Seriously, when they come out and say they only have about 3m for 2 years budgeted for their STARTING centerfielder, you have to ask yourself, “Why bother?”. Anybody worth that little on the open market almost certainly won’t be any better than what they already have for $400k per year (Maier).

let’s hope the Royals are overstating their financial pinch a bit, and/or that the sheer number of nontenders drives the price down enough where we can target and acquire the catcher and CF we need.

One thing that could favor the Royals – they can offer the right candidate a nearly guaranteed starting spot, rather than a bench role. Potential playing time might be a tiebreaker in our favor, if competing offers are similar.

I understand why the Royals are non-tendering Buck, as he likely would get more in arbitration than he could on the open market. But among the seemingly dozens of available free agent catchers, Buck might be the best one. The Rays might be able to find someone to take Dioneer Navarro, but if he is non-tendered, he is the other catcher teams that makes sense for a rebuilding team.

The MLBTR list includes a lot of names of guys who not be non-tendered (many of the better ones like Hermida and Shoppach have already been traded to teams willing to pay them or who have already signed), but among the ones who conceivably could be cut loose, there are a few interesting ones.

We have talked about Ryan Church and Kelly Johnson, who probably make the most sense for the Royals. Gabe Gross is basically Church swapping out a little offense for a little more defense. Jack Cust is probably on the downside — three true outcome guys tend to fall off a cliff in their early to mid 30s — but might be useful on a one-year deal if the Royals have the sense to just tell Guillen to stay home this spring.

Ryan Garko is a generic, low upside stopgap 1B. He does just about everything a little below average (power, walks, defense, etc.). He is also right-handed, so he is even on the wrong side of a platoon. A team, however, may get lucky with Garko who at age 29 might put a peak year and reach 1.5-2.0 WAR. He certainly would make more sense than Guillen at DH (as would Marcus Thames but just barely).

Chad Gaudin is a decent backend starter or swingman — I would take him over Davies as a starter.

Jeremy Accardo has struggled the last couple of years with injuries and conistency, but he has the goods to be a decent reliever and is worth a major league deal. He probably draws a lot of interest if he is actually non-tendered.

Bill Bray is an interesting rehab case as a lefty reliever who can miss bats when healthy. Neal Cotts has some uses a generic lefty reliever.

Shawn Hill would be interesting as a rehab case on a minor league deal — he is not bad on the rare occasions when he is healthy.

Josh Towers, especially if he regains some of the groundballs he had as a younger starter, would be a decent starter to stash in Omaha and battle Campillo for the first callup. Tim Redding has no real upside but would be another depth guy.