The Royals’ 2027 payroll picture is already starting to come into focus, and it’s not a tiny one. Even after a season that went sideways in a hurry, the club is staring at a payroll that could sit around the $111 million mark before any real winter shopping begins.
That number starts with the money already on the books. Seven players under contract account for $85.854 million in salary, and that figure includes the $2 million buyout the Royals are expected to owe Carlos Estévez if they pass on his $13 million club option after he missed nearly the entire season with an injury.
Salvador Perez is part of that core, and his deal comes with a little accounting twist. He’ll be in the final year of the two-year, $25 million extension he signed after the 2025 season, with a $9 million salary in 2027.
Of that, $2.5 million is deferred until 2032. Spotrac lists him at $12.5 million for 2027 because of the contract’s average annual value for Luxury Tax purposes, but the actual cash hit for the Royals that year is just $6.5 million, with the rest paid later.
There’s also a deferred $7 million signing bonus that won’t be paid until 2030.
The next layer is arbitration, where Kansas City has eight players eligible under the current rules: Lucas Erceg, Kyle Isbel, Alex Lange, Daniel Lynch IV, James McArthur, Nick Mears, Alec Marsh, and Michael Massey. Some of those cases look straightforward, others much less so.
McArthur and Marsh both have injury questions hanging over them, and both look like candidates to be non-tendered, though the Royals could still try to bring them back on minor league deals. Lange had mixed results, Mears spent much of the year hurt, and Erceg was eventually demoted, so each of them presents a decision.
Even so, none of those names is expected to get expensive, and the Royals are thin enough in the bullpen that they’re not in a position to start handing out arms lightly. If any of them are kept, the salary figure likely stays at or below $1.6 million apiece.
Lynch should be tendered for his second year of arbitration and would likely land around $2 million. Massey is also in his second trip through the process and appears headed toward something near $3 million. Isbel, in his final year of arbitration, could come in at $4 million to $4.5 million.
If Kansas City keeps those “close call” arbitration cases, the total comes in at just under $15 million for that group, which would put the club just under $101 million in obligations for 13 players. Add in the remaining 13 players projected to be on the roster at or near the league minimum, and the number climbs to about $111 million.
The Royals haven’t said publicly what they plan to spend next year, but John Sherman has suggested the team expects to be at least where it was this season. In August, he said, “We’re freeing up some money that I think we can invest,” he said in an interview in August.
“We have our payroll that I think is probably at the highest sustained level as the Royals maybe ever have had, right? And it didn’t work out this year, and that’s frustrating.
But it doesn’t take away from what we want to accomplish here. We want to win.
We want to win now. We think that our division is still there for the taking.”
That leaves general manager J.J. Picollo with roughly $30 million to match this year’s payroll, and possibly more if the club keeps pushing spending upward the way it has over the last three seasons.
The challenge is that the Royals need help in the bullpen, but Sherman has downplayed the idea of throwing big money at that area, saying they could “cobble” together a solution. The free-agent market is much heavier on starting pitching, which isn’t really where Kansas City needs to shop. The names that do stand out on the offensive side include Gleyber Torres, Ian Happ, Seiya Suzuki, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Randy Arozarena, Taylor Ward, Luis Arraez, and Brandon Lowe, though the depth dries up fast after that.
Kansas City could also take the long view and wait for prices to soften, just as it did in February of 2025 when it signed Estévez after missing on a bat.
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