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ROYALS HEADLINES
Perez, Royals begin extension talks; long-time coach and manager to retire

By artoodeetoo
10/04/2025

10/1 -- Royals' top pitching prospect to miss 2-to-3 months of baseball activities: Ben Kudrna, who was the team's second-round pick in the 2021 draft and a top-five prospect throughout the organization, is likely to miss the next several months of baseball activities after experiencing shoulder inflammation after his final start of the season back on the 19th of September in which he pitched 5 2/3 innings of one-run baseball in a 6-4 win over Louisville.

Kudrna apparently had the option to undergo surgery with a 10-to-12 month recovery timetable, or rest and rehab without going under the knife. The second option, however, would require him to miss the next several months to allow the shoulder to heal on its own, while surgery would allow him to begin throwing sooner and getting additional work in over the offseason with the stipulation that he wouldn't be ready until mid-to-late 2026.

The 22-year-old reportedly chose the non-surgical option, meaning he should be ready either at the start of the season or soon after, but will have to forego any baseball-related activities for at least the next several months.

"Fortunately, the severity of the inflammation was not serious enough to require surgery, so the team doctors were able to give him a choice as to what he wanted to do," said GM JJ Picollo in a recent interview. "With someone as competitive as he is, I don't think he wanted to miss out on a chance to pitch in the spring and show his stuff. Surgery would take that completely off the table."

Split between Double and Triple-A in 2025, Kudrna was solid with a 4.36 ERA and nearly a strikeout per inning over twenty-three starts (117 2/3 innings of work). The ERA seems to be a little inflated, but posted FIP and SIERA marks of 3.94 and 3.66, respectively, combined between the two levels.

10/2 -- Royals, Perez have 'had discussions' on extension: Arguably the biggest piece of news prior to free agency for the Royals is what to do with veteran mainstay Salvador Perez, who is due a $13.5 million team option for 2026. However, the Royals and Perez appear to have mutual interest in scrapping the option year in favor of an extension, but would rather do it sooner than later, per Anne Rogers of MLB.com, to beat the clock on the option decision.

They'll have roughly a month to get something done, as they'll have a decision to make in early November on the team option. After that, he'd have to play on the option and then negotiate an extension while on the option year. If the Royals exercise the option, it will save them some money most likely, but could hurt the relationship between the two sides.

JJ Picollo has mentioned that Perez 'will be a Royal' in 2026, but didn't say how, pointing out that they do have the option year. However, Perez would really be doing a disservice betting on himself going into his age-36 season without trying to get some additional security in hand. A rough year could leave him at the mercy of the free agent market, as the Royals would likely have their answer(s) regarding the catcher spot going forward and could let him walk, especially with Carter Jensen now with the Royals and top prospect Blake Mitchell close behind.

Perez crossed the 1,000-RBI mark this past season, joining George Brett and Hal McRae as the third Royal to surpass that milestone. He's also just three homeruns short of 300 for his career, also needing just twenty-one to pass Brett as the Royals' all-time homerun king. He'd also become the ninth primary catcher in league history to hit 300 or more homeruns, with all but one (Lance Parrish) going into Cooperstown at some point.

"Salvador Perez is synonymous with Royals baseball, he is the guy that everyone thinks of nationally when it comes to Kansas City baseball and he's just so well-respected and admired around the league," manager Matt Quatraro said in the team's post-season press conference a few days ago. "I mean, you talk about George Brett, Frank White, Amos Otis, here with the Royals. You talk about Patrick Mahomes, Andy Reid, and Travis Kelce, if you're talking football. Tom Watson, the great PGA Tour golfer, is from here. Sal belongs up there, for sure. People come to see guys like Bobby Witt and Vinnie Pasquantino play, but Sal is the glue that binds it all together. He's seen a lot of winning, and he's seen some tough times, so he's really the perfect guy to be the ambassador for Royals baseball around the league."

10/3 -- Omaha's Jirschele calls it a career: One of the longest-tenured coaches in the history of the franchise at any level, Mike Jirschele has decided to officially retire from baseball. The 66-year-old is stepping away from the game as Omaha's all-time winningest manager with 1,214 wins, and also collected over 1,600 wins as a minor league manager in his career, covering High-A and Double-A, as well as Triple-A.

He spent all of his post-playing career with the Royals' organization in various coaching and development roles, covering nearly 40 years. A fifth-round pick of the Rangers back in 1977, Jirschele had a standing offer to play quarterback at Wisconsin, but turned it down to sign with Texas. He retired from playing after the 1989 season having never reached the majors, but had several stints in Triple-A.

"He's a titan of this organization, and someone I'm proud to call a friend as well as a colleague," Royals GM JJ Picollo said in a statement. "We wish Mike the best as he moves on to a new chapter of his life, but we sure hope that he's not a complete stranger. Whoever replaces him has some massive shoes to fill."

But what he's most going to be rather infamously known for is holding Alex Gordon at third base in Game 7 of the 2014 World Series against San Francisco in the bottom of the ninth. In 2019, he had an interview with then-Royals beat writer Jeffrey Flanagan of MLB.com, and explained his decision much further in detail in that piece.

"When Alex (Gordon) came up, I was just thinking about the situation -- we were down 3-2, one out left," he started to explain to Flanagan. "I was just hoping we could get something going, anything. I also was hoping Alex or the next guy up, Salvy, could maybe pop one out of the park. They were both capable. And Salvy already had taken Madison Bumgarner deep earlier in the series."

Multiple screenshots and videos showed that Gordon likely had no chance to score, given that shortstop Brandon Crawford, a Gold Glove-winning shortstop, handled the relay throw from the outfield about as well as you could have. And Gordon, who was not a runner already on base, but was the batter on the play, was running out of steam, per Jirschele.

"We all knew Crawford had an above-average arm and above-average accuracy. I was really hoping for a bad throw, even though Gordo was really starting to run out of gas," he said later on. "Those were my reads, and I’m just praying for any kind of a bad throw. Well, the throw comes into Crawford on one hop, but he fields it perfectly."

"Now I’m watching to see if he fumbles the exchange at all. But he didn’t. Gordo had just gotten to third base and Crawford had made the exchange cleanly and he was only about 25-to-30 feet past the infield. I knew then we had no chance, so I held Gordo up. With that much of an accurate arm, I never thought twice about sending him. He would have had no chance."

Picollo said that they'll start a "league-wide" search, but the Royals have largely promoted from within in the minor league ranks for much of their history, and that is not expected to change. Some internal candidates that make sense would be current Omaha pitching coach Dane Johnson, Dominican League Ventura manager Ramon Martinez, and Double-A NW Arkansas manager Brooks Conrad.

It's also an opportunity for someone like current third base coach Vance Wilson to manage his own dugout and get some experience as the main decision-maker, but reports are that he could be a managerial candidate with some of the open positions at the MLB level.

10/4 -- John Sherman talks payroll, roster building: The Royals will likely enter the 2025-26 offseason with almost $170 million in obligations, but that means that every arbitration-eligible player will sign for their Fangraphs estimate, and that all under-contract players return for the following season, which almost never happens.

Controlling owner John Sherman has said that payroll is generally fluid, but has always leaned on his top personnel executive in JJ Picollo to 'make his case' for a player or players that he and his staff feel will make the team better.

"JJ and I are constantly having discussions on players that we think could help our club next year," he said in an interview with MLB.com's Anne Rogers. "Would we like to be competitive at a lower payroll? Sure, but sometimes that's just not the reality if you want to field a winning team."

The Royals under Sherman's ownership have not been afraid to spend, especially to attract and retain players. Winning and competing for playoff berths also helps, along with having one of the best pitching minds in baseball in Brian Sweeney as pitching coach. They have signed Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha to not one, but two contracts each, along with extensions for Bobby Witt Jr and Cole Ragans. They appear to have some mutual interest in negotiating an extension for long-time franchise mainstay Salvador Perez, but nothing has come on that front yet.

The trades that Picollo has made with Sherman's blessing, especially the Ragans deal and this past July, have already been huge wins for the organization. Stephen Kolek and Ryan Bergert look like pitchers that could stick in the rotation; and they received some nice contributions from Mike Yastrzemski, Randal Grichuk, and Adam Frazier.

"We're really proud of what we've done in a short time with the staff that we have," he went on to say. "We're not satisfied yet for sure, and there's room for improvement, but I'm pleased that things are trending upward in a lot of aspects around the organization."

Rogers went on to ask about the hitting struggles, and while Sherman largely demurred on the topic, he did admit that they "need additional help" in that regard.

"I'll let JJ and his staff speak on the personnel side, but yes, there were times that we struggled to string together much offense," he said. "Part of that is having a lot of young players on the roster, but some of it also was just some regression by veteran players who played really, really well last year in 2024. The key is to ensure that you limit your weak spots down the lineup and keep the pressure off some of the more veteran players."