100-RBI men in Salvador Perez and Vinnie Pasquantino. Caglianone and Carter Jensen are two of the most promising young hitters in baseball. They have some of the best starting pitching in the league, and two terrific relievers in Lucas Erceg and Carlos Est\u00e9vez.<\/p>\n

But is it enough to truly contend, or is the team doing just enough to make it seem like they are trying to win? What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019re trying a new series at Royals Review, a daily mid-day question of the day to hear about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[5,936,2123,55,2596,2595,4,252,72937],"class_list":{"0":"post-562928","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-royals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-kansas","10":"tag-kansas-city","11":"tag-kansas-city-royals","12":"tag-kansascity","13":"tag-kansascityroyals","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-royals","16":"tag-royals-review-question-of-the-day"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116042614948367492","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}