Sources: Witt Jr., Royals agree to $288.8M deal
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Jeff Passan, ESPN
Shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. and the Kansas City Royals are in agreement on an 11-year, $288.8 million contract extension, sources told ESPN, a staggering guarantee that will keep the young star in Kansas City as the Royals attempt to build a team — and a new stadium — with him at the center.
Witt, 23, who is entering his third major league season, was one of the best players in baseball last year, prompting the Royals to lavish upon him a deal that includes superstar money with flexibility as well. The contract will allow Witt to opt out after the seventh, eighth, ninth and 10th years, sources said. It also includes a club option after the 11th season that would tack on three years and $89 million to the contract, giving it a 14-year, $377 million ceiling.
The deal, which begins a monumental week for Kansas City sports that will end with the Chiefs playing San Francisco in the Super Bowl, guarantees Witt more than all but 15 players in baseball history. It reflects the team’s belief in Witt, who last season hit .276/.319/.495 with 30 home runs and 49 stolen bases while playing Gold Glove-caliber defense. His signing, a week before Royals players report to spring training, caps a busy winter in which the Royals moved aggressively in free agency, in part to help convince Witt that owner John Sherman was sincere in his desire to bring the Royals back to relevance less than a decade after they won the franchise’s second World Series.
Locking up Witt was the top priority for the Royals all offseason, and they secured a deal only two months before a ballot referendum in Jackson County, Missouri, to extend a three-eighths-of-a-cent tax that would help fund a new downtown Kansas City stadium for the Royals and renovate the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium.
A 6-foot-1, 200-pound shortstop whose father spent 16 years as a major league pitcher, Witt has entranced evaluators for years with his combination of power, speed, baseball know-how and high character. Kansas City scouted him heavily before selecting him with the No. 2 pick out of Colleyville, Texas, in the 2019 draft. Two months later, Sherman bought the Royals from longtime owner David Glass and inherited the most talented player to join the organization in decades.
In his first full season in 2021, Witt rocketed to Triple-A and was the unanimous minor league player of the year. At Witt’s big league debut on Opening Day in 2022, Kansas City luminaries — from the Royals’ lone Hall of Famer, George Brett, to the city’s mayor, Quinton Lucas, to the recently crowned NCAA champion Kansas men’s basketball team — showed up to see the Royals, and Witt in particular.
As a rookie, Witt’s performance matched the hype: 20 home runs, 30 stolen bases, best-in-baseball speed and a glove that could grow into something special. A better version of him showed up last season after Witt spent the spring with the United States’ World Baseball Classic team. He led the major leagues with 11 triples, bumped his home runs by 50% and his stolen bases even more, matured defensively, and cut his strikeout rate to 17.4%. Only Ronald Acuña Jr., Mookie Betts, Corey Seager and Ozzie Albies — the first three of whom finished first or second in MVP voting last year — had 30 or more homers with lower strikeout rates.
Never would the timing for an extension be better than this winter. Witt would have entered arbitration after the 2024 season and been just three years from free agency and the allure of teams far more moneyed than the Royals. Had a deal not been completed, the Royals could have begun entertaining the possibility of trading Witt — especially if it was clear they were unwilling to operate in the $250 million-plus space and dwarf their previous record contract, a four-year, $82 million extension for All-Star catcher Salvador Perez.
Sherman was. And, in doing so, he hopes not only to send the Royals on a proper trajectory after a dismal 56-106 finish in 2023 but convince fans to vote yes on putting $1 billion toward a stadium estimated to cost $2 billion and serve as the nerve center for a downtown entertainment district. The Royals’ current home, Kauffman Stadium, was built in 1973 and renovated in 2009.
Discussions have been going on between the Royals and Bobby Witt Sr., who serves as his son’s agent with Octagon, for months. Witt’s guarantee of $288 million is the second largest for a pre-arbitration player behind Fernando Tatis Jr.’s 14-year, $340 million contract and exceeds Tatis’ deal — which was previously regarded as in its own class — in annual value by around $2 million.
The opt-outs, which come after the 2030, 2031, 2032 and 2033 seasons, afford Witt the opportunity to reach free agency or renegotiate the deal, but he intends to remain with the Royals long past the first seven years, which will pay him $148 million. The deal also includes a no-trade clause and a signing bonus of $7,777,777 — perfect for the player whose No. 7 jersey is ubiquitous around Kansas City.
The commitment is an investment in trust by both sides. Big-money, long-term contracts for players as young as Witt are regarded by low-revenue teams such as Kansas City as necessary to keep players of his caliber. At the same time, they come with enough risk that teams are loath to hand them out. Only six previous players with two or fewer years in the major leagues had been given nine-figure deals. All have been All-Stars: Fernando Tatis Jr. (14 years, $340 million), Julio Rodriguez (12 years, $209 million), Wander Franco (11 years, $182 million), Mike Trout (six years, $144.5 million), Corbin Carroll (eight years, $111 million) and Acuña (eight years, $100 million).
Witt, meanwhile, is entrusting his best years to an organization that has struggled to surround him with good players in his first two years, during which the Royals went 121-203. The free agent signings of right-handers Seth Lugo (three years, $45 million) and Michael Wacha (two years, $32 million) have helped stabilize a rotation that saw a potential breakout in the second half from left-hander Cole Ragans, whom Kansas City acquired for reliever Aroldis Chapman in June. The return of first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino, who missed most of 2023 after undergoing shoulder surgery, should provide Witt with better lineup protection.
Multiple teams’ internal projection systems regard Witt as one of the 10 best players in baseball and see MVP-type seasons in his future. During his first season, Witt showed flashes of greatness, and when fans stumped to ensure he’d remain with the Royals, he said that he didn’t want to look too far ahead but that “I want to be here for a long time.”
Now, he will be.
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Ryan S. Clark
Once again, the New York Rangers are in search of a new head coach with the club announcing Saturday they have fired Peter Laviolette.
Dismissing Laviolette, who had a year remaining on his contract, comes just days after the Rangers completed what became a trying season that ended Thursday with the team failing to make the playoffs despite reaching the Eastern Conference Finals last season.
In addition to moving on from Laviolette, the Rangers also parted ways with associate coach Phil Housley.
This now means the Rangers are searching for their fourth coach since 2021 with Laviolette joining a list of fired bench bosses that includes David Quinn and Gerard Gallant.
“Today I informed Peter Laviolette and Phil Housley that we’re making a coaching change,” Rangers general manager Chris Drury said in a statement. “I want to thank them both and wish them and their families all the best going forward. Peter is first class all the way, both professionally and personally, and I am truly grateful for his passion and dedication to the Rangers in his time as head coach.”
Laviolette, who won a Stanley Cup as head coach of the Carolina Hurricanes back in 2005-06, was hired at the start of the 2023-24 season. He guided the Rangers to a 55-win season that also saw them lead the league with 114 points. They would advance to the Eastern Conference Finals where they lost to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers in six games.
Entering this season, the Rangers were once again among those teams that was expected to challenge for a Stanley Cup. They catapulted to a 12-4-1 start only to then lose five straight games, which started them down a path of struggling to find consistency.
By December, the Rangers made it known they were open for business. They traded captain Jacob Trouba, who had one year remaining on his contract, to the Anaheim Ducks. Less than two weeks later, they traded one-time prized prospect forward Kaapo Kakko to the Seattle Kraken in exchange for defenseman Will Borgen.
On Jan. 31, the Rangers signaled their intent for a playoff push when they re-acquired J.T. Miller in a trade with the Vancouver Canucks. The Rangers kept going with their roster reshuffle as the trade deadline drew closer. They traded defenseman Ryan Lindgren to the Colorado Avalanche and forward Reilly Smith back to the Vegas Golden Knights while getting defenseman Carson Soucy from the Canucks.
Even with those changes, the Rangers would lose four straight in early March before having two more stretches of three-game losing streaks which saw them fail to gain any sort of grasp in the Eastern Conference wild-card race.
Sources told ESPN’s Emily Kaplan that the Rangers would like to interview several candidates from outside of the organization, including Mike Sullivan and Rick Tocchet if they are available, Joel Quenneville, John Tortorella, Jay Woodcroft, Jay Leach and David Carle.
The Rangers’ firing Laviolette comes hours after the Ducks announced they had fired Greg Cronin. It now leaves the NHL with five head coaching vacancies with the Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks and Philadelphia Flyers ending the regular season with interim coaches in place.
The PWHL’s first expansion team will be based in Vancouver with an announcement scheduled for next week, a person with knowledge of the decision confirmed to The Associated Press on Friday.
The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the league has not revealed its plans. The Province newspaper in Vancouver first reported the city being selected for PWHL expansion.
On hold for now is the league announcing a second expansion city, with Seattle being considered, the person said. The league has other candidates for expansion if discussions break down with officials in Seattle, the person added.
The Vancouver expansion announcement is expected to be made Wednesday, with media invited to attend a news conference billed as being an “historic announcement for sport in Vancouver and British Columbia.” The new team is expected to be based out of the Pacific Coliseum, the former home of the NHL Canucks.
The PWHL declined to verify any details by saying: “We’re continuing to finalize decisions related to expansion and look forward to sharing more details soon.”
The six-team league is in the midst of completing its second season and has spent the past six months evaluating more than 20 markets for the potential to expand by as many as two franchises.
The decision to select Vancouver meets several key criteria for the women’s pro league founded by Dodgers owner Mark Walter, who serves as the PWHL’s financial backer, and tennis icon Billie Jean King in June 2023.
Aside from being a large market, the region has a growing girls’ hockey base, which was evident in January, when a PWHL neutral site game in Vancouver drew a sellout crowd of 19,038 — the fourth-largest turnout for a league game.
Geography also plays a factor with the league seeking to broaden its reach across North America. The league currently has five teams — New York, Boston, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto — based in the northeast, and one in St. Paul, Minnesota.
PWHL officials have privately expressed concern of a start-up pro women’s league being launched on the West Coast.
Adding an expansion team in Seattle would make the most sense in part because of its proximity to Vancouver, while also already home to two pro women’s teams, the WNBA Storm and NWSL Reign FC. The PWHL’s neutral site game in Seattle in January drew a crowd of 12,608.
Other potential markets include Denver, Detroit and Quebec City, though it’s more likely the PWHL would desire a second expansion team based in the U.S.
The PWHL’s nine-city Takeover Tour of neutral games this season drew 123,601 fans in helping the league top the 1 million mark in attendance last month.
The PWHL’s regular season resumes next week — with each team having three games left — following a three-week break coinciding with the women’s world championships being held in Czechia (Czech Republic). The four-team playoffs are set to open in the first week of May.
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