Baseball Prospectus Kansas City

RECAP: A pulse is found

by Colby Wilson May 1, 2018

Jakob Junis vs. Chris Sale may not be a traditional matchup between front line starters, but fortunately Junis didn’t let a little thing like narrative slow him down. The righty didn’t factor into Tuesday night’s decision. It wasn’t his best start of the season and I’d wager he didn’t quite have his best stuff, or […]

Tags: Alex Gordon, Jakob Junis, Kansas City, Royals |

RECAP: A split twinbill is good for the Royals

by Colby Wilson April 28, 2018

With the Royals playing two today, I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and recap both games! (Please send whiskey, I obviously need help). Game One This game was trash and bad. Alex Gordon was the only one who looked like a Professional Hitter™, which is all […]

Tags: Alex Gordon, Eric Skoglund, Kansas City, Royals |

RECAP: Matt Davidson might be a god

by Colby Wilson April 27, 2018

Pray tell, what aside from absolute madness would compel a man to spend his Friday night watching the Kansas City Royals and Chicago White Sox endeavor to baseball? Well, part of it is that hey, the Royals may win one. I hold no illusions about this most of the time right now, as we’re all […]

Tags: Jorge Soler, Kansas City, Mike Moustakas, Royals |

Abraham Almonte was the bright spot, so yep that was a loss

by Colby Wilson April 21, 2018

What would you expect to get out of Danny Duffy on three day’s rest? Historically, the answer had been pretty good, depending on your perspective. In two career starts on less than four days of rest he’d pitched seven innings and allowed three hits, one earned run and struck out seven. The problem is that […]

Tags: Abraham Almonte, Danny Duffy, Kansas City, Royals |

Hammel’s sterling effort wasted in first game of doubleheader

by Colby Wilson April 20, 2018

Whoa. Jason Hammel pitched a complete game. Part of this, it’s true, is due to the singular nature of his accuracy and his pitch economy in Friday’s doubleheader opener against Detroit. He was deep into the eighth before he reached 80 pitches, finishing eight innings for the first time since 2015 and his first complete […]

Tags: Abraham Almonte, Jason Hammel, Kansas City, Royals |

B-O-Y-E-R Does Not Spell Relief

by Colby Wilson April 14, 2018

Editor’s note: This article was begun on a Friday morning before we got the wonderful news that Brandon Maurer had been banished to Omaha for Crimes Against Baseball in what, if there’s a merciful baseball God, will be a lengthy sentence. The slant of the article was initially supposed to be to trash both he […]

Tags: Blaine Boyer, Brandon Maurer, Kansas City, Royals | 1 Comment

RECAP: The Grimm Reaper Strikes Again

by Colby Wilson April 11, 2018

A semi-troubling Danny Duffy start was beset by another Justin Grimm implosion, costing the Kansas City Royals a 4-2 loss in the Wednesday series finale against the Seattle Mariners. Let’s start with Duffy. Something is not right. I don’t know what it is, I don’t know how to fix it and I won’t deign to […]

Tags: Danny Duffy, Justin Grimm, Kansas City, Mike Moustakas, Royals |

We talk a lot about how spring training statistics don’t mean anything, and they really aren’t all that important, but that’s not entirely true. We most definitely should never be looking at the stats from spring games and making judgments based solely on them, but as spring progresses, they do have some meaning. I think a lot about Alex Gordon in 2017. The numbers on the surface looked like he might be on his way to a solid season, but when you really think about them, you saw a .468 SLG in an environment that favors hitters and realized how weak a lot of the contact was. That’s just one example in a sea of many, but it’s a place where you can see the stats and take some context clues to make some judgments.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the numbers now that we’re about halfway through the spring and look at if they’re real or fake.
Alex Gordon
Might as well start here since he was the early example. He’s hitting .133/.229/.167. When a player is coming off a bad season and then has numbers like this, you start to worry a little bit. He has one extra base hit in 30 at bats, and in the time we’ve seen him play, it’s been a lot of weak ground balls. He talked about a new approach, but it sure looks like more of the same to me during the first few weeks of spring games. He’s been hitting at the top of the lineup a lot early on, and I think the reason is to get him at bats because if this is him, he’s a number nine hitter again.
Verdict: He’s not this bad, but I think the numbers are real in that they suggest last year might not have been a fluke.
Whit Merrifield
After a breakout year, Merrifield is hitting .484/.484/.968. He as three doubles, three triples and two home runs in 31 at bats. You can see by the average and OBP that he hasn’t walked any, but coming off the year he did and seeing him sting the ball seemingly every time he makes contact is really encouraging for Merrifield to continue to grow. His extra base hit numbers prorate to about 150 per 600 at bats, so that probably won’t hold, but he’s basically looked as good as the numbers suggest.
Verdict: He’s not this good, but I think the numbers are real in that they suggest last year might not have been a fluke.
Michael Saunders
Up until Jorge Bonifacio got popped for PEDs, I didn’t really focus much on Saunders, but now that he has a chance to make the team, it’s easy to look at his .304/.385/.391 line and think that he could maybe be something to help this team. He hasn’t played as much as the starters, so his sample is even smaller than the other small samples, but this is a similar situation to Gordon’s last year. He has two doubles, and one of them was in the ninth inning of a game against a guy who is most certainly a minor leaguer and the other one was a well placed gap shot that I don’t believe even reached the warning track. He hasn’t swung and missed much, but he’s looked like someone who doesn’t really have it anymore, which supports his 2017 season and 2016 second half.
Verdict: The numbers are sadly misleading.
Jake Junis
Did you really think I’d write an article about spring and not talk about my crush? Junis only has two appearances, so who knows what’ll happen, but he’s thrown six innings, allowed one home run (right down the line) and two hits with 10 strikeouts and zero walks. His fastball has been 93-95 and his slider has been unreal. His last outing he looked about as good as I’d seen him at any point last season. Yes, it’s just spring, but it’s hard not to be excited about him after the way he finished the season. The way some of his teammates talk about him, you wouldn’t be surprised if he pitched above what many believe his ceiling will be. I don’t think Junis is quite this dominant, but he’s a really solid pitcher, and this spring is showing it so far.
Verdict: It’s real and it’s spectacular.
Danny Duffy
He gave up seven runs in 3.2 innings yesterday against the A’s, who seem to bludgeon the Royals no matter where they play. Prior to that, he’d allowed two runs on three hits in five innings. One bad outing can skew stats so much without much of a sample that you don’t want to get all that worried, especially about a guy who has made at least 24 starts in each of the last four seasons and has a 3.47 ERA and 3.87 FIP in that time. For a veteran with the track record Duffy has, you don’t worry about a bad spring and especially not a bad spring start. It happens.
Verdict: He’s earned the stats, but nah.
Burch Smith
There was a lot to be excited about with the Rule 5 pick given the big fastball and former top prospect rankings before injuries just destroyed Smith. He’s still a great bet to make the team because they don’t want to lose him, but a 7.88 ERA is is met with eight walks in eight innings. And the numbers could be even worse, but three of the runs are unearned, and some of that is from an error he made himself. From what I saw, the fastball isn’t nearly as big as it’s been in previous seasons and it has seemed awfully straight, a la Brandon Maurer. Maybe he can develop, but it’s been a rough go.
Verdict: The stats are, sadly, real.
The samples are still tiny, so it’s pretty easy for the narrative to turn around, but what we’ve seen in the first three weeks of spring training is starting to give us an idea of what this team might look like. I think with the free agent additions, the offense is going to be a bit better than we expected when spring started, but still not especially good. I think the pitching staff is about what we all thought. The starters have shown flashes of being solid to good while the bullpen has proven inconsistent. That seems about right to me. With 13 spring games to go before the game in Omaha and many of the starters getting some more at bats over them, we’ll see if the stats hold up for the guys I think are real and if they catch up for those who I think are not.

RECAP: Make the whole rotation out of Jake Junis

by Colby Wilson April 9, 2018

So what we had on this night was an answer to my previous query of, “When should Brandon Maurer pitch?” A: Any game the Royals are up or down by nine or more runs. Maurer got that opportunity thanks to Jake Junis, who carried a no-hitter into the seventh and generally looked the part of […]

Tags: Jake Junis, Kansas City, Mike Moustakas, Royals |

Aug 8, 2017; Kansas City, MO, USA; Kansas City Royals relief pitcher Brandon Maurer (32) pitches against the St. Louis Cardinals in the eighth at Kauffman Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports

RECAP: Please don’t pitch Brandon Maurer when it matters

by Colby Wilson April 8, 2018

For just a second, I’m gonna say some nice things about Jason Hammel and Ian Kennedy. In back-to-back days, Kennedy and Hammel pitched a combined 12 innings. They allowed seven combined hits and no runs to the Cleveland Indians, a very good team with the deepest lineup the other side of Houston. That is not […]

Tags: Brandon Maurer, Jason Hammel, Jorge Soler, Kansas City, Royals |

Recap: Jake Junis is Good!

by Colby Wilson April 3, 2018

Holy cow, what a difference a competent pitching performance makes. Fundamentally, the Kansas City Royals were no different offensively in game two of their series against the Detroit Tigers than they were in Monday’s matinee. The offense sputtered, and that’s probably an insult to sputtering offenses. They eked out a meager run against noted human […]

Tags: Cheslor Cuthbert, Jake Junis, Kansas City, Royals |