Royals, Adalberto Mondesi avoid arbitration with one-year deal

The Royals announced Tuesday that they agreed to a one-year deal with infielder Adalberto Mondesi, thus avoiding arbitration. Lynn Worthy of the Kansas City Star reports that Mondesi will be paid $3.045M in 2023.

Once viewed as one of the game’s top prospects and a potential foundational piece in Kansas City, Mondesi has instead become a perennially tantalizing talent who can’t stay healthy enough to capitalize on his prodigious tool set. The now-27-year-old Mondesi turned heads back in 2018 when in just 75 games and 291 plate appearances he turned in a .276/.306/.498 slash with 14 home runs and 32 steals. He connected on nine homers and swiped 43 bags in just 102 games the following season.

Unfortunately for Mondesi and for the Royals, that 102-game showing in 2019 mark a career-high. Those 2018 and 2019 seasons are the only times that Mondesi has appeared in even 60 games in a year, though to his credit, he did play in 59 of Kansas City’s 60 games in 2020 — albeit with a diminished .256/.294/.416 batting line and a then-career-high 30% strikeout rate.

Mondesi has appeared in just 50 games over the past two seasons due to a pair of oblique strains, a hamstring strain and, most notably, a torn ACL he suffered after just 15 games in 2022. Mondesi also suffered a pair of subluxations in his left shoulder during the 2019 season and ultimately required surgery to address the issue. In addition, he’s spent time on the injured list due to an impingement in his other shoulder and to back and groin strains.

It’s a veritable laundry list of injuries for Mondesi, who made his MLB debut as a 20-year-old back in 2016 but has played in just 358 major league games in his career. At his best, Mondesi possesses elite speed, above-average power and the ability to play a strong defensive shortstop, but his body hasn’t allowed him to showcase that skill set nearly as much as he, the Royals and MLB fans in general would prefer to see. That said, at a $3.045M salary for next season, the risk for the Royals is minimal.

Despite the lack of games played, Mondesi has spent so much time on the major league injured list that many will be surprised to read he’s in his final season of club control. With five years of service time under his belt, he’s on pace to reach free agency as a 28-year-old next winter. Obviously, he’ll have plenty of motivation to remain healthy, though even if Mondesi defied the odds and enjoyed a full, healthy season, any and all interested teams would be wary of his injury history on the open market.

Mondesi’s role with the 2023 Royals figures to be somewhat up in the air given the defensive excellence of Nicky Lopez and the emergence of top prospect Bobby Witt Jr. All three players can play the shortstop position, but Kansas City moved Mondesi to third base late in the 2021 season with an eye toward Witt potentially taking over at shortstop. However, Witt wound up playing primarily third base in his rookie campaign last season. Any of the three players could ostensibly handle any of the three positions to the left of first base, so it’ll be up to new head of baseball ops J.J. Picollo and new manager Matt Quatraro to determine their preferred alignment between now and Opening Day.

Of course, all of that is putting the cart well before the horse. First and foremost, the Royals will focus on getting Mondesi healthy and keeping him healthy enough to play in a meaningful number of games for the them next season. Michael Massey, Nate Eaton, Samad Taylor and Maikel Garcia are all infield alternatives on the 40-man roster should the Royals need to account for an injury to Mondesi or another infielder. It’s also possible that the Royals will add to their infield depth this offseason via either the trade or free-agent market.