{"id":352622,"date":"2025-12-18T05:17:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T05:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/352622\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T05:17:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T05:17:07","slug":"outfielder-lane-thomas-and-kansas-city-royals-finalize-5-25-million-one-year-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/352622\/","title":{"rendered":"Outfielder Lane Thomas and Kansas City Royals finalize $5.25 million, one-year contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) \u2014 Outfielder Lane Thomas<\/a> and the Kansas City Royals<\/a> finalized a $5.25 million, one-year contract on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Thomas can earn an additional $1 million in performance bonuses.<\/p>\n

He had nine RBIs for Cleveland in the 2024 AL Division Series against Detroit but hit .160 with four homers and 11 RBIs in 125 at-bats over 39 games this year in an injury-decimated season with Cleveland. He batted .268 for Washington in 2023, when he set career bests with 28 homers, 86 RBIs and 20 stolen bases.<\/p>\n

Thomas didn\u2019t play between April 8 and 15 this year because of a bone bruise in his right wrist sustained when hit by a pitch from Shane Smith<\/a> of the Chicago White Sox<\/a> and between April 19 and May 22 because of the same injury. He was out between May 26 and June 9 due to plantar fasciitis in his right foot.<\/p>\n

He played his last big league game of the season on July 4, then was sidelined again because of the foot injury, though he did appear in three Double-A games from Sept. 2-5 as part of an injury rehabilitation assignment. He has surgery on Sept. 23.<\/p>\n

A year earlier, he hit a tiebreaking grand slam off Detroit ace Tarik Skubal<\/a> in Game 5 on an AL Wild Card Series.<\/p>\n

Thomas had a $7,825,000 salary in a one-year contract that avoided salary arbitration. He became a free agent last month.<\/p>\n

Now 30, Thomas has a .242 average with 76 homers and 254 RBIs in seven seasons with St. Louis (2019-21), Washington (2021-24) and the Guardians, who acquired him from the Nationals ahead of the 2024 trade deadline for infielder Jos\u00e9 Tena, left-hander Alex Clemmey and infielder Rafael Ramirez Jr.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/p>\n

The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) \u2014 Outfielder Lane Thomas and the Kansas City Royals finalized a $5.25 million, one-year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-352622","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-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352622","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=352622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}