• 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.

• I probably should have put this out prior to the awards being announced, but if I had a vote on all the major ones, it would gone like this:
  AL ROY: Ohtani, Andujar, Torres
  NL ROY: Acuna, Soto, Buehler
  AL MOY: Cora, Cash, Melvin
  NL MOY: Counsell, Snitker, Maddon
  AL Cy Young: Verlander, Snell, Bauer, Sale, Kluber
  NL Cy Young: deGrom, Scherzer, Nola, Corbin, Freeland
  AL MVP: Betts, Trout, Martinez, Chapman, Bregman, Ramirez, Lindor, Khris Davis, Verlander, Merrifield (because 10th place votes are for fun or something)
  NL MVP: Yelich, deGrom, Story, Arenado, Baez, Cain, Freeman, Muncy, Rendon, Realmuto
  Obviously my votes align pretty well with what we saw over the last few days, but not entirely. I’m a little bit surprised that Brad Keller didn’t get any love, but not a lot surprised since voters only list their top three and the three finalists were clearly the best three rookies. I don’t think Ryan Yarbrough deserved the vote he got at all, so that’s where I’m surprised Keller didn’t fit in, but oh well. Whether they mean something or nothing, I still think awards season is fun, and I enjoy going through and see who voted for whom and all that good stuff. Next up is Hall of Fame season, which is less fun. Here’s hoping for Edgar Martinez to get that final push to get to where he belongs.
• Craig wrote about the Royals bullpen roles yesterday and the KC Baseball Vault team talked about them on the podcast that you can click the links to read and listen to respectively, but I wanted to weigh in as well. Some of my thoughts will likely overlap, but that’s okay. I think the Royals do have an opportunity to find a way to build a really effective pitching staff with the talent they have, which is something we’ve talked about a little bit over the last few months. In guys like Jorge Lopez, Heath Fillmyer, Eric Skoglund and even Jakob Junis and Danny Duffy, the Royals have pitchers who I think you can count on for at least six outs in a big moment in games. I know that’s weird to include a couple of those guys in there, but even Skoglund flashed a really good curve at times and if he can figure out how to get some consistency out of that, his long arms can make him a big weapon with that pitch. They’ll still need starters. I don’t think it’s sustainable to not have anyone shooting for 175-200 innings in a rotation, but I do believe the Royals talent on hand puts them in a great position to take advantage of some unorthodox thoughts. Think about opening a game with someone like Duffy and stacking with righties and letting him go three or four and then moving on to Junis to finish things out against all these righties with his nasty slider. That’s just one example, but I do think the Royals would do well to find a different approach as they’re rebuilding looking toward their next contender. And for those who say Ned Yost is too rigid, I do agree that it might be a factor, but I always go back to him being the one to put Alex Gordon in the leadoff spot, which made all sorts of sense, but was seemingly out of character for Ned. That’s not to say it proves he’s forward thinking, but it does prove that he can be, so we’ll see, I guess.
• The 40-man roster is now sitting at 37 players, which is actually still sort of high for this point in the offseason because they haven’t yet added the minor leaguers who will be eligible for the Rule 5 draft otherwise. I would imagine there are at least three players the Royals will protect. Scott Blewett, Arnaldo Hernandez and Josh Staumont come to mind. And if they do that, they’d be back full at 40, which leaves them no room for any additions to the roster, and that includes the Rule 5 draft, which I imagine they’ll participate in again. I feel like this is almost a weekly feature of Friday Notes, but with Ramon Torres out, there are now some obvious removals left. I know it’s hard, but Bubba Starling has likely got to go. Beyond that, it’s not so easy to find the next removals, but Jason Adam, Burch Smith, Glenn Sparkman (even though I think he has a chance to be very useful) and Rosell Herrera all seem like candidates to go. I was going to say Samir Duenez, who I mentioned awhile ago as being on borrowed 40-man roster time, but I still think they give Ryan O’Hearn a shot to prove what we saw at the end of the season wasn’t a fluke before they look for something to do with Duenez. Even though it’ll be a boring offseason, I imagine there’ll be some roster maneuvering going on right up to the last minute.
• Remember early in the season when it seemed like the Royals hit into a double play even when there was nobody on base? Well that happened, but then it also seemed to sort of shift as the season went on. One thing is that Salvador Perez stopped hitting into quite so many with eight over 36 games between his return and the end of May, but another thing is that the personnel is much better equipped to not do that. One Baseball Prospectus stat that I think is fun to look at in the offseason is NETDP, which basically shows how many more (or fewer) double plays a player hits into than the average player based on opportunities. The worst on the team was Hunter Dozer at 5.22 and Perez at 5.20, so that’ll continue to be a problem in 2019, but then it was Abraham Almonte, Cheslor Cuthbert, Alcides Escobar and Drew Butera. The best on the team was a lot of guys we’ll see on Opening Day with Adalberto Mondesi at -3.61, Alex Gordon at -3.29, Ryan O’Hearn at -2.81 and Jorge Bonifacio at -2.61. Really outside of Dozier and Perez, everybody likely to be on the 2019 roster was below 1, which means maybe there’ll be a little less frustration any time a runner is on first with less than two out for the Royals. And for what it’s worth, after being at the top of the league early, the Royals finished with just the eighth most double plays in baseball at 123. So, hey, it could have been worse.

This year, people weren’t as upset with PECOTA. Hard to imagine. The Royals were projected to be one of the worst teams in baseball and lo and behold, they were. It’s no surprise given the exodus of talent. They actually underperformed their team projection for a lot of the same reason they overperformed in the past. It was about the bullpen. The projection was not for the bullpen to be a complete tire fire like it was, at least early in the year, and therefore accounted for a few extra wins. But I’ve gone on long enough defending PECOTA. I want to look at a few individual offensive projections of players who we expect to see big playing time in 2019 just to see how far off or close it actually was.

Hunter Dozier

Dozier is another player without much of a sample to go by, but given that, I think the projections were surprisingly good. He actually hit for a bit less power than projected, but he had a hand/wrist injury early in the year that a computer can’t account for. He walked at a better rate than projected, but he had the same contact issues the system believed he would and had almost exactly the XBH/PA ratio projected of him. He’ll be in his age-27 season next year, so I imagine his projection will show some improvement, but he’s going to need to best last year’s projection to have a spot in the future.

Alex Gordon

After a couple down seasons, Gordon’s PECOTA projection was actually predicting a bit of an uptick, but not a return to a top hitter. It was surprisingly close, though the power projection was a little much. As far as counting stats go, PECOTA basically nailed it. Really, I’d call this a big win for the projections. I mean look at that TAv. I’d expect something similar next season, though maybe a touch below what he put up this year as it accounts for aging.

Whit Merrifield

In some ways, they nailed it with Whit. In other ways (most ways?), not so much. He was only projected for 330 plate appearances, so some of the counting stats were pretty low, but some of it was pretty right on. It’s interesting in some ways to me that his ISO was basically nailed as was his strikeout percentage. The walk rate was way higher than expected and it probably didn’t hurt that his BABIP was a good 50 points higher than the projected. But even though he outperformed his xBABIP, his speed helps to give him a bit of an edge there. I’d expect a bit of regression in the average next year, but I’m guessing PECOTA will be more on board with Whit in 2019.

Adalberto Mondesi

I feel like Mondesi is one of those instances where critics of projection systems would point to its flaws, but for a guy who hit .181/.226/.271 in 209 big league plate appearances coming into the season, there’s reason to think the above projection was actually quite generous. It was banking on improvement with age and a strong showing in AAA translating to the big leagues a little more than previously, but instead, the projection missed on just about everything with the exception of projecting a high strikeout rate. The .299 BABIP projection seemed a little light give his speed and he bested that by a lot at a not crazy .335 (.322 xBABIP). The projections are going to be all over the place on Mondesi for a couple years at least as he gets some data on his side.

Ryan O’Hearn

This one is just sort of fun because he’s a guy who exploded sort of out of nowhere. PECOTA did believe in his power, but man he still way outperformed it. There’s not much I think we can glean from this since O’Hearn’s emergence was so crazy, but I just think it’s fun to look at the numbers.

Salvador Perez

The belief in the PECOTA system was that the power would decrease for Perez while the hit tool wouldn’t decline quite as fast as it appears it might be. In fewer plate appearances than projected, Salvy hit six more home runs and struck out 11 more times. The end result wasn’t too far off with the TAv being within just a few points, but the way he got there was definitely not predicted by the projections here.

Jorge Soler

His season was cut short by yet another injury, but this projection was pretty amazing in a lot of areas. Look at that ISO, walk rate and strikeout rate. He ended up just hitting for a better average than projected which bumped everything up a bit, but some of that is an elite BABIP of .340. He does hit the ball hard and runs pretty well, so he could be a guy to run a high one and it’s not that much higher than his career number of .321, but that appears to be the difference between reality and the projection. I think PECOTA will be quite bullish on Soler from a rate stat standpoint, though I could see him getting a big ding in playing time predictions due to injuries.

I’m a big fan of the projections because a) it’s something to talk about toward the end of a long offseason and b) it’s always fun to predict ahead of time which are bullish, which are bearish and which are right on. Plus, it’s fun at the end of the year to compare a few. And yeah, it’s nice when they’re outperformed by your favorite team too.

• With the likely limited events of the upcoming offseason, it has me looking ahead to 2019/2020, which is pretty dangerous, but depending on how some of the young guys do this year, the Royals might be looking for some stopgaps to get from the end of the 2019 season to the middle of 2021 or so. A few names to keep an eye on in free agency, to me, are Mitch Moreland, Todd Frazier, Jedd Gyorko, Jarrod Dyson, Ben Zobrist (if he doesn’t retire), Mike Fiers, Erasmo Ramirez and any number of relievers. While things can certainly change over the next 12 months, any of these players might find a year in Kansas City attractive if either just for a job or maybe some nostalgia as their careers wind down. Knowing that outfield and corner infield appear to be the areas where the team might need a boost in 2020 is sort of comforting because there are passable options out there. Of course, there always seem to be passable first baseman (a la Lucas Duda), but even so, this is a short list for what the Royals might go after in 2020 in order to remain respectable while waiting on the next wave that should start to show up in the next couple seasons.
• One thing that I hadn’t really considered until really just now is how much bad the Royals are replacing on their 2018 roster heading into 2019. Of course, that doesn’t mean the replacement won’t be as bad or maybe even worse, but with the losses of Mike Moustakas, Jon Jay, Lucas Duda, Ryan Goins, Abraham Almonte, Cheslor Cuthbert (likely), Drew Butera, Paulo Orlando, Alcides Escobar (hopefully), Kelvin Herrera, Jason Hammel, Burch Smith (hopefully), Blaine Boyer, Brandon Maurer (hopefully), Justin Grimm and Enny Romero, the Royals are actually ridding themselves of -3.8 WARP. So simply replacing that with guys who really belong on AAA and are the definition of replacement level will bring the Royals four more wins. Go out and get some one-win players to replace them and that’s how they get from horrific to simply bad without really having to do anything. The top of the roster still needs an overhaul, and that’s something that might happen naturally too if Adalberto Mondesi keeps up his second half work, Whit Merrifield continues to be this player and Jorge Soler comes back healthy. But the biggest issue for the time being is that the bottom of the roster was just so horrible in 2018 that it weighed down everything. I think a good first step is bringing that up and then going from there. Of course, there will be bad players on the roster. It’s a matter of minimizing them as much as possible.
• Gold Glove finalists were announced yesterday and while the award is a silly one, it has gotten better. The days of Rafael Palmeiro winning it while barely playing first base are over, as they actually utilize some analytics in the process. The Royals had two finalists and if you watched the team for more than a handful of games, you know it’s Alex Gordon and Salvador Perez. By pretty much all accounts, Gordon was the best left fielder in baseball. Again. And he’s doing it as now one of the slower players in baseball, so he’s getting by with instinct, arm and just some natural talent there. So I think it would be a huge upset if he doesn’t win given that he’s got the history and the name and the numbers to back it up. Perez had his streak snapped last year, so he’s going for his fifth again this season and compared to Gomes and Maldonado (last year’s winner), I do think he comes out on top as well. He really upped his caught stealing numbers and that means something to the voters. So my guess is even in a terrible season, the Royals have two familiar Gold Glovers.
• As the Royals transition from their last good team to hopefully their next, there are a few different types of players they have on their roster. One of them is the type we’ve talked a fair amount about and that’s the guys who really seem to have a short time to make an impact and an impression. One of those guys is Brian Goodwin. With Brett Phillips, he has some time, but Goodwin seems like one of those guys who can either become a part of the future in 2019 or can become a footnote of players who just happened to be on the Royals roster at some point in time. I was actually somewhat impressed by him last season in his short time with the Royals. He seemed to play a solid center field and flashed enough power to keep teams honest. The UZR numbers backed up the solid defense, though the sample is still way too small for defensive purposes. I don’t think Goodwin is a starter on the next Royals playoff team, but he’s still young enough that he can play a valuable role, and I’m very excited and curious to see how he fares in 2019 for them.

There are a lot of dichotomies in this statement. Fillmyer has been all over the board at times this season, and he struck out a career-high nine batters—one short of the season-high by a Royals starter, set back by Jason Hammel (May 27) when he was a starter and equaled by Danny Duffy (June 9) when he wasn’t hurt. Simpler times.

If Fillmyer was going to get banged around, having it happen at Great American Ball Park would not have been stunning. It’s a bandbox. It’s nigh-impossible to actually effectively judge a Reds pitcher because they’re forced to do so much of their work there—via ESPN.com’s Park Factors metric, GABP is the sixth-most unforgiving park for pitcher’s and nearly 40 percent higher (1.398) on home run factors.

And the Reds are by no means mashers—in fact, aside from Joey Votto, Scooter Gennett and Eugenio Suarez, most Reds are largely of the sub-replacement variety (see Adam Duvall cratering when traded to the Atlanta Braves). But it is their home park, where luminaries like Tucker Barnhart have an OPS above .800.

Ha. Well, Heath Fillmyer went full-deGrom in scattering four hits and one earned over 7.1 innings to secure his season’s fourth victory and continue a late-season push to be part of next season’s starting rotation.

Both teams put up a run to open the contest. In the Royals half of the first inning, Adalberto Mondesi singled, stole second, stole third and honestly, I imagine he was eyeballing taking off for home before Salvador Perez doubled him home.

The Reds equalized two batters into their half of the first when Jose Peraza swatted a homer to center. But that was really the last time Fillmyer was challenged, as he did not surrender another hit until the fifth inning when Gabriel Guerrero singled; Guerrero also was runner to reach scoring position against Fillmyer, advancing on a Billy Hamilton walk before Scott Schebler lined out to end the inning.

Meanwhile, the Royals put up a fencepost in innings three-through-seven, adding a run to their tally in every half-inning. To wit (and even Whit):

• Merrifield singled to open the third, stole second, stole third (his 40^th and 41^st, as apparently he was concerned about BERTO catching him) and scored on an Alex Gordon single.
• In the fourth, some idiot in the stands robbed Jorge Bonifacio of a home run by reaching over the wall and interfering. Bonifacio was given a double, with Hunter Dozier (walk) winding up on third. Alcides Escobar drove in Dozier on an infield single.
• In the fifth, BERTO led off with a triple and scored on Gordon’s groundout. Sound boring? No. Not with the World’s Fastest Man on third. Gordon’s high tapper, fielded by Sal Romano and not-quite-lobbed but not-quite-fired to first, allowed BERTO to showcase his world-class speed.
• With two down in the sixth, Escobar reached when Peraza booted a grounder. Fillmyer (!) made the Reds pay by roping a double (!!!) into the gap, scoring a still-quick Escobar who was off at the crack of the bat. Nice first career hit for Fillmyer; is there anything he can’t do (aside from make three good starts in a row)?
• Gordon homered in the seventh. Gordon is hitting .341 in his last 11 games and has driven in 18 runs in September.

Of course, the ninth inning was not without its foibles. Votto led off with a single before Gennett flew out and Suarez struck out against Jake Newberry, who replaced Tim Hill. Newberry walked Curt Casali and Tucker Barnhart worked a full count before grounding out to end the game.

Your Unusually Happy Tweet of the Game

#HEYHEYHEYHEY

We aren’t going to set a franchise record for losses.

Celebrate the little things.#Royals

— Pine Tar Guy (@Royalfan83) September 27, 2018

The Bright Spot: Mondesi and Merrifield stealing the Reds blind. Gordon keeps raking. Fillmyer Fillmyering all over Great American Ball Park.

The Nadir: Rosell Herrera probably thought his return to Cincinnati would go better than 0-for-5, including 0-for-4 with a strikeout today.

The Next Step: We’ve come to the end. A four-game series against AL Central champion Cleveland closes out the 2018 season at Kauffman Stadium. The Tribe needs to wins for 90 on the season; any wins against the division champs will send the Royals into the off-season on a high note. Game One features Josh Tomlin for Cleveland and Glenn Sparkman for the Royals in terms of the pitching matchup.

That’s not the point here. The point is that while Kansas City has been at times bad, they’ve usually been fundamentally sound and of late have been legitimately exciting at times. This was in rather direct opposition to Detroit, which sold off almost all of its players you’ve ever heard of, leaving them with… this collection of people. Niko Goodrum has been out for nine days and I suspect that has caused considerably more consternation than a good team would likely worry about.

The Tigers don’t look to have a considerable amount of talent, both now or on the horizon, but they compounded that by playing extremely sloppy baseball, at least on Friday night. Say what you want about the Royals, and God knows I have a lot this year, not one time have I thought, “I… I’m not sure that professional baseball player knows how to catch or throw a baseball.”

The struggles in the field started for Detroit in the first inning, although one of the problems didn’t make the scoreboard as an error. Adalberto Mondesi reached via error on Dawel Lugo (that’s not a real name) and then scored FROM FIRST on an Alex Gordon single, running on the pitch when Gordon blooped it into left, checking up at third only to see Christin Stewart lazily one-hop the return throw to second. Can’t do that against the fastest player in baseball, and BERTO made him pay.

Whit Merrifield stole a base after leading off the third inning with a single, because that’s what Whit does. He moved to third on Mondesi’s ground out and scored on Gordon’s single because Gordon is very, very quietly hitting .385 (10-for-26) since Sept. 15.

Everything more or less fell apart in the fourth for Detroit, although an equally baffling baserunning play helped the Tigers limit the damage. After Jorge Bonifacio led off with a walk, Alcides Escobar reached on an error when Jarrod Saltalamacchia missed a catch of Francisco Liriano’s throw to first—in fairness to Saltalamacchia, Liriano hummed a beebee from about two feet away, so it’s not all on him—to put Bonifacio on third.

Boni then got his on yuks by wandering some 30 feet off the bag at third, I suppose in anticipation of a safety squeeze? Either way, James McCann picked him off and suddenly the Royals looked like maybe they wouldn’t make anything out of this golden opportunity.

Stewart struck again, however, this time fumbling Rosell Herrera’s double all over the yard to score Escobar and give Herrera an extra base; Cam Gallagher drove him in with a sac fly to make whatever it was Stewart was purporting to do out there sting even more.

Down 4-0, the Tigers finally went to work on Ian Kennedy in the fifth, when Ronny Rodriguez tomahawked an Ian Kennedy offering into the bullpen in left. An inning later—after the Royals couldn’t bring Herrera home on a two-out triple—Nicholas Castellanos’s one-out double plated JaCoby Jones to make it a two-run game.

Kennedy might not have had the 20-game winner stuff, but he certainly did his part to ensure that he wouldn’t have to go as long between wins this time. By the time he finally exited—after a throwing error by Mondesi put Pete Kozma on to start the eighth—Kennedy had gone seven-plus innings while allowing just two earned, striking out six and scattering seven hits. He’d take the unearned run as well after Castellanos’ double down the line in left hung up in the same janky corner that Stewart had trouble with earlier in the game; Gordon didn’t kick the ball across half the outfield, but the carom did allow Kozma to score.

Wily Peralta came on in the ninth and gave up a single to Rodriguez and walked Jeimer Candelario because why not? Fortunately, he struck out Lugo and Jim Adduci for his season’s 12^th save to even the series at one game apiece.

Your Unusually Happy Tweet of the Night

#Royals scored, and made Loriano throw 22 pitches. Neat.

—

]]> http://kansascity.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/09/21/recap-the-royals-are-bad-but-they-are-not-detroit-bad/feed/ 0 http://kansascity.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/09/21/friday-notes-september-21-2018/ http://kansascity.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/09/21/friday-notes-september-21-2018/#comments Fri, 21 Sep 2018 12:12:01 +0000 http://kansascity.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=39945 The Royals have hit a bit of a skid over the last few days, but I don’t think the wins and losses are the main reason there’s been some optimism around Kansas City regarding this team. It has to do with how the young guys are playing and the exploits of Adalberto Mondesi and Ryan O’Hearn in particular have people thinking about what might actually be next season. I’m not here to ruin your Cheerios or anything, but I’m fully expecting a lot of people to talk about the Twins turnaround from 2016 to 2017 and even the A’s ascent this year as possibilities for the Royals. I guess you can never say never, but I expect those people to be disappointed. And that’s not to say the team can’t be good next year. It’s just that they’re not likely to be that good. I suppose stranger things have happened.

• I think it’ll be a really boring offseason, but also strangely fascinating, if that makes any sense at all. I expect a ton of rumors to swirl around the Royals with regard to Whit Merrifield and Salvador Perez while nothing really ends up happening unless a team gets desperate and gives a franchise changing return for either of them. But I don’t really see a whole lot happening in terms of the roster outside of the bullpen, which we’ve talked about quite a bit throughout the season. I think we have a real good idea that Dayton Moore’s focus is going to be on bringing in relievers. My question is if he goes for veteran reclamation projects like he did this year in the hopes that it’ll work better and he can flip them in July or if he looks for guys who maybe didn’t fare well as starting pitchers and could benefit from a shift to the bullpen. Those guys might be able to be around for some good baseball in Kansas City if the rebuild goes as expected by the front office. I’m not sure who that would be, and they’re harder to find now that the role of the bullpen is important enough that teams don’t typically discard starters who might work in that role, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the route they take in trying to fix this unit. I’m also very curious to see how Jorge Lopez would look in a fireman role out of the bullpen, but I’m thinking the upside he’s shown as a starter with a few very good starts (you know, last night not withstanding) will mean he starts the year in the rotation next year. Either way, that part of the offseason will be very interesting to me.
• In thinking about next year’s defense, I believe it has a chance to get back to truly elite levels relatively quickly, but it all depends on how the Royals align. And some of that depends on what they think they can get offensively out of the guys who look to be excellent defensively. Think for a moment about an outfield of Alex Gordon, Brian Goodwin and Brett Phillips. And then a potential infield of Whit Merrifield, Adalberto Mondesi, Nicky Lopez and Ryan O’Hearn. Okay, O’Hearn isn’t the elite defender, but if Merrifield can pick up third base as quickly as I feel like he can, that could be one salty group. The issues start to come if they decide to make room for Lopez by moving Merrifield to center or if they hope to get extra offense and play some combination of Jorge Bonifacio and Jorge Soler in the outfield. But there is potential for a fantastic defense next season, which won’t do anything but help the pitching staff just like it did during the championship seasons. I know it was a different offensive climate, but Jeremy Guthrie put on 303 base runners in 2013 and still ended up with league average ERA. That takes some serious defensive help.  
• I saw an article by Bob Nightengale going over some of the changes to the game that John Smoltz would like to see happen. Ignoring the fact that some of the changes are just silly, I just want to talk for a minute about how ridiculous it is that one of the game’s ambassadors (and yes, that’s what he is a national announcer) is constantly ridiculing the game he’s supposed to be helping to promote. The fact is that things change in every sport and those involved either adapt or get left behind. I completely understand why some people don’t like what the game as become with the shifting and so many teams openly accepting being uncompetitive, but that doesn’t make it bad. It just makes it different. There are always ways to improve the game, and I’m not saying it’s perfect, but Smoltz is a tired act in my opinion.
• One underrated aspect of the Royals offense next season is that they might actually see a few more pitches than previous iterations of the Royals. The league average in pitches per plate appearance is 3.9 this year, and five players who look like at least decent bets to be on the 2018 roster have been better than that – Brian Goodwin, Ryan O’Hearn, Jorge Bonifacio, Hunter Dozier and Brett Phillips. Two more – Alex Gordon and Whit Merrifield – are right around that average. And a couple of the guys who are way below that – Adalberto Mondesi and Salvador Perez – have value offensively in ways outside of plate discipline. I can’t promise you the offense is going to be good, but they might be a little tougher on opponents next season. That’s especially true when you talk about adding Lopez to the lineup later in the year if he can continue to work counts at the next level.

]]> http://kansascity.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/09/21/friday-notes-september-21-2018/feed/ 0 http://kansascity.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/09/17/recap-yeah-the-bullpen-again/ http://kansascity.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/09/17/recap-yeah-the-bullpen-again/#comments Tue, 18 Sep 2018 02:39:25 +0000 http://kansascity.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=39686 Ryan O’Hearn is just a big ol’ American tater-mashing galoot and I love him.

I don’t know what Ryan O’Hearn’s big-league career is going to look like, and neither does anyone else. He could blossom into a fringe All-Star or spend most of his 30s in South Korea. I try not to get carried away on the small samples, because once upon a time Jeff Francoeur was on the cover of Sports Illustrated something like 15 games into his career and I bet SI wishes it had a mulligan on that, and I say that as an absolute Jeff Francoeur stan.

Francoeur eventually went from phenom to highly-regarded clubhouse guy and role player, largely because he couldn’t/wouldn’t work the count at all. There’s no shame in that life; Frenchy played 12 years and earned almost $30 million during his big-league career. If you offered that to O’Hearn right now, I imagine he’d say yes. A decade-plus in the bigs and life-altering money is nothing to turn one’s nose up at.

And yet there is a whiff—an ever-so-slight as to be almost imperceptible hint—that O’Hearn could be even better than that. He may not be—again, he’s a big dude who mashes, with an aversion to lefties and defense that’ll probably have him doing a lot of DHing during his life. He may need to brush up on his Korean. But so long as he keeps hitting like this, I’m more than willing to keep giving him the benefit of the doubt.

The Kansas City Royals bullpen is another matter entirely.

The Pittsburgh Pirates hosted the Royals and the two teams matched one another tit-for-tat for much of the night. But as happened a few times (so, so many times that one loses track), the bullpen simply hold up its end of the bargain in a 7-6 walk-off loss to open the series.

Brad Keller was good again. He wasn’t dominant, and he ran into trouble at times, but he managed to scatter 10 hits over six innings, limited the damage to four runs and struck out seven to boot. He pitched well enough to win. You’ll find that doesn’t often matter around here.

A chance for the Royals to do some really early damage—after Alex Gordon was hit by a pitch and Salvador Perez reached via error—was negated when Joe Musgrove induced an O’Hearn ground out to end the first inning, but Kansas City still managed to draw first blood in the third inning. Whit Merrifield led off with a single, moved to second on an Adalberto Mondesi bunt and scored on Alex Gordon’s double. Good ol’ National League baseball at its finest.

That lead lasted approximately seven minutes. Adam Frazier singled with one out, moved to second on a Starling Marte groundout and scored on a Corey Dickerson single. Back to square one we go! The Pirates then took the lead an inning later when Frazier doubled home Kevin Newman and Jacob Stallings after the duo posted back-to-back one-out singles.

The Kansas City offense roared to life in the fifth when Keller singled to lead off the inning. Smelling blood in the water, BERTO, Gordon and Perez followed a Merrifield flyout with three straight singles, with Gordon’s scoring Keller and The Sheriff bringing home BERTO. Then Mrs. O’Hearn’s Baby Boy scored Gordon with a booming double into right; Jorge Bonifacio’s sac fly scored Perez and gave the Royals a 5-3 lead.

Alas.

Keller faced the first two Pirates to start the seventh; that didn’t go well, as both Pablo Reyes and Marte singled. Dickerson was out on a bang-bang play at first that allowed Mondesi to casually show off the cannon attached to his right shoulder (call was upheld on review), but both runners moved up on the high chopper and Josh Bell drove in Reyes with a single.

It looked like fortune was favoring the Royals when O’Hearn led off the eighth against LEFTY Steven Brault and took him out of the park. Leaving aside that it was just O’Hearn’s second hit against a lefty in his Kansas City career, he did it against Brault, no slouch against lefties himself.

Pirates lefty Steven Brault had not allowed a homer to a left-handed hitter in 151 2/3 career innings before Ryan O’Hearn went deep in the eighth. It was O’Hearn’s 11th since debuting July 31st. 6-4, KC

— Rustin Dodd (@rustindodd) September 18, 2018

Things went to crap once more in the eighth. With two outs, Jose Osuna singled on a ball Kevin McCarthy couldn’t handle, moved to second on a wild pitch and then scored when O’Hearn dropped Hunter Dozier’s throw on Reyes’ single. Marte’s triple tied it. You know where this is heading, but let’s see it to its logical conclusion. The Royals ninth yielded nothing. Ben Lively walked Bell but got Jordan Luplow to ground into a 5-4-3 double play. A sliver of hope! Dashed. Kevin Kramer walked. Newman singled to left. So did Stallings and Kramer, off at the crack of the bat, slid in ahead of a throw up the line. Lather, rinse, repeat. Seen this one.

Your Tweet of Despair

You mean Ben Lively didn’t pitch well? No way. #Royals

— Roberto (@RobertElledge89) September 18, 2018

The Bright Spot: O’Hearn and Gordon both got base knocks and both drove in multiple runs.

The Nadir: Three innings, three earned runs is not inspiring bullpenning.

The Next Step: Eric Skoglund gets start No. 2 since returning from the disabled list. His reward is Jameson Taillon, who has a 2.41 ERA in his last 11 starts. I’m sure the Royals will provide adequate run support.

]]> http://kansascity.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/09/17/recap-yeah-the-bullpen-again/feed/ 0 http://kansascity.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/09/15/recap-kennedy-gordon-esky-royals-turn-back-the-clock-to-defeat-minnesota/ http://kansascity.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/09/15/recap-kennedy-gordon-esky-royals-turn-back-the-clock-to-defeat-minnesota/#comments Sun, 16 Sep 2018 02:58:55 +0000 http://kansascity.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=39522 For starters, I want to question the FS1 brass about what possibly constituted Minnesota and Kansas City’s being the featured Saturday night national broadcast. Were you throwing off because it was a college football Saturday? Were you hitting the Willians Astudillo/Effectively Wild demographic? Did y’all just want barbecue? It was the barbecue, wasn’t it?

It’s fine! In fact, it’s better than fine because it gave a national audience a chance to see the very best parts of the Kansas City… rebuild? Build? Mid-year retooling that offered a jaded fanbase some (possibly misguided) hope? Probably that last one. But regardless, the Royals showcased their finest wares in a 10-3 win against the Twins, Saturday.

The Royals got going in the first, taking a 1-0 lead thanks to Whit Merrifield’s leadoff double, Adalberto Mondesi’s groundout—which moved Merrifield to third—and another Alex Gordon groundout to score Merrifield. Gordon was not finished by a long shot.

After the Twins tied the game with an RBI single from Ehire Adrianza in the second, the Royals answered with another run, this one from the bat of Alcides Escobar to drive in Jorge Bonifacio, who singled with one out and moved to second on Rosell Herrera’s groundout.

Following a quiet third inning, the Royals broke through for four runs in the fourth. It started rather beautifully—Herrera singled and scored on an Escobar triple (we’re not done with him yet either). But then there was some consternation when Cam Gallagher’s bunt attempt failed but Astudillo made a pick-off attempt on Escobar that sailed into left and brought the veteran home. Paul Molitor seemed to think Gallagher had interfered with Astudillo’s  throw, and he felt so strongly about it that he got tossed out of the game for his troubles.

No longer a candidate to bunt, Gallagher roped a double to left, moved to third on a BERTO single and then both scored when Gordon doubled, at which point the game was broken wide open.

Logan Forsythe singled in Gregorio Petit in the top of the fifth. Whoop-de-doo.

Gordon drove in Gallagher (single) and Merrifield (walk) in the bottom of the sixth with a double. An inning later, Escobar scored Herrera with a double, and then came around on Gallagher’s single—I’ll make a big deal out of Gordon and Escobar turning back the clock, but don’t sleep on Gallagher going 4-for-4 as he bids to become future Drew Butera.

Meanwhile, in just his third start since late June, Ian Kennedy didn’t have to work terribly hard—big leads are pretty easy for anyone to make stand up, even someone who entered on a 17-start streak without a win. Six innings, six hits, one earned and four strikeouts later and Kennedy had his first win since April 7.

In the eighth, the Twins pushed a run across against Glenn Sparkman, who relieved Tim Hill after Jake Cave’s leadoff single. Astudillo greeted Sparkman with a single to move Cave to third, and then Max Kepler scored him with a sac fly. Hilariously, the inning ended with an Adrianza pop up to third, only Astudillo had broken for second… or forgot there was only one out? Either way, he was doubled off first to end the frame and, for all intents and purposes, the evening.

Your Unusually Happy Tweet of the Game

Beautiful baseball being played by the Royals right now

]]> http://kansascity.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/09/15/recap-kennedy-gordon-esky-royals-turn-back-the-clock-to-defeat-minnesota/feed/ 0 http://kansascity.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/09/04/theres-always-hope/ http://kansascity.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/09/04/theres-always-hope/#comments Tue, 04 Sep 2018 12:00:38 +0000 http://kansascity.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=38393 On September 2, 2005, the Kansas City Royals lost their 90th game of the season. The 10-inning, 8-7 loss at home to the Rangers dropped the Royals to 39 games behind the division-leading Chicago White Sox and also gave them the worst record in baseball….by TEN games. That they would almost play .500 baseball the rest of the way (13-16) is something of a miracle.

On September 2, 2018, the Royals completed a sweep of the Baltimore Orioles to up their record to 45-91, 32 games behind the division leading Cleveland Indians. If it was not for the absolutely atrocious Orioles, the Royals would have the worst record in baseball by nine games.  Kansas City has won seven of eight games to get here. Five of those wins were over the Orioles and Tigers, so don’t think the darkness has ended, but it’s something.

Of course, revisiting 2005 makes some sense, given that was the year the Royals lost 106 games – the worst in their history and this year’s team was, at least until a week ago, making a helluva run at besting that. Similar results? Yes. Similar teams? Not so much. At least not anymore.

On that dreary night in 2005 (actually it was 81 degrees with a light breeze, the baseball was dreary, perhaps it was a delightful night to sip four beers and eat two hot dogs), your Kansas City Royals trotted out this lineup:

• Aaron Guiel, CF.  He would go 2-for-5, upping his batting average AND on-base percentage to .148. The 32-year old was actually on the verge of getting hot and would record a trio of three-hit games in the next week.
• Terrance Long, LF. The 29-year old (I remembered him being older) would also go 2-for-5. He had that September and 12 games with the Yankees the next season left in his major league career.
• Emil Brown, RF. Finishing off the first of two competent seasons with the Royals, the 31-year old Brown went 0-for-3 with two walks.
• Matt Stairs, DH. The 37-year old Stairs would finish that year, one in which he played in 127 games, with a .373 on-base percentage. He would double and walk in five plate appearances and Chip Ambres would pinch run for him late. Ambres, by the way, would play 53 of 80 total major league games that year for the Royals.
• Mark Teahen, 3B. This was the season before ‘The Season of Teahen’, but the 23-year old rookie would go 4-for-5 with two doubles to push his average to .238 and edge his on-base percentage over .300!
• Angel Berroa, SS. The 27(?)-year old Berroa would go 1-for-5 in this game, one of 159 he would play that year. Angel would strike out 108 times in 2005….and walk 18. Say what you want about errors, but Berroa would make 25 that year.
• John Buck, C. The 25-year old was in his second major league season and his 0-for-5 that day would drop his average to .216. He would actually ‘get hot’ to end up slashing .242/.287/.389 for the year. In other words, he was John Buck.
• Justin Huber, 1B.  My goodness I was sure that Huber was going to be somebody. The 22-year old had gotten a whole five games in June and was now back with the September call-ups. He would go 2-for-5 that day, play the bulk of September and do a decent job of tempering the excitement surrounding him. Players who also played first that year: Stairs, Mike Sweeney, Tony Graffanino, Joe McEwing, Eli Marrero and Ken Harvey. And you were mad Ned Yost was playing Lucas Duda too much.
• Denny Hocking, 2B. The 35-year old was in his last major league campaign. He went 2-for-5 in his eighth start in nine games.
• Zack Greinke, SP. The 21-year old would pitch into the sixth, allowing three runs on seven hits. This was the season before Greinke quit baseball for a time and he would go 5-17 with a 5.80 earned run average. While pitcher records and ERA are generally poor indicators, they pretty accurately reflect Zack in 2005. Greinke was followed by Andrew Sisco who gave up two runs in 2/3 of an inning, Ambiriox Burgos who did the same, Juan Carlos Oviedo (Leo Nunez) who went two scoreless and Mike MacDougal who gave up a home run to Rod Barajas in the tenth. At the time, this bullpen had some hope as Sisco was 22, Burgos 21, Oviedo 23 and MacDougal 28 and all were entertaining/maddening.

Fast forward to the lineup of September 2nd of this year.  If you are reading about the Royals at this point in this season, I’m going to assume you are die-hard enough to not need much player embellishment:

• Whit Merrifield, DH. (29)
• Alex Gordon, LF (34)
• Hunter Dozier, 3B (26)
• Ryan O’Hearn, 1B (24)
• Jorge Bonifacio, RF (25)
• Rosell Herrera, 2B (25)
• Brett Phillips, CF (24)
• Alcides Escobar, SS (31, but Mondesi is just 22)
• Meibrys Viloria, C (21)
• Jorge Lopez, SP (25, followed by Tim Hill, 28 and Kevin McCarthy, 26)

Now, we are a bit unfair to the 2005 team as the September 2nd lineup was missing the injured David DeJesus, a good player who was just 25-years old, and Mike Sweeney who was sort of that team’s Alex Gordon. Back then, there was hope – some of it logical – that Teahen and Buck would both develop into good regular players. Teahen actually did for a bit, but could not sustain it.  That hope is probably little different from what we are currently thinking about O’Hearn, Bonifacio and maybe even still Dozier.

Greinke, after a couple of years, would turn into a star and the hope, of course and as always, is that the similarly-aged Mondesi will do the same for this version of the Royals. While you can say that Greinke helped the Royals become good by getting traded for Lorenzo Cain and Alcides Escobar later on, the 2005 Royals were seven years from even being considered ‘decent’ and no one on that roster was part of them getting to that point.

Can we say the same of this year’s Royals? Cynically you can say yes and without question the lineup above (even with Mondesi and Perez in it) is not a lineup that gets to the playoffs next year or the year after, but it just feels like a better group than 2005.

One can say that mistakes were made and resources wasted at the start of the year that got the Royals to the point where winning seven of eight MIGHT save them from the worst season in franchise history. One could also say that mistakes were made and resources wasted during the season that are keeping this team from the number one draft pick. Intentionally or not, Baltimore has done a marvelous job of being so bad that not even the Royals can tank enough to win less!

Are the Royals seven or eight years away from being in contention again?  Maybe, but I think there is hope that they are more like four years (with some luck and a hot start, maybe three) and if that is the case, there are names in the lineup from September 2nd that will be part of the next round of success.

If nothing else, that makes 2018 better than 2005 and, for the love of god, hopefully will make 2019 better than 2006.

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