{"id":41126,"date":"2020-11-30T00:40:21","date_gmt":"2020-11-30T05:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=41126"},"modified":"2020-11-30T00:40:21","modified_gmt":"2020-11-30T05:40:21","slug":"kansas-city-royals-sign-mike-minor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2020\/11\/30\/kansas-city-royals-sign-mike-minor\/","title":{"rendered":"Kansas City Royals Sign Mike Minor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/mlb-teams\/kansas-city-royals\/\" target=\"_self\">Kansas City Royals<\/a> have bolstered their rotation going into 2021. They have added left-hander <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/m\/minormi01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mike Minor<\/a><\/strong> to the roster pending a physical. The deal is for multiple years, but the financial terms are not known at this time. Jeff Passan of ESPN first broke the news late Sunday evening.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Left-handed starter Mike Minor and the Kansas City Royals are in agreement on a multiyear deal that is pending a physical, sources tell ESPN. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Ken_Rosenthal?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@Ken_Rosenthal<\/a> had the agreement first.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JeffPassan\/status\/1333268892463017984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">November 30, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Royals Sign Mike Minor<\/h2>\n<p>The 32-year-old Minor had a mediocre 2020. He started the year with the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/mlb-teams\/texas-rangers\/\" target=\"_self\">Texas Rangers<\/a> before moving to the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/mlb-teams\/oakland-athletics\/\" target=\"_self\">Oakland Athletics<\/a> via <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2020\/08\/31\/oakland-as-acquire-mike-minor\/\" target=\"_self\">trade<\/a>. He threw 56 2\/3 innings with a 5.56 ERA, 62 strikeouts and 20 walks. It seems as though Minor was a victim of some bad luck as his 4.64 FIP was better than the actual results. It&#8217;s possible that the new Texas ballpark had some effect on his results on top of the randomness that came with a short season. His underlying numbers were quite fine otherwise. A 25.9% strikeout rate and 8.4% walk rate were both in the top 25 for starters with at least 50 innings pitched.<\/p>\n<p>This will be his second stint with the Royals. He pitched well in 65 games with them in 2017 after missing two full seasons due to injuries. The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/mlb-teams\/atlanta-braves\/\" target=\"_self\">Atlanta Braves<\/a> originally drafted and signed Minor in the first round of the 2009 Amateur Draft, and he&#8217;s been a reliable pitcher when healthy since his debut in 2010. He has 1152 1\/3 innings with 71 wins, a 3.98 ERA and FIP and 1,048 strikeouts.<\/p>\n<p>His best year came in 2019 with the Rangers. Minor won 14 games in 32 starts while pitching in over 200 innings. He received an All-Star nod and down-ballot Cy Young award votes. The veteran lefty may be slowing down; his average fastball velocity fell to just 90.6 MPH in 2020, but increased slider and breaking ball usage seems like enough to keep him viable for the moment.<\/p>\n<h3>Where He First on Kansas City&#8217;s Roster<\/h3>\n<p>Minor could be a great veteran signing for a rebuilding Royals pitching staff. He could pitch anywhere from third in the rotation to fifth. Kansas City has promising young arms like <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/k\/kellebr01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Brad Keller<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/singebr01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Brady Singer<\/a><\/strong> on the rise, but Minor is just the sort of experienced starter many teams like to have on their staff.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo: <a id=\"jlUj4ojXQLpa7Kw65lc4eA\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1273756201\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'jlUj4ojXQLpa7Kw65lc4eA',sig:'O3iGce8vOC6V11_SAo_aqYfJTEXxILhHg6LSib2jrMA=',w:'594px',h:'401px',items:'1273756201',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Kansas City Royals have bolstered their rotation going into 2021. They have added left-hander Mike Minor to the roster pending a physical. The deal is for multiple years, but the financial terms are not known at this time. Jeff Passan of ESPN first broke the news late Sunday evening. Left-handed starter Mike Minor and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3127,"featured_media":41132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35,12,1071],"tags":[51,1782,69],"class_list":["post-41126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-royals","category-mlb","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-mike-minor","tag-mlb"],"modified_by":"DJ Kleinbard","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}