Royals Acquire Matt Peacock, Designate Domingo Tapia

The Royals announced that right-hander Matt Peacock has been acquired from the Diamondbacks in exchange for cash considerations.  To make roster space for Peacock, Kansas City has designated righty Domingo Tapia for assignment.

Arizona designated Peacock for assignment earlier this week, and he’ll now head to the Royals’ Triple-A affiliate after spending his entire pro career in the Diamondbacks organization.  A 23rd-round pick in the 2017 draft, Peacock made his Major League debut last season and posted a 4.90 ERA over 86 1/3 innings, starting eight of his 35 appearances.  In 2022, Peacock made two appearances out of Arizona’s bullpen before getting DFA’ed.

Peacock is a grounder specialist who regularly topped the 60% groundball-rate threshold during his time in the minors, and he also has respectable walk totals, though he doesn’t record many strikeouts.  The D’Backs regularly used Peacock as a starter prior to the canceled 2020 minor league season, and he hasn’t recorded a minor league start since (albeit in limited action at Triple-A), so it will be interesting to see how the Royals will opt to deploy the righty.  Conceivably, the Royals might use Peacock in a flexible swingman role depending on their needs, and his grounder-heavy arsenal could be particularly effective on a solid defensive team like K.C.

Tapia’s resume is pretty similar to Peacock, as both are right-handed groundball specialists who pitched in their first big league game in 2020.  Tapia took a longer path than Peacock, as Tapia was an international signing for the Mets back in December 2009.  After long stints in the New York and Cincinnati farm systems, Tapia finally broke into the Show with the Red Sox in 2020, then posted a 2.67 ERA over 33 2/3 combined innings with the Mariners and Royals in 2021.

Over 718 1/3 career innings in the minors, Tapia has a 4.12 ERA and 17.68% strikeout rate.  Tapia has been more or less a full-time reliever since 2018, and his efforts to win a job in the K.C. bullpen this spring were hampered by a lack of control (six walks in 5 1/3 Cactus League innings).