Nobody knows Royals prospects like Clint Scoles. Nobody. Seriously, I would put his knowledge of the system ahead of the guys who actually get paid to write about it for Baseball America. Fun fact: He also consistently wrote our most read articles on the site. I always took that to mean readers put a great deal of stock in what Clint writes. As it should be. Our number one post in 2018 was his re-ranking of the prospects in the system about a month after the conclusion of the draft. Another favorite of mine was this profile of Bryan Brickhouse and his attempted comeback.

I started reading Darin Watson way back when he had a Blogspot site called Tangled Up In Royals Blue. How could you skip past a name like that? He quickly became one of my favorite internet Royals writers, so it was truly a thrill to get this opportunity to work with him. If you dig the history of the franchise, don’t miss his article on the 1968 expansion draft. His series on the greatest moments in Royals history is also a must-read.

Our managing editor, David Lesky, already fired the confetti link cannon last week, so I’ll just point you in that direction. It was his final edition of Friday Notes which is appropriate because if you’ve visited this site at all, you know that was a mainstay in our rotation – our James Shields. (We’re talking the Royals version here.) The Notes were dependable and always brought the good stuff. And freed up my Thursday to where I didn’t have to sweat the content.

Joining us halfway through our existence, I thought Colby Wilson was at home at BPKC. In a small way, it feels like we saved him from the doom of blog networks and unending slideshows. He quickly became our lead recapper. (I’m not sure that’s a word. Whatever. We’re going out in style.) Remember the game where Hunter Dozier was the tying run in the ninth inning and got thrown out on a delayed steal to end the game? That probably triggered a flashback for Colby. He is also adept at writing some regular essays, including a look at how it felt when Eric Hosmer finally signed with the Padres. Big things are in store for Colby.

Hunter Samuels wrote one article for us this year, but it was one of the best. That’s the way Hunter rolls. Every time he submitted an article, I learned something new. There isn’t higher praise I can give. If you haven’t read his tribute to Yordano Ventura, do it now. If you have read it, it’s worth revisiting.

Doc Riddle joined the site this summer as our man in Lexington. Good place, good time. Doc loves the Legends and you could feel it in his writing about the prospects with the Royals Sally League club. His profile of Daniel Lynch is what you want from a minor league scouting report. I’m disappointed we didn’t get to read him more in this space.

Can’t forget the podcast guys. The KC Baseball Vault hosted by Mike Engel and Jeff Herr has been around for a long time and I was excited when they hopped on board here. The Kelly’s Bar sponsorship isn’t bad, either. They posted 120 podcasts since we opened up shop, which is a ton of Royals audio content. Mike and Jeff have great on-air chemistry and make podcasting seem easy. When you play the show, it’s as if you’re sitting at a table with a couple of friends listening to them gab about the Royals, which is exactly how a team-oriented podcast should be.

If you’re looking to blame someone for me still being around the Royals internet universe, Clark Fosler is your guy. Clark and I joined forces and created Royals Authority some 12 years ago at a now defunct network called MVN. We’ve been together every step of the way. Blogs are way different now than when we started, but I think a semi-successful formula still applies. Write everyday to build your individual audience and then find a reliable partner to shoulder some of the burden. We found a system that worked for us and kept at it from moves to ESPN and SB Nation and then to Baseball Prospectus. It was a blast writing with him. Clark is a busy guy these days; I was always happy when he found the time to write. His last piece at BPKC on hope for the future is appropriate given his tenure as the dean of Royals bloggers.

Before I go, I’ll point you to two of my favorite articles from this past year. The Royals started shifting more than ever in 2018 which was great for us because in a quickly lost season we could point to something they were doing that was clearly at the urging of their analytics department. The fact that the shift irritated Jason Hammel was just a bonus.

The first five months of the season was… let’s just not rehash that. But September was fun! And Adalberto Mondesi was a spark plug who ran with abandon, harkening back to the Keep The Line Moving Royals of the pennant winning years. 

And with that it’s time to turn off the lights and lock the doors. The corporate guys tell me they’ll keep the site alive just in case there’s an article you like so much you need to read it on the regular. There’s also the odds we show up in some random Google search, which is always nice. As always, I am humbled you chose to visit this site and make it a part of your routine of Royals fandom. I’ll still be kicking around at the main Baseball Prospectus site and have been keeping busy working on a nice project over there behind the scenes. 

What will be weird is not having a dedicated Royals site where I can submit random ramblings and then beg on Twitter for clicks. Meanwhile, free agency beckons. There are some things percolating, but at this point, who knows? If Scott Boras is reading this, I could use the representation.

Until we meet again. Farewell. And thanks.

• My first article of 2018 was about Jorge Soler and how he was a big key for the Royals in 2018. After a brutal 2017 season for him, I kept my faith that he could actually be a real contributor to the team in 2018, and I think I was half right. When he was healthy, he was very good, hitting .265/.354/.466. Of course, health is always his issue, and will continue to be a question until he provides an answer that makes that question go away. But he was a big key for the team, hitting .315/.416/.575 in wins. Hey, not much made the 2018 Royals look good, so you have to go digging. But I did like that article.
• After a run of college picks, I looked at the Royals first two days of the draft and their history of taking college players, which was a little more lengthy than I expected it to be. As I said at the time, their draft strategy shows a lot of faith in their current crop of young players in the lower levels and wanting to match up some arms to go with them. So far, things have worked out well with Daniel Lynch and Jackson Kowar looking very good in helping Lexington win a Sally League title, but time will still tell on all of this. It’s fair to say that the farm system is much improved with the additions of these college players (and some others) along with improvements in the system throughout the season. This upcoming season might be even more important than 2018 in building the system as the players who took a step forward need to take another step while the draft picks need to solidify their standing. Plus, with the number two overall pick, this is the year to make big jumps.
• I wrote a fun piece in June about the players who have the Royals to thank for their big numbers. Obviously there was plenty of season left after the article ran, so some guys fell of the pace a little bit, but some of these numbers were just silly. And I’m not sure I’ll ever forget the Matt Davidson vs. the Royals in April experience. Any time I need to drop a few pounds, that’ll make me gag.
• As the Royals move forward with a lot of young pitching in the coming seasons, I wrote about the importance of a good framing catcher in helping them to succeed and how they didn’t really have that in Salvador Perez and Drew Butera. Even looking back on the article, it amazes me how many strikes Royals catchers missed for their pitchers, and how Cam Gallagher could be a huge improvement for this pitching staff in 2019. If Perez is healthy, he’s likely to go back to his very heavy catching duties, though as he gets older, maybe that’s not such a sure thing moving forward. In an era when framing is seen as more important every year and our ability to measure it is better and better, this is a big deal for the Royals moving forward. I’m not saying Gallagher should start at catcher or anything, but I wonder how many extra outs he frames for Royals pitchers in 2019 over Butera.
• In another just for fun piece, I tried to look ahead to the 2019 Royals roster that they’ve been pointing toward since starting this rebuild treck back to the top. Obviously, Ryan O’Hearn hadn’t yet emerged, so maybe he prevents a first base signing to bridge the gap to Nick Pratto, but it’s still actually pretty fun to go back and look at what I wrote about that roster. I actually still think a good chunk of that is true, though I wonder if they make their “Shields-esque” trade a year earlier if they show as much promise in 2019 as they did in the last month and a half of 2018. I’ll be keeping an eye on that to see how ridiculously wrong I was about all of this.
• After a season of Cal Eldred at the helm of the pitching staff, I attempted to evaluate him based on improvement from some of the young pitchers throughout the season. I still don’t know exactly what Eldred’s specialty is and/or what he does well, if anything, so it’s hard to get a read on the type of pitchers who the Royals should be targeting to take advantage of those strengths. But there were some positive signs and reading through that again makes me more excited for Heath Fillmyer actually. Well, as excited as you can be about Fillmyer. But still, there’s some reason to at least watch some of the young guys next season.
• And finally, this one is pretty recent, but after Rob Manfred and gang talked about banning the shift, I wrote about why that wouldn’t solve the issue like he thinks it would. You probably recently read the article since it’s only about three weeks old, so I won’t dig in too much, but until they fix replay, the million pitching changes and the fact that pitchers are so good that it’s not fair so much of the time, the shift doesn’t really matter all that much.

So that’s it, friends. That’s my best of 2018 as I exit stage left. Thank you again for everything on BP Kansas City. It’s been a heck of a ride. As I’ve mentioned before, you can still catch me on the main BP site along with somewhere else relatively soon (hopefully). Happy new year everyone!

• Since there hasn’t really been an avenue to do it, I haven’t talked about the Terrance Gore deal much. I love Gore. How could you not? But why are they giving him a big league deal? Gore stated a bit ago that he’d like to go to a team where he’ll have a chance to actually play and show that he can play. The dude is a career .239/.333/.273 hitter. In the minors. He’s a phenomenal weapon as a pinch runner, but he has no business on a big league roster for any length of time before September 1. And I hate saying that because of how much I love him, but that’s not a player in any need of a big league deal. Some argue the $350k he’d get on the minor league deal would be enough to both scare teams off from claiming him and would scare him off from declining the assignment to the minors and they might be right, but that seems like a lot of work. I mean, Rajai Davis who has actually hit before was available on a minor league deal. Look, if this is just Dayton Moore taking care of one of his own, then I’ll back down and admit I’m an idiot for caring this much, but if there’s really a thought that Gore is going to be an integral part of this roster, then I just don’t get it at all. Speed is great, but it only goes so far. If you do some quick roster math, you can see the roster crunch is very real. Salvador Perez, Cam Gallagher, Ryan O’Hearn, Whit Merrifield, Hunter Dozier, Cheslor Cuthbert, Adalberto Mondesi, Chris Owings, Alex Gordon, Billy Hamilton, Brett Phillips, Brian Goodwin, Jorge Soler, Jorge Bonifacio and Terrance Gore all have big league time. Of those, Dozier, Phillips and Bonifacio all have options and Cuthbert could easily be on the chopping block at any time. Even so, that’s 15 players for 12 spots. Things have a way of working themselves out, but I just continue to be perplexed by this offseason.
• Not to beat a dead horse (or sorry, PETA, feed a fed horse…so stupid), but the Daniel Descalso signing by the Cubs underscored my biggest issue with the Chris Owings signing. It’s not that they signed him. I’m not a fan of Owings, but I get the upside play on a guy who theoretically should be entering his prime. So I’m fine that they signed him. I still can’t figure out why in the you know what they had to sign him for $3 million. And then a player who is better than Owings signs for two years and $5 million. And before you say that Descalso doesn’t play shortstop, I still say that NEITHER DOES OWINGS! With Descalso, you have a player who made a conscious effort to alter his swing to produce better results. And it worked. So yeah, I’d have much preferred Descalso to Owings for that money because I think he could actually potentially start at third and be productive, but also just because I think he’s better. But regardless, that’s not my point. It just goes to show another example of Dayton Moore completely misreading the market. I know I shouldn’t be worked up over a one year deal for this little money, but what it represents just irks me and I can’t seem to get over it. And every time a comparable or better player signs for less money, I’m going to be annoyed.
• The Royals are still expected to throw a lot of reliever spaghetti against the wall at some point this offseason, but in order to do that, they likely have to wait at least a month before they start signing guys to minor league deals. I feel like they think they’re all set on lefties with Flynn, Tim Hill and possibilities of Eric Skoglund, Richard Lovelady and maybe even Danny Duffy back there, so to focus on some of the righties, some names to watch are Blake Wood (yes that Blake Wood), Jim Johnson, Brad Boxberger, Randall Delgado, Drew Hutchison and Carson Smith. There are others too, sure, but those are some names that I’m kind of focused on based on what the Royals tend to like in relievers. They like that past success at some point and they like guys they know, which is why Wood is in there. And before people get worried about 2018 redux, I am too, but the error they made last year was not in signing guys like Blaine Boyer and Justin Grimm, it was in sticking with them for too long. If the Royals went out and signed three or four of the above or just three or four random relievers, that’s great. Figure out what can stick. But if it’s as clear this year as it was last year that it wasn’t going to stick, they need to move on quickly. And I think they will this year as they seem to have some almost ready pieces in the minors in guys like the aforementioned Lovelady along with a project of their own in Josh Staumont and recently added to the 40-man Arnaldo Hernandez. I’m fine with getting them a little more development in the minors, but they’re there at the highest level, basically ready to take over when the reclamation projects stink, if they do.
• I mentioned last week that I’ll be writing Friday Notes until the site is done, which is coming soon, so keep an eye out for one more (I think? Hope?), but then I’m sort of a free agent. Yes, I’ll be writing at Baseball Prospectus and will be writing some Royals stuff there, but as I’ve already done, I’ll focus on some other teams around the game as well. The great thing about BP is it gives me an opportunity to keep writing while also looking for a forever home to write about the Royals. So yeah, that’s my elevator pitch. I’m not sure what the future holds for me right now in writing exclusively about the Royals, but I’m working on figuring that out now. And if this turns out to be it for me here at BP KC, I just want to say it’s been an absolute pleasure to bring you Royals content on this site for the last two and a half years. Thank you for reading and interacting and agreeing and disagreeing. It’s been a blast. 

• I wrote about the Billy Hamilton signing for the main site, but I wanted to bring some of my reasoning for disliking the trade here that includes a couple additional things I hadn’t even thought of until Clint Scoles brought them up the other day. From a pure dollars per win standpoint, Hamilton for $5.25 million is an absolute steal. With the value of a win nearing $10 million, he doesn’t have a big hill to climb to get to where he needs to be to be worth the money, but there’s an opportunity cost here that I believe makes this deal not worth the money or the roster spot. I mentioned some of this last week, so forgive me for repeating myself, but the Royals have plenty of outfielders already and they even have one who plays outstanding defense. And with all the lefty outfielders they currently have projected to at least fight for starting time, it’d be nice to have one who could hit lefties and Hamilton is worse against lefties than righties. This also theoretically limits the flexibility of Whit Merrifield, which isn’t a huge deal in itself, but could slow the Royals down in promoting Nicky Lopez. Again, it’s not a huge deal or anything, but if you want to know who Hamilton is likely blocking, there’s another answer in addition to Brett Phillips. It isn’t that both those guys couldn’t use more time in AAA or that Phillips couldn’t play right field and Lopez couldn’t play third base, but then you’re missing out on the opportunity to give Jorge Bonifacio and Hunter Dozier the requisite plate appearances to get to the magical 1,500 number that Dayton Moore preached so loudly with guys like Mike Moustakas and Alcides Escobar. It’s a one-year deal, so it’s really not a big deal, but as much fun as Hamilton’s defense and stolen bases will be, I think it was a poor use of limited remaining funds.
• The Royals doubled down on their 2017 Rule 5 draft strategy and walked away with two pitchers, drafting Sam McWilliams from the Rays second overall and trading for Chris Ellis who was selected by the Rangers. Both are interesting picks. In McWilliams, I see a vaguely similar results profile to last year’s breakout, Brad Keller. Not that they’re the same pitcher, but McWilliams also reached Double-A in the season before the draft and had middling at best results. He was very good in high-A for the Diamondbacks in five starts, so that’s something to build on. He’s a tall righty with a decent fastball and solid slider, according to J.J. Cooper at Baseball America. He strikes out a fair amount of hitters and limits walks reasonably well, so that’s something that’d be nice to continue in the big leagues. Ellis reached Triple-A last year for the second time and had decent success, throwing 79 innings over 16 outings (14 starts) with solid control and enough strikeouts to be dangerous. His Triple-A debut in 2017 was pretty much a disaster, but he’ll be 26 in 2018 and seems like a decent bet to stick in middle relief for the big club, at least for awhile. As we’ve all learned from the Rule 5 draft, we just can’t know what he’s going to be. This time last year, I was super excited about Burch Smith and had very little interest in Brad Keller and we all saw how that worked out.
• I know that Ned Yost said he wasn’t going to talk about the lineup, but that doesn’t stop us from doing it. With the addition of Hamilton, I think the lineup is in pretty good shape as far as us having an idea what it will be. I imagine they’ll at least stick with the top three from the end of the season after Alex Gordon hit .275/.359/.425 over his final 21 games hitting there. So a top three of Merrifield, Adalberto Mondesi and Gordon seems likely to be followed by Salvador Perez and his .204 ISO. This is where it gets a little murky, but if I had to guess, I’d say Ryan O’Hearn gets first crack to hit fifth and will be followed by Jorge “if healthy” Soler. I could see Soler and O’Hearn flipped with the seven-eight spots being some combination of Jorge Bonifacio, Brett Phillips, Cheslor Cuthbert and Hunter Dozier, whoever wins the right field and third base jobs. And at the end of the lineup will be Hamilton. One thing I noted in my BP write-up of the Hamilton deal is that there have been just seven teams in modern history to have three or more players steal 40 or more bases. The most recent was the 1988 Cardinals. These Royals could easily be the eighth if everyone stays healthy and hits enough to stay in the lineup. So if nothing else, that’s pretty cool.
• Speaking of third base, I don’t think the Royals will bring in any competition to their current group, especially with the signing of Owings, but it is a position where I could see it. They signed Cuthbert for the $800,000, but I think I mentioned before that if they cut him early enough, they only owe him about $133,000 and if they cut him in spring, they’d owe him $200,000, so they could move on. And Dozier does have options. I mentioned some non-tenders who they could look at either last week or the week before, but could they maybe look toward signing a veteran like they did last year with Mike Moustakas? I wouldn’t bet on it, but it’s certainly possible. A Moose reunion would actually make some sense here, but it’s not just him. Yangervis Solarte is a player with some versatility who can play third, though he isn’t especially good. Josh Harrison is another and so is Tim Beckham. What’s appealing about Beckham would be his ability to play shortstop as well since Owings isn’t what you’d call good there. Again, I doubt it happens with that Owings already on board, but it’s something to watch for if one of these veterans gets to March in the same way Moustakas did last season.

Is the Royals outfield wide enough? Are the Royals throwing away their shot? Kansas City sure didn’t wait for it and went out and signed center fielder Billy Hamilton. It might be nice to have Hamilton on our side.

On top of that move, the Royals signed utility man Chris Owings, and carved out some space on the 40 man roster to make room for likely Rule 5 picks as they finish up a somewhat busy but curious Winter Meetings.

Programming note: While what you’ve known as BP Kansas City is being absorbed into the larger Baseball Prospectus site, if you’re subscribed to our podcast through iTunes or another app, you should still continue to receive new episodes as they’re published just like you always have.

Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes and BlogTalkRadio. You can also download this episode here (mp3).

Follow the Vault at @KCBaseballVault. Follow host Jeff Herr at @TheJeffReport, co-host Michael Engel at @michaelengel. You can also email feedback to KansasCityBaseballVault@gmail.com.

Baseball Prospectus Kansas City will be shutting down by the end of the year.

As you may have heard, Baseball Prospectus changed ownership last month. The new group is looking to streamline the site. That means the BP locals are ceasing publication and many of the writers from those ventures (including us) will migrate to the main page. There will be Royals content over there, some of it provided by us, but I’m not sure how everything is going to work going forward. There are still a lot of unknowns. Consider this the cliffhanger portion of this announcement. The one thing I do know is that there will no longer be a BP branded site dedicated to the Royals, and that’s too bad. I liked our little corner of the internet.

It’s been a helluva journey, starting at Blogspot, getting picked up to write at MVN with Clark and then traveling to ESPN and their Sweetspot Network before landing at Royals Review. We were independent for the most recent edition of the glory years for the Royals and then joined forces with the guys at Pine Tar Press to bring you this current edition of the blog. See what I mean in the lede? Who am I to give Dayton Moore grief about The Process 2.0 when this is The Blog 5.0 or something?

At any rate, it’s been an honor to work with these guys at the site and bring you some of the most comprehensive, original Royals coverage you’ll find on the free internet. Personally, I’m damn proud we’ve never posted a slideshow. I’m not about to start now.

Thank you for making us a part of your daily Royals experience. We’re still around, and although it may be difficult to find us in the immediate aftermath of all this, we’ll be sure to let you know what’s up when the time comes. Onward.

• You may have noticed that we didn’t post anything on Wednesday or yesterday surrounding the Royals signing Chris Owings to a $3 million deal with $500k in incentives. If you were wondering why, at least from my end, it’s because I was confused. And I still am. There was a time that Owings was highly regarded and he’s still just 27 years old. But he’s also six years into a big league career where he’s hit .250/.291/.378 playing half his games at what was a hitter’s paradise before the 2018 season. And the role he’s presumably in for is to be a utility infielder, which includes backing up the shortstop position. Sounds fine, I suppose, but Owings didn’t play shortstop at all in 2018. Why? Well, the metrics say he isn’t especially good there. I haven’t seen a ton of him, so maybe the metrics are missing something in him, but my concern is that if you bring in a guy who can’t hit, he better be very good defensively and Owings just isn’t. Now, it could be that this is just the first move in a series of moves, but I doubt that. If that’s the case, I’ll call off the dogs. And beyond the actual player, why give him $3 million? Who are you competing with for Owings and why aren’t you just letting them have him? There are plenty of shortstop options out there who can probably be had for less than that. Look, there are worse things than signing a utility guy for a relatively small amount, but this to me seems like a poor use of limited funds and limited roster space. And to make it all worse, the Twins signed Ronald Torreyes, who is a better defender and probably a better hitter (or at least has a higher floor) to a minor league deal worth $800k. Come on, Dayton. 
• In Ken Rosenthal’s latest at The Athletic (okay, probably not even his latest at this point), he talks about the Angels decision to non-tender Blake Parker and that the Royals (among many others) had reached out to him already. When I saw he was cut loose, the Royals were my first thought for him and a great opportunity for both sides. No, he’s not a part of the next good Royals team or anything and teams are smart enough to look past save totals, but a team that figures to be in a lot of close games would be a good team to sign with when trying to build some value. And he could be a nice trade chip mid-season if a team is looking for relievers as the 2019/2020 free agent relief market isn’t nearly as strong as this year’s, which leads to a weaker trade market as well. 2019 will be Parker’s age-34 season, which would probably surprise some, but he’s still pretty good with more than a strikeout per inning and good control. He got hit a little too hard with the home run ball, but he’d be a nice fit in a bullpen trying to be rebuilt. I know Ned Yost said that he’d be willing to be creative with his bullpen, but these roles have a way of working themselves out and I think Wily Peralta is a ticking timebomb. And I’ll say this again after I mentioned it last year. Some may think it’s not worth having a closer on a bad team, but I disagree. It’s not worth paying big money for one or keeping one who could have big trade value, but there’s value to being able to close down a close game for young players developing, so I’d definitely give Parker a shot and even give him two years if that’s what brings him in.
• Another non-tendered player seems to be mentioned quite a bit with the Royals and that’s Billy Hamilton. Look, I get it. The Royals love speed and they love defense and Hamilton is fast as all get out and can really go get it in center field. So it makes sense. And I’ll even go as far as to say that I wouldn’t be terribly shocked if the Royals picked him up just because of all that I mentioned before. But I really don’t see a purpose for it nor do I see why people actually seem to be in favor of it. I said before that Owings can’t hit, but Hamilton really really can’t hit. He’s a .245/.298/.333 career hitter and that’s playing half his games in a hitter’s haven. He strikes out too much and even though he actually walks a decent amount, it’s just not enough. He’s better defensively than Brian Goodwin and a bigger stolen base threat than Brett Phillips, but he also doesn’t hit lefties well, which would be the reason I could see to bring him in since Goodwin and Phillips are both lefties. I will say that the bigger dimensions at Kauffman Stadium could actually benefit him because of the type of hitter he is, but I doubt it would do enough for him. I just don’t see a reason for it personally and I hope they steer clear of the flash of his speed and defense. I do think Phillips probably finds himself in Omaha to start the 2019 season because of inventory, but I don’t think that needs to open up a spot for another outfielder, especially with Whit Merrifield and now Owings in the fold.
• The Rule 5 draft is coming up on Thursday at the end of the meetings, so I’ll give my thoughts on what the Royals could do here. I’ve mentioned Drew Jackson in the past as a guy they could look to as someone who could back up at shortstop and around the infield, but the Owings deal makes me think that won’t happen. The same is true for Richie Martin, who was a first round pick of the A’s just a few years ago and finally started to hit this past season in AA, but I’m not sure the spot for him is there. Art Warren from the Mariners could be fun with a fastball in the mid-90s that can get up to 98 and a filthy slider. He’s an injury risk and walked a ton of hitters last season in AA, but he could be a steal. Riley Ferrell from the Astros would be a big-time risk/reward proposition as well. Like Warren, walks are an issue and maybe the Royals already have this profile enough with guys like Josh Staumont, but if they can figure out his control issues, they could have a potential relief star. Of course, if the Astros can’t do it, can the Royals? Andrew Sopko from the Dodgers could be interesting. He gave up more hits than innings pitched last season, but also struck out more than a batter per inning. He’s not a star, but could be a number five guy or a middle relief arm. And one more (there are plenty, but I’ll stop here) is Emmanuel Ramirez who has a very good changeup and a very good curve but not a great fastball. Maybe it doesn’t work in the big leagues, but he’s had enough success that I’d give it a shot on a rebuilding team in a big park. I guess we’ll see in a few days what they do here.

Jayson Stark of The Athletic wrote a great article yesterday that talked about how support for the idea is growing and has been a focal point of the commissioner since he took the job a few years ago. There were a lot of shifts in 2018, which was more than 2017 and that number doesn’t figure to decrease any time soon. Even the Royals were shift-happy with mixed feelings. And it makes sense why teams would shift. We now have more data than ever before indicating where hitters are likely to hit the ball, so why not move a defender to that spot to increase the likelihood that they can record an out. And the belief is that because of the shift, hitters have tried to beat it by hitting it over the shift rather than the other way against the shift.

The argument here is that the shift has had a lot to do with the “launch angle revolution” which has led to increased strikeouts and that’s led to less action.

Okay, but like, no.

We’ve known forever that ground balls are not ideal. Sure, some hitters try to keep the ball on the ground to utilize their speed but outside of some rogue players (looking at you, certain former Royals first baseman), getting the ball in the air has been a gameplan for a long time, long before the shift. Maybe more hitters today are trying to lift the ball, but even if that’s the case, that isn’t the issue to me. Now, I do believe that’s part of why we’re seeing more strikeouts, but I don’t believe it’s enough of the reason to matter.

As many smarter than me have noted, the reason we’re seeing so many strikeouts in today’s game is probably because pitchers are just really, really good. And maybe more than good, pitchers are really good at throwing really hard. Also, technology is now available to work on things like spin rate that can make balls even harder to hit. So what do you get when you combine an inordinate number of pitchers touching the upper-90s on the radar gun while knowing how to make it move in a way that is extremely difficult to pick up out of the hand and make contact with? You have swings and misses. So you can argue that the shift has led to trying to hit the ball six miles which has led to more swings and misses, but I believe you’d be misguided.

So before I get back to what the real problem is, if there is one, let’s look at the idea of banning the shift and how difficult it would be. As Stark notes, the basic principle of the rule would theoretically be that when the play starts, there must be two infielders to the left of second and two to the right. But how far to either side? And what is an infielder? It’s not that it isn’t possible to figure all these questions out, but I do believe there are more questions than answers at this point that’ll make this a much longer term project than just putting a rule in place and having it all ready to go.

It may seem like I’m against change in baseball altogether. I did tweet yesterday that banning the shift is silly because the game always adjusts. And I do agree with that, but that isn’t to say that there should never be rule changes. I’ve mentioned this before, but to me, there are three big issues with pace of play that have a bigger impact than anything the powers that be have tried to mess with to this point.

I mentioned the first and that’s strikeouts. I’m not sure what the answer is there because you can’t tell pitchers to stop being good even if you believe someone has told the Royals pitchers that throughout the years. Realistically, the only way to combat this is to change the mound, which brings plenty of health risks as pitchers would not be accustomed to pitching from a lower mound or even one a few inches farther back to mitigate their velocity and spin rate. I’ll leave that solution up to someone smarter than me.

And it might be that the pace of a game doesn’t drastically change until that’s fixed, so anything else is window dressing, but window dressing isn’t always bad. The two easy changes for me are to fix replay and do something about the time between pitching changes.

The first is one that I’ve argued about since the start of replay. Why in the world do the umpires need to wait for the manager to challenge, stroll over to the headphones, stand there as if they’re doing anything while waiting for New York, only to then take their time to make the call after they’re given the result? These replay officials are already watching the games. They need to be ready with the call in a much shorter time frame than they currently do. And, oh yeah, enforce the 10 seconds the managers have to make their decisions. No more hands in the air while they wait for the thumbs up or thumbs down from their guys.

As for pitching changes, I don’t know what the solution is exactly, but I know that what is happening now is slowing games down after the fifth or sixth to a point that it even bothers me and I’m the audience that they basically can’t lose. I don’t mind the idea that a reliever has to face multiple hitters. In fact, I actually think I really like that. It adds to the strategy quite a bit. You want to take your starter out in the fifth to play matchups the rest of the way? That’s fine. But when you get to something like Rizzo-Bryant-Schwarber in the seventh, do you bring the lefty specialist in to face Rizzo if you know he has to face Bryant next? Added benefit here is pitchers put into situations where they’re less likely to excel have a good shot to add balls in play since they’re more likely to be hit by the player they don’t have the platoon advantage against.

Anyway, these are issues that require detailed and nuanced responses. And as the winter meetings approach and the discussion of how much trouble the game is in continues, just remember that the rumors of the demise of the game have been greatly exaggerated. I respect and even like that Manfred is willing to think outside the box, but I don’t think I can be less impressed with both what he thinks is actually wrong and how he proposes to fix it. I guess what I’m saying is Lesky for Commissioner. Tell a friend. Or something.

So I encourage you to click all the links, watch the video and read the articles because it’s all really interesting to see what the team at the home office is doing with some of the latest and greatest stats. One of my biggest complaints with certain stats is outlined in the second link. Many metrics of both batting and pitching treat every outcome as if the player’s skill caused that.

Take FIP for example, which is one of my personal least favorite stats. If a pitcher gives up 17 absolute rockets that are caught and strikes out 10 hitters while walking four, he throws a no-hitter with a FIP of around 2.30, but is he really likely to continue that success? I don’t think so. I know that’s a tangent on a pitching stat, but still, DRC+ addresses that with the recognition that certain outcomes are more indicative of a player’s skill than others and account for that.

Anyway, you’re here for Royals stuff, so I won’t blab on any more. Okay, well maybe I will, but it’s only because I want to give you some context for the numbers you’re about to see. The DRC+ leaderboard looks about like you’d expect. Mike Trout is at the top. Mookie Betts, JD Martinez, Jose Ramirez, Nolan Arenado, Justin Turner, Christian Yelich and Alex Bregman are also in the top 10 (along with Luke Voit and Max Muncy because things get weird sometimes). One thing I find interesting is that in this top 10, all but one of these players performed better than their “d” stats. Mike Trout, for example, hit .312/.460/.628 in reality, but his dAVG, dOBP and dSLG was .306/.444/.602. It’s a small difference obviously, but he was probably fortunate. Ramirez was the only player who actually underperformed, and it was by a very small margin.

Okay, Royals. I get it. There were 23 hitters on this leaderboard for the Royals. The limitation right now of this board is that if a player played for two teams, his whole season is on here, but there are worse things than that. Here are the DRC+ numbers next to their wRC+ numbers:

Okay, so first it’s easy to see some disagreement between the numbers. It’s also easy to see some of the bigger disagreements are on guys with smaller samples, so that’s not terribly surprising. It looks like Salvador Perez’s gap of 18 points and Alcides Escobar’s gap of 13 are exceptions here in that every other player with a gap of at least 10 points had fewer than 300 plate appearances, some far fewer. Also, peep those Ramon Torres and Paulo Orlando numbers. Easy to see why they’re gone.

Looking at some of the outliers, Perez hit .235/.274/.439, but his d numbers were .266/.305/.475. Why did he fail to reach them? I don’t know, but we did talk quite a bit throughout the season of how hard he hit the ball throughout the season, so that certainly played a role. Ryan O’Hearn is a huge drop from wRC+ to DRC+, though he’s still tops on the team in either metric. His “d” numbers were .264/.347/.512 compared to .262/.353/.597, so basically the power was the difference there. I think it’s fair to say the fact that he had a 25 percent home run per fly ball rate played in here, though based on some lower level minor league numbers, he might be able to get at least relatively close to that again.

One player who I plan to write more about at some point at some time is Adalberto Mondesi. He’s a bit of a mystery as this new metric paints him as a basically average hitter rather than one considerably above average. His ability to swipe bags makes an average-ish hitter above average, but I think there’s something to be said for a very good, but not great, barrel rate to go along with decent average exit velocity and hard hit percentages. He also probably benefited from some luck on fly balls with a crazy home run per fly ball rate. It’s probably a reason that we’re seeing a lot of fantasy articles about how he’s being overrated in drafts. I think there’s reason to believe there might be some regression and DRC+ is just another way to look at that possibility.

I’ll leave you with one more table (and then a few words after it) to show the biggest gap between actual OPS and dOPS, just to see some of the method to the madness for these Royals:

This is a good way to look at who might bounce back if they can retain a similar style to how they hit in 2018. It’s going to provide the same information as the DRC+, but maybe in a way that’s a little more familiar to you for right now.

Based on this information, I think it’s fair to think Perez and maybe Cuthbert find their way to a better 2019 than 2018, but we might see some drop off from Soler if he’s healthy and probably an expected decline from O’Hearn after his crazy season. There’s still a lot more to unpack with this new stat, but I’m a big fan so far.

Not that there was much drama to be had anyway. All three: Cheslor Cuthbert, Brian Flynn and Jesse Hahn were projected to make between $1 million and $1.7 million. Once the club decided to tender contracts, the differences at the open of negotiations were always going to be easy to overcome. 

As written in this space last week, the pitchers were obvious candidates for a contract, Cuthbert less so. By keeping the price below a million, the Royals leverage their meagre offseason war chest, so why not keep him around for another go? We already know what he brings to third base, but competition is healthy. At least that’s what I’m telling myself at this point of the winter.

By avoiding arbitration with their three remaining candidates, the Royals now have nine players under contract for the upcoming season at a total commitment of $72 million.

This is relevant because the Royals stated desire is for their Opening Day payroll to land somewhere in the $90 million neighborhood. That means they have around $18 million left in the kitty to divide among 16 players left to fill out the roster. Per the current CBA, we do know the major league minimum salary will be $555,000. 

Let’s just cut the crap and state the obvious: There are going to be a lot of minimum wage earners on next year’s team. 

Of course, that’s by design. It’s been written before and bears repeating that it just doesn’t make sense to throw good money at a bad baseball team. Yes, last year’s Royals team was all about bad baseball, never mind how you felt in September. There’s a decent chance they will improve, but really, it’s difficult to not have that good old dead cat bounce following a 104 loss season. 

Whit Merrifield played for $24,500 over the league minimum last year and bumping his WARP from 2.5 in his sophomore season to 4.3 last year, should get some sort of reward. But let’s not get carried away. It would be decent of the Royals to reward their best player, but there are plenty of internal pressures from within MLB to keep the gift-giving to a minimum in the short term. The system is the system is the system. Maybe he earns around $600,000 next season. 

So those free agent lists that go over 100 deep? If you’re aiming to guess as to who the Royals would bring in to fill out their roster, start in triple-digits and work your way down.

Meanwhile, the Royals chose not to tender four players prior to Friday’s deadline, making all four free agents. All four were expected to sign minor league deals and remain with the team.

The only surprising thing about Bubba Starling these days is when you remember he’s still playing baseball. The Royals added him to the 40-man roster in November of 2015 to keep him protected from that year’s Rule 5 draft. Since then, he’s amassed 800 plate appearances due to injury. It’s just not going to happen for the guy. Keep him around as an organizational guy at this point.

Jason Adam saw a handful of innings in Kansas City last summer and was a nice story as the local kid who makes good. Except he was underwhelming out of the bullpen. In 32 innings, he surrendered 30 hits, nine of which left the yard. His chase rate was average and he was able to miss bats on occasion. It’s just when contact was made, it was generally hard. On a team looking for bullpen help, it’s a bit of a surprise to me they would remove him from the roster, but it makes sense if they’re going to bring him back. Maybe he’s an adjustment or two away from being a cromulent bullpen piece. 

He got a cup of coffee in 2017, but Andres Machado boarded the struggle bus at the opening of last season. After getting raked at Triple-A (9.72 ERA and 16 walks in 25 innings), he was demoted to Double-A. He found his footing there, but was still allowing far too many baserunners. He’s currently getting lit up in the Venezuela Winter League (5.27 ERA and 1.902 WHIP in 13.2 innings).

Perhaps the biggest surprise was the non-tender of Samir Duenez. The Venezuelan repeated Double-A last summer and improved offensively, hitting .282/.357/.463 in 80 games. He’s been in the organization since 2013 and has been on the 40-man since 2016. Just 22 years old last year, he could conceivably attract interest to another team on a minor league deal. But sometimes, you stick with the one who brought you to the dance. Besides, it’s not like he’s ready for the majors and the Royals are doing him wrong. They’re simply removing him from the 40-man where he’s occupying space that could be put to better use.

The moves leave the Royals with 36 on the 40-man, which gives them the flexibility to add a player or two via free agency (yeah, right) or, more likely, through this month’s Rule 5 draft. When you’re struggling to keep your team above the 100 loss level, it’s all a numbers game anyway.