After a solid season in the Royals’ bullpen, left-hander Angel Zerpa is drawing trade attention from rival teams, MLB.com’s Anne Rogers writes. There is no sense a deal is close or even if Kansas City is open to moving Zerpa, but Rogers notes that the Royals could deal from what seems to be a surplus of left-handed pitching.
Cole Ragans sits atop the K.C. rotation and obviously isn’t going anywhere, and Kris Bubic probably won’t be dealt since the Royals want to see how he fares in a return to starting pitching. Zerpa, Daniel Lynch IV, Sam Long, and prospects Noah Cameron and Evan Sisk are the other left-handers on the Royals’ 40-man roster, with Rogers noting that Lynch and Cameron will also be competing for a rotation job in Spring Training.
Kansas City might wish to see how the rotation competition plays out before making any decisions on trades, in order to gauge Bubic’s health now that he is a bit further removed from an April 2023 Tommy John surgery, and to monitor Kyle Wright’s return after he missed all of 2024 recovering from shoulder surgery. There’s also the fact that Zerpa is not just one of several lefties, but he is currently the top left-handed option in the Royals bullpen. Given how the relief corps was middling on the whole in 2024, the Royals might prefer to add to the pen rather than subtract, especially since the team’s pitching depth already took a hit when Brady Singer was dealt to the Reds.
Still, there’s no harm in hearing what teams might have to offer for the 25-year-old Zerpa, who is team-controlled through the 2028 season. An amateur signing out of Venezuela in 2016, Zerpa has spent his whole career in the K.C. organization, and made it to the majors for a single appearance during the 2021 season. The Royals shuttled him back and forth from Triple-A several times in 2022-23, but Zerpa also dealt with two notable injuries — a patellar tendon tear in his right knee cut short Zerpa’s 2022 season, and a shoulder problem kept him from making his 2023 debut until August.
With a 3.84 ERA in his first 58 2/3 innings (starting six of 19 games), Zerpa broke camp in 2024 in a full-fledged relief role. He just about matched his previous career ERA with a 3.86 ERA in 53 2/3 relief frames last year, along with an outstanding 58.2% grounder rate. Zerpa’s ability to keep the ball on the ground helped him paper over below-average strikeout (20.4) and walk (8.3) rates, and notwithstanding his .325 BABIP, a lot of the hard contact he allowed ended up staying on the ground.
It isn’t your standard recipe for bullpen success, and so it seems plausible the Royals might consider selling high on Zerpa if another club has enough interest. Rogers suggests that rival teams might even be looking at returning Zerpa to a starting role, which might also bump up his value in trade talks to some extent.