For awhile, the bullpen wasn’t so much the problem as three pitchers – Blaine Boyer, Jason Grimm and Brandon Maurer. That’s actually still true. Just look at these numbers for fun.

Whole Team

Sans MGB

Even though 13 percent of the bullpen’s innings brought the unit’s ERA up a full point, I don’t think it’s fair to say this bullpen is actually any good if you exclude those three. For one, Maurer is still on the team and he’s even thrown four straight scoreless innings somehow. Plus, the same 13 percent of innings going the other way belong to Kelvin Herrera who isn’t even on the team anymore and Brad Keller who is now in the starting rotation. So let’s just say that even though those three are a big ol’ gas can, the bullpen is still a problem. In fact, take a look at the numbers without Herrera and Keller:

So yeah, losing Keller and Herrera from the bullpen hurts quite a bit. Just for fun, here’s what the current crop of relievers have done this year:

All this makes me think back to Dayton Moore’s statements about how he’s embarrassed by this season and how they’re going to do better in 2019. The Royals are 34-78. The bullpen has been responsible for 24 losses. Some of them are not their fault, but they’ve given up leads in 12 games and lost 12 tie games. The offense shoulders some of this blame, but this isn’t about them. This is about the bullpen that is one of the worst we’ve seen in a long time in Kansas City. I’m just pulling a number out of thin air here, but even an average bullpen probably wins, let’s say, six of the games with a  blown lead. And maybe pulls out four of the 12 ties. I’m not even talking about a good bullpen, but an average one. So give the Royals 12 more wins and they’re 46-66. They’re still horrible, still picking top five or six next year, but it’s less disheartening.

Those numbers are exactly why I believe the Royals are going to do something silly and spend some money or player collateral on the bullpen. I understand to some extent. At least a portion of developing big leaguers is winning games, and this bullpen is a deterrent to winning games. And if the Royals end up trading for some long-term assets in the bullpen, I’ll be a lot more okay with that than if they try to make a free agent splash. So what could the 2019 bullpen look like?

Let’s start with the incumbents. The Royals best three relievers right now are, I hope you’re sitting, Kevin McCarthy, Brian Flynn and Wily Peralta. All have been fine, but none of those three should ever be better than maybe the fourth best reliever in a bullpen. I think they all have their place in a big league bullpen if there aren’t better options, but they need to do better. Glenn Sparkman and Jason Adam have shown flashes of being acceptable as well, though Adam obviously allows too many home runs right now and I think Sparkman falls in the same category as the first three eventually.

There are a couple minor league options. Richard Lovelady is the obvious here, and I think he’ll be up in the big leagues soon enough and it’s pretty clear he’s part of the future plans. Josh Staumont has been in the rotation and the bullpen this year, but as a reliever has excelled in many ways this year. The issue is that he’s still walking way too many with 35 in 44.2 innings out of the bullpen. Still, 65 strikeouts in that time is pretty attractive. And they also have Jorge Lopez, who they received in the Mike Moustakas deal. The Royals are figuring out his role right now, but I’ll play spoiler and tell you he ends up in the bullpen. He hasn’t been good yet and has control issues like Staumont, but a 95 MPH fastball and a plus curve could be a nice combination.

Looking to free agents, I could see the Royals signing a guy to close with the idea of maybe flipping him in July. Cody Allen is out there and maybe his struggles push him to a team like the Royals, but I still think he gets a deal with a contender. David Robertson will be a free agent, but I can’t imagine he’ll enjoy going from a team like the Yankees to the Royals unless he’s desperate to get a closer’s job and nobody else is offering one. Your better bets here are guys like John Axford, Brad Brach, Brad Ziegler or maybe someone like Justin Wilson.

And looking at some trade targets, maybe they see if they can get Ken Giles right if he doesn’t do well in Toronto. The Mariners are always a possibility to trade with and they have Alex Colome setting up for Edwin Diaz and might want some youth somewhere. I bet the Rockies would gladly move away from their Bryan Shaw deal. Or their Jake McGee deal. Or their Wade Davis deal. That’s a lot of money to absorb in any of those deals, so they’re unlikely, but you never know what can be worked out.

The point is, right or wrong, the Royals are probably going to be making some bullpen moves unless a few players step up over the last couple months of the season. I don’t think they’ll be spending huge money or anything, but it’s difficult to look at what this bullpen has done so far and how Dayton Moore feels about this season and not think there are changes coming. Is it worth it to win 71 games instead of 64? I don’t believe it is, but I have a feeling the front office disagrees and they get the final say for better or for worse.

Brandon Maurer and Blaine Boyer are is a bad pitchers and I’m really hopeful that they’ve he’s been DFA’d (or, frankly, outright cut loose) by the time you read this. But in the event that they haven’t he hasn’t been (Note: One down, one to go!), I want to illustrate for you, dear reader, how gut-punchingly bad they have he has been, both this season and through the larger arc of their his careers.

Blaine Boyer

Hello, precipitous decline in fastball velocity!

Boyer’s fastball is a tick below 92 mph, averaging 91.8 through the first threeish weeks. Of the 104 MLB relievers with 50 or more fastballs offered to this point in the season, it’s well below the league average (93.3) and 78^th overall, ahead of Nick Goody, Dan Jennings, Bobby Poyner and Warren G. Harding, the last of whom was the 29^th President of the United States, has been dead for almost 95 years and likely didn’t have a great fastball when he was alive.

Last year, Boyer threw 384 fastballs, averaging 94.2 mph. The year before, 92.8 on 573 pitches. The fastball might be washed, kids. The fastball doesn’t come back for 36-year olds unless MLB decides to suspend PED testing and if that happens, we’ll get my beautiful son Jorge Bonifacio back in the lineup and I won’t care what Blaine Boyer is up to anyway.

Should you (wrongly) think, “Well, Boyer has other offerings, just throw less of the fastball,” I’m here (rightly) to correct you. Boyer’s breaking ball may be one of the most hittable pitches in baseball. Here are the locations for balls in play off Boyer’s breaking offerings this year. They’ve averaged 90.4 exit velocity. Seven have gone for hits—that .500 average is fourth-worst in baseball.

The exit velocity on the breaker has climbed from 81.4 mph to 90.4 mph in three years. The opponent average (and I’ll cop to a small sample this year) has gone from .275 to .329 to .500. His spin rate (2470) is the highest it has been since StatCast started keeping track in 2015, so that’s likely not the issue at hand. Is Blaine Boyer bad? Sure seems like it!

Effective velocity vs. actual velocity? Nearly a mile per hour slower, tied for 159^th of 244 pitchers with at least 100 pitches to their credit. And that’s an improvement! Two years ago, the difference was a full mile per hour, in the wrong direction. Bad. This is bad. All of it. Wither Miguel Almonte?

Here is where I’d like to point out that Boyer has been BABIP’d half to death over the last couple of years, from .328 to .376 to an insane .444 this season. BABIP can be a nouveau riche stat depending on how long you’ve been analyzing some analyticals, and can still provide a useful 10,000-foot view of a situation like Boyer’s (because, again, he’s bad), but it doesn’t take much effort to separate fact from fiction. Isolating line drives from other plate results, we find some things.

1. Line drives results give us opponent BABIPs climbing from .587 to .806 but which drop back to .714 this season. Which… understandable, right? Line drives are hard-hit balls by definition.
2. All other results are down in the low-to-mid .200s (.231 down to .202 to .273 this year).
3. So… is Boyer getting crushed by BABIP, or is his BABIP high because most of the softly-thrown, poorly-located pitches he throws opponents are able to smack the living bejeezus out of?

It’s here that our article takes a turn, because your originally scheduled Brandon Maurer content now has to be replaced by an altogether different question: of the two, who are unquestionably on the shortlist for worst relievers in baseball at present, what was it about Boyer that kept him with the big club while Maurer went down? Other troubles aside, Maurer still throws hard and has some value to recoup should he put together a few weeks—somebody is always gonna take a flier on the guy whose fastball sits 95 mph (see Royals, Kansas City, just last year). Unlike Boyer (9.64 BB/9), Maurer isn’t currently walking a man per inning. Give me the guy who will at least bother to throw strikes.

Conclusion: Brandon Maurer has been trash for all of 2018, but he’s at least been the kind of trash you can trick somebody else into throwing out for you. Blaine Boyer has been more like a bag full of diarrhea-filled baby diapers; that’s gonna be your mess to clean up.

The group they break camp with for the opener on Thursday will most assuredly look different by the All-Star break. Hell, it’s likely there will be plenty of turnover before the end of April.

Still, the first pitch of the season has yet to be uncorked, and the lineup looks to be fairly settled, so what else are we going to do? (Spring training is too damn long.)

Let’s start with the known relief quantities. If you want to get a picture of how different 2018 will be from the last several seasons, look here. This is a limited subset of the bullpen with only Kelvin Herrera and Brandon Maurer as the relievers currently to be trusted.

Ned Yost is back to declaring only Kelvin Herrera and Brandon Maurer as bullpen locks. Justin Grimm and Rule 5 pick Brad Keller seem safely on the team. Same with Blaine Boyer. The rest … who can say?

— Rustin Dodd (@rustindodd) March 25, 2018

Justin Grimm lost his arbitration case with the Cubs (he asked for $2.475 million and was awarded the club counter at $2.2 million) and was then released in mid-March. He gets roughly $530,000 of that, plus the additional $1.25 million he agreed to with the Royals. Grimm has seen a steady decline in his performance since his peak in 2015 when he posted a 1.99 ERA in just under 50 innings.

Last summer it was an increase in home run and walk rate, combined with a decrease in strikeout rate that contributed to his struggles. No pitcher can overcome those self-inflicted obstacles. The question is whether he can curb the trends. His HR/FB rate was a ridiculous 22%, so let’s just feel good about the assumption he can reduce his HR/9.

For those of you still jonesing for the Dayton Moore to Atlanta connection, we present Blaine Boyer. Boyer was selected in the third round of the 2000 draft by the Braves and made his major league debut all the way back in 2005, when Moore was director of player personnel development. Boyer is difficult for hitters to barrel, but still allows too many baserunners to be completely trusted.

He’s in camp as a non-roster invitee, so the Royals will have to dump someone from the 40-man if he’s going to stick.

Already on the 40-man roster are a pair of Rule 5 selections in Burch Smith and Brad Keller. This is the tricky part where we will veer into the statistical realm of Spring Training. Keller has thrown 10 innings and whiffed 14 while posting a 2.70 ERA. The caveat here is that his Baseball Reference OppQual score which measures the quality of opposing batters he faced is a weak 7.1. BR defines that as around Double-A quality. Read into that what you will.

Meanwhile, Smith has whiffed 16 in 12 innings of work. His ERA of 7.50 and 24 total baserunners allowed could be alarming if you are one to read heavily into exhibition baseball performance.

As Rule 5 picks, both Smith and Keller can’t be optioned directly to the minors, They first have to pass through waivers and then offered back to their original teams. (The Rays and Diamondbacks, respectively.) They also have to serve at least 90 days on the active roster, or we repeat this whole drill next season.

Brian Flynn is out of options and is the lone southpaw in consideration here, so it’s difficult to understand why he’s not considered a lock at this point. He’s also looked sharp this spring with a 1.98 ERA in 13.2 innings of work. He’s whiffed 10 and walked just one.

Apparently, Wily Peralta is still in the mix, although it’s difficult to understand why. He’s had a miserable spring to this point with a whopping 24 baserunners in just eight innings of work. I don’t give a damn about your sample size. When those are your numbers…woof. Peralta was signed to a $1.525 million contract for 2018, which means the Royals are on the hook for just over $380,000 if they cut him before Opening Day. He will reportedly stay in Arizona on Monday to throw a pair of innings in a minor league game.

That’s an eight man bullpen to open the year. While the Royals are saying they have only two “locks,” it really looks like they have six or seven, depending on where you stand with the two Rule 5 guys. The real question at this point is whether they want to gamble about $1.2 million on Peralta making the tradition to the pen.

There are still other options. The Royals are reportedly considering keeping Eric Skoglund with the club as a middle reliever. It’s difficult to understand the logic behind that move should it come to fruition, as he’s much more valuable as a starter. And if the Royals see him as a fit in the rotation in the future, he should open the year in Omaha. Speaking of Omaha, he will start the Royals final exhibition game against the Storm Chasers on Monday.

Tim Hill was protected by the Royals in the Rule 5 draft and could be rewarded with a spot on the Opening Day roster, although he represents the longest long shot. However, the Royals want him to work on his slider, so it looks like Triple-A is the destination.

And all the roster intrigue isn’t limited to the bullpen. All indications are Ryan Goins will make the team which means another 40-man roster move is forthcoming.

Opening Day is just around the corner. The bullpen questions have yet to be settled, but don’t discount the Royals’ ability to spring a surprise roster move or two before everything is set for Thursday.