\n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n\tYancen Pujols, via El Extra Base’s Daniel Alvarez-Montes, reported early this morning that Marte and the Royals had progressed in talks and were close to signing a deal to bring him to Kansas City.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Royals have shown interest in Marte before. Last year, a possible deal at the Winter Meetings would’ve brought Marte to Kansas City in exchange for reliever Hunter Harvey<\/a>. However, the deal couldn’t be finalized. Marte was also a free agent this winter, and there were rumblings that he fit what the Royals were looking for in the outfield for 2026<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \n\tMarte has a career 35.9 fWAR and is a two-time All-Star and Gold Glove award winner. He’s been beset by injuries over the past few years, as he hasn’t had more than 370 plate appearances in a season since 2022, his first season with the Mets. Last season, in 329 plate appearances, he slashed .270\/.335\/.410 with a .326 wOBA, 112 wRC+, and 0.7 fWAR. He also had nine home runs, 37 runs scored, 34 RBI, and seven stolen bases.\n<\/p>\n \n\tIn terms of his Statcast percentiles, he showed a decent 90th percentile exit velocity and ranked in the 52nd percentile in strikeout rate. However, he is definitely a player in the later stages of his career, as illustrated in his TJ Stats summary from 2025 below.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n \n\t \n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n \n\tDespite this declining skill set, it’s likely that Marte will be a platoon bat who will rotate among all three outfield positions with Isaac Collins<\/a>, Kyle Isbel<\/a>, and Jac Caglianone<\/a>. MLB.com Royals beat writer Anne Rogers reported that Marte, who is coming to Kansas City on a one-year deal, will be utilized mostly as a depth piece off the bench, but he could earn more playing time if he produces like he did last year or in 2024 (103 wRC+).\u00a0\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n\tIt sounds like Marte will be receiving a Major League deal, which means that the Royals will likely DFA someone on the 40-man roster to make room. Outfielders Dairon Blanco<\/a> and Drew Waters<\/a> seem like prime candidates, especially Waters, who is out of Minor League options and posted a 66 wRC+ in 219 plate appearances last season.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 On Saturday afternoon, MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand reported that the Kansas City Royals had agreed to a deal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[5,936,2123,55,2596,2595,4,252,1420],"class_list":{"0":"post-599597","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-starling-marte"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116153195922836610","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599597","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=599597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Starling](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/StarlingMarteTJ-2025.png.f813dadfaf6b56c82f0e25208bdd05f1.png\"\/)
\n<\/p>\n