The signing of Lucas Duda does not matter to either the 2019 Kansas City Royals or to the future of the Royals. Let’s get that straight. It doesn’t matter. Duda hasn’t been particularly noteworthy since 2015, and over the last three years has been, in aggregate, a league average bat. For a first baseman—a 33-year-old one, at that—that’s not worth much.
One of two things will happen with Duda in his second tour with the Royals: either he’s surprisingly excellent and gets flipped at the deadline for a lottery ticket prospect, or he’s anything less than that and is cut sometime in June when he hits a profound slump that extends to its fifth consecutive week.