This past off season Dayton was mocked heavily for signing several veterans that were not All-Stars or big difference makers. The key for Dayton and the Royals was that he did not spend much money to sign these free agents. He actually did a decent job when looking at the cost of the players and their contrbutions so far this season.

Here are the names, WAR and salaries (total and prorated) for the free agents signed this off season:

Note - I assumed that Francis would hit both of the innings ($1.2M) and GS ($0.8M) salary kickers.

So far this season the Royals are spending $0.85M per WAR for these players. In today's current free agent market, the going rate is $4M to $5M spent for each 1 WAR of player talent, so the Royals are getting a huge discount.

If these five players can continue to produce at their current pace, they will produce around 12.4 WAR for the season. The $10.6M spent for all these players is less than the team spent on just Jose Guillen's salary each of the last 3 seasons.

There is definitely reasons to believe that both Frenchy and Melky did not need to be signed. The main reason bing that Mitch Maier was available for similar production at a lower price, but having a backup OF is never a bad idea.

Dayton did nice job of scraping the bargain bin for a few useful players at a cheap price this off season. Congrats.