{"id":296486,"date":"2025-11-21T00:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T00:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/296486\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T00:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T00:07:08","slug":"royals-james-mcarthur-avoid-arbitration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/296486\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals, James McArthur Avoid Arbitration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Royals announced that they have agreed to terms on a contract for the 2026 season with right-hander <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/m\/mcartja01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-11-20_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">James McArthur<\/a>, therefore avoiding arbitration. He will make $810K next year, reports <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/anne__rogers\/status\/1991619508411461973\" rel=\"nofollow\">Anne Rogers of MLB.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>McArthur, 29 next month, showed huge promise a few years ago but is a big wild card now. He debuted with the Royals in 2023 by tossing 23 1\/3 innings. His 4.63 earned run average wasn\u2019t especially impressive but his 25.6% strikeout rate, 2.2% walk rate and 58.7% ground ball rate were all excellent. A tiny 54.5% strand rate seemed to inflate his ERA, which is why he had a 2.78 FIP and 2.65 SIERA.<\/p>\n<p>That got him some run as the closer in Kansas City to begin 2024 but his results backed up. He tossed 56 2\/3 innings that year with a 4.92 ERA. His 5.7% walk rate and 53.3% ground ball rate were still good but moved in the wrong direction, while his strikeout rate fell to a subpar 19.8% clip. He landed on the injured list in September due to an elbow sprain.<\/p>\n<p>At some point in the 2024-25 offseason, he underwent surgery to repair a fractured olecranon in his right elbow, with two screws inserted. In July, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/anne__rogers\/status\/1946336747249348788\" rel=\"nofollow\">Rogers<\/a>\u00a0reported that he wasn\u2019t responding well to the screws, so they were removed. He didn\u2019t pitch in any official game action for the year.<\/p>\n<p>Though McArthur spent the entire 2025 season on the IL, he got his service time count up to two years and 150 days. That was just a bit past <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mlbtraderumors.com\/2025\/10\/super-two-cutoff-expected-to-be-around-2-140-years-of-service.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">this year\u2019s Super Two cutoff<\/a>, there qualifying him for arbitration. Since he missed so much time, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mlbtraderumors.com\/2025\/10\/projected-arbitration-salaries-for-2026.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz<\/a> projected him for a salary of just $800K, barely above next year\u2019s $780K league minimum. Despite the modest projection, his uncertain health status made him <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mlbtraderumors.com\/2025\/11\/2025-non-tender-candidates.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">a candidate to be non-tendered<\/a>. Friday at 4pm Central is the non-tender deadline.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of moving on, the Royals will keep McArthur around and hope for better health and a bounceback. Perhaps that bodes well for his health outlook in the coming season, though they aren\u2019t risking much by agreeing to a salary barely above league minimum. McArthur still has an option and doesn\u2019t need to be kept on the big league roster.<\/p>\n<p>Photo courtesy of Peter Aiken, Imagn Images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Royals announced that they have agreed to terms on a contract for the 2026 season with right-hander&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,133462,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-296486","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-james-mcarthur","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}