{"id":353812,"date":"2025-12-17T09:42:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T09:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/353812\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T09:42:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T09:42:11","slug":"all-star-third-baseman-maikel-garcia-and-kansas-city-royals-finalize-57-5-million-5-year-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/353812\/","title":{"rendered":"All-Star third baseman Maikel Garcia and Kansas City Royals finalize $57.5 million, 5-year contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

All-Star third baseman Maikel Garcia and the Kansas City Royals have finalized a $57.5 million, five-year contract. Kansas City scheduled a Wednesday news…<\/p>\n

KANSAS CITY, Mo.(AP) \u2014 All-Star third baseman Maikel Garcia and the Kansas City Royals finalized a $57.5 million, five-year contract on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Kansas City scheduled a Wednesday news conference to discuss the deal, which includes a team option for 2031. The agreement essentially buys out his arbitration years and potentially his first two years of free agency. <\/p>\n

The 25-year-old Garcia is coming off a breakout season both in the field, where he won his first Gold Glove playing alongside All-Star shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., and at the plate, where he hit .286 with a career-high 16 homers and 74 RBIs.<\/p>\n

While the Royals have prioritized landing outfield help in the offseason \u2014 they agreed to a $5.25 million deal with Lane Thomas<\/a> on Thursday \u2014 they also wanted to ensure they maintained their franchise cornerstones. That began with re-signing catcher Salvador Perez to a $25 million, two-year contract in November, and it continued by keeping Garcia through at least the 2030 season.<\/p>\n

He also is capable of playing shortstop and second base, and Garcia even dabbled with playing in the outfield last season.<\/p>\n

By keeping him in the fold, the Royals also solidified what has been one of the better infields in baseball. Witt is coming off a second consecutive All-Star appearance and Gold Glove, Perez is a nine-time All-Star and five-time Gold Glove winner, and first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino just had the best season of his four-year big league career, hitting .264 with 32 homers and 113 RBIs.<\/p>\n

It also follows a trend of the Royals keeping their own. Each of those four players was signed and developed by Kansas City.<\/p>\n

The Royals failed to make the playoffs last season, but they did finish 82-80, the first time they have had consecutive winning years since going to back-to-back World Series in 2014 and \u201915. And with a talented pitching staff set to return, and young position players on the upswing, there is optimism that Kansas City can get back to the postseason in 2026.<\/p>\n

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

Copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All-Star third baseman Maikel Garcia and the Kansas City Royals have finalized a $57.5 million, five-year contract. Kansas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-353812","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}