The Royals are in a position where they have a hard time fitting on the trade market. They’re not on the brink of a teardown. That’s already happened. They’re not on the brink of winning. That’s yet to come. They’re kind of figuring out what they have in their young players right now and are a year away at a minimum from supplementing that young group of players they have. Even so, that doesn’t mean they can’t play a key role this week. Plus, with all the GMs in one place, it’s easy to find rumors out there because they and the agents tend to be so easily accessible.

Who You’ll Hear About

There aren’t many players the Royals are going to shop this winter, but you never know when the right offer might come along. And aside from the idea that everyone is available for the right price, these are the players (in alphabetical order) who you’re most likely to see a rumor about this week.

Jorge Bonifacio - The Royals can’t be thrilled with Bonifacio after his 2018 season. He was decent offensively as a rookie, and I still think he got a raw deal with the Melky Cabrera acquisition. He came to camp in great shape and was the second best player on the field, but then got popped for PEDs. Maybe he was in such great shape because of them and that’s why he was playing so well too, but it was a big blow. Now the Royals have a bit of a logjam after they acquired both Brian Goodwin and Brett Phillips. Between Bonifacio and Soler, the Royals might very well just have too many players and they might be interested in jettisoning the one who they’re disappointed in. It’d be selling low if you believe there’s more to Boni, but a team like the Braves might be interested in him as they look to fill their RF spot via trade this winter. They’re not getting much back for him, but the roster space might be worth it. Personally, I’d hold on to him to see if he can rebound, but I think I like Boni more than most.

Danny Duffy - Speaking of selling low, the ship has likely sailed on the Royals trading Duffy, if that ship was ever even at the dock. A lot of people were clamoring for the Royals to move him last year, and I get why they didn’t. Even though he had a decent season, it had ended with another elbow injury and a legal issue, which probably negated his value. Given his standing with the team and in the community, I believe the Royals were right to not sell for pennies on the dollar. If he rebuilt his value with a good and healthy season, sure, explore trade possibilities this winter. With three years left on his deal, he’s still valuable. Unfortunately, he wasn’t really good or healthy this season, so they’re not moving him, but his name will likely be mentioned at least a few times.

Ian Kennedy - If the Royals could get out from under some of his deal, I’m sure they’d be ecstatic. It’s not happening, but he’s getting closer to not being completely impossible to move due to salary. He has $33 million left over the next two years, so the Royals would have to pay down probably two-thirds of that at this point, but if he pitches as he did after coming off the DL (25 IP, 18 K, 6 BB, 2.88 ERA, 2 HR allowed), maybe a team will get desperate in June or July and the Royals will only have to pay like 40 percent of what’s left. There will almost certainly be no deal this week or this offseason for Kennedy, but I bet his name gets out there, mostly by the Royals doing.

Whit Merrifield - Whit is the best trade chip the Royals have and the guy they honestly probably should move. But unless some team gets really stupid (and they might), it’s not happening either. With four years of team control left and a continuously improving bat and overall game, Merrifield is very valuable. He’s also about to 30 and the aging curve isn’t what it was during the steroid era. I’m personally torn here because I love Merrifield and would love to see him with the Royals for as long as possible. His two best positions, second base and center field, both have young solutions in the organization who are both at least close to ready. The Royals are likely going to want a top 30 prospect, top 75 prospect and two more for Whit. They’d likely get offered a top 50-60 prospect and two more, with one maybe being in the back of the top 100. I don’t think they’d jump at that, but you’ll probably hear about it starting this week.

Salvador Perez - They’re not moving Perez. That won’t stop him from being in rumors. Salvy is a free agent after the 2021 season, though I don’t see him going anywhere unless something happens in the next three seasons. Catchers across baseball hit .233/.304/.374, so even though Salvy is OBP-challenged, his bat is a breath of fresh air. His contract isn’t nearly as friendly as people make it out to be, but he’d have some really good value in a deal.

Jorge Soler - I’ve long thought the Royals should move Soler at the first chance they get, and it’s not because I don’t like him. I think he has the best chance to be a middle of the order masher of anyone in the organization right now. He smokes the ball, works walk and his prodigious power. We saw glimpses of it this year before the broken foot ended his season. But that’s just it. It’s always something. Either he’s hurt or he’s in a massive slump or it’s both. The times it’s all clicked for him have been few and far between, but the talent is so clearly there that he has value, especially considering he’s under a very reasonable contract and has three more years of team control. If I had to bet on a move being made from one of these six players, I’d bet on one of Soler or Bonifacio being traded. Soler might bring back a reliever the team actually covets, so he might be the better bet to go if teams are convinced he’ll be healthy.

If they make a trade from the big league level, the odds are that they’ll be targeting either a prospect who is about a million years away or a reliever. It’s so hard to say who they might look to get on that market, but the fact is that they are going to be looking for relief help this offseason and want to pay as little as possible. Of course, the good relievers who aren’t expensive and have team control are going to cost quite a bit in terms of trade equity, so I’m not sure anything will get it done, but it’s who they’ll look toward.

My guess is it’ll be all quiet for the Royals for most of the offseason. It’s easy to predict that. But you never know. The GM meetings are a great opportunity to lay the groundwork for something down the road, so we may not end up seeing the fruits of this week until July or even later. And hey, I love rumor season, so the GMs all in one place with agents not too far behind definitely works for me.

You know, I think what jumpstarted the rebuild is we quit talking about the rebuild. I think when you create a mindset that we’re rebuilding, you somehow build in or make an excuse that it’s OK to lose baseball games. It’s not… I think that was a big part of it. We just made a decision we were going to quit talking about this.

Interesting. And a little goofy. A winning culture and, by subset, a positive mindset are clearly important to Moore. If he believes that not talking about a rebuild was what led to a better second half, that’s his prerogative. But facts are facts and the 2018 season was the first year of a rebuild. Not talking about it doesn’t magically make said rebuild go any faster or disappear altogether. 

Rebuild. Rebuild. Rebuild. There. I wrote it. I’ll write it again.

The truth was, Moore didn’t think his team was going to be 100-loss bad last summer. The overall results left him dissatisfied, but the Royals improved second half left him encouraged.

I think for 2019, I’m more encouraged than I was perhaps at the beginning of 2018… I really felt that 2019 would perhaps be a much more challenging year for us from a won-loss standpoint, not 2018. I didn’t see 100 in the 2018 season. I just didn’t. I felt this team was much better than that. 

I’ve heard that Moore has expressed his thoughts that 2019 would be the real difficult year in the rebuild. Sorry. A difficult year in the process to get back to the postseason. I’m not sure why he necessarily targeted 2019. Truthfully, last season and each of the next two or three look to be lean. The Process can be accelerated through savvy drafting and smart international scouting, two things Moore mentioned, but the Royals lost a lot of talent and that makes the climb back all the more challenging.

Moore issued a bit of a mea culpa when it comes to the current state of the team.

I think one of our frustrations and one of my failures, and many failures truthfully, is the fact that we are where we are. So the focus of this next era of Royals baseball, we want to put together a winning team and then win for a long time. I’m not saying we’ll make the playoffs every year, but we want to play winning baseball. Championship caliber baseball. I like the fact that we played that way in the second half, but we want to win more consistently.

It’s a goal we can all get behind.

Of course the not-rebuild still means there is a lot of focus on the minor leagues. The best system in the history of whatever was used to launch the franchise to back to back pennants. That meant the minors need a little extra TLC to get it back to where it once was. That remains a goal and Moore is pleased with the progress that was made during the year.

It’s a lot better now (the minor league system) than it was at the beginning of the season. It’s hard necessarily to quantify that, but I like the fact that we have a lot more depth with pitching than we did at the beginning of the year obviously with the draft picks, the trades that we made as well… Internationally, I think we’re doing much, much better. I’m excited about our commitment to the Eastern Rim. I think we’re positioned really well to make sure our farm system is rebuilt to a level that is acceptable and that can produce championship, winning caliber players. 

I feel really good about where we are. We’re not where we want to be. We’re going to need to get a lot better if we’re going to play in postseason, but I think the foundation is here for us to go forward.

Obviously, most of that talent is in the low minors. Moore says not to expect them to fast-track players. 

I think it’s going to be really important we stay even more patient. I think we were probably a little too aggressive the first time around with maybe pushing players. Not changing the expectations, because the expectations as we know is what drives results. And so our expectations are always going to be very, very high for our players. 

So for example, we don’t like to see a lot of strikeouts with our players at the minor league level. We don’t want to see high strikeouts for guys we think are going to be on base guys and hit in the middle of the order and play the type of style we need to play in order to win in our ballpark. And so we may not be as aggressive with promoting them in the minor leagues until they cut their strikeout rates by 10 or 15 percent let’s say. Don’t hold me to that, but that’s just an example. 

I dig this because it’s always valuable when you get an on the record quote about a detail of organizational philosophy. Of course, we’ve known all along the Royals value contact. It’s just fascinating to hear Moore talk in some depth about this. Sorry, fans of Frank Schwindel. He cut his strikeout rate by four percent last year (from 16.7 percent to 12.8 percent) and still couldn’t get the call to The Show.

Moore specifically named Seuly Matias (34.8 percent strikeout rate last year in Single-A Lexington), Nick Pratto (27.9 percent) and MJ Melendez (30.3 percent) as players who they want to see cut their whiff rate. 

If they’re going to strike out, the Royals want to make damn sure the players they have are athletes who like to compete and are good teammates. Again, we’ve heard this before from Moore. It’s important to him and will guide him and his staff going forward. Moore admitted that they have to have the talent to play baseball as well. Duh. Let’s hope he can find players who fit this magical combination.

At least Ned Yost will be returning. Moore is pleased because of the harmony they share. Moore noted they both hold the same beliefs on how you build a team, maintain an organization and the importance of the things it takes to win.

I’m excited Ned is going to be back for the 2019 season. We’ve always just left it kind of year to year since we won the World Series just because it takes so much commitment and energy to go through the major league season.

As I’ve written before, this makes sense. Yost has managed for a long time and has accomplished everything one would hope to accomplish as a big league manager. He has nothing left to prove and managing a club that is not-rebuilding can become a bit of a chore. You could see it wear on him in the middle part of the year, but the improved second half provided Yost with a bit of positive energy. He’s back and everyone has the flexibility that is inherent in a short-term commitment. It’s a happy front office and manager.

For the most part, it sounds like Yost will be managing most of the same crew that closed out the 2018 season. 

I feel like there won’t be a lot of turnover… A lot of change… A lot of adding to that group. We’re prepared to go forward with them.

Moore mentioned two points of emphasis going forward. One, they need to build an elite farm system. And two, they need to get the major league payroll under control so the Royals are in a better position in 2020 and ’21 and beyond. He says everything will be viewed through those two objectives.

In other words, don’t expect the Royals to make any kind of interesting moves this winter. With over $67 million committed to five players and a rumored projected payroll set somewhere around $90 million (no one at the press conference asked Moore about next year’s payroll, which is really poor form) the organization will go bargain hunting when adding to the roster. The bullpen is an obvious area of need and Moore mentioned they would look into some reclamation projects. They’ve had success in the past with Ryan Madson and Joe Blanton. The Royals will look for another arm or two with some rebound potential.

And when it comes to the relief corps, Moore wouldn’t dismiss the idea of moving starters Danny Duffy or Ian Kennedy to the bullpen. Of course, Duffy has done it before. Kennedy has only made two appearances in relief in his career. Both are interesting candidates, but rotation depth figures to once again be rather thin. I’d wager they will open the year as starters. I won’t wager that they will still be in the rotation when next September rolls around.

It was a freewheeling conversation, lasting over 50 minutes and touched on topics such as analytics and how the Royals mesh the data with scouting, the importance of the team in the community and, as you’ve probably heard, Luke Heimlich. I’m not sure why the Heimlich question came up again, but Moore once again stated his belief in Heimlich as a person and a ballplayer. Why Moore feels the need to answer that question, only he can say. The smart move would be to deflect. Heimlich isn’t in the organization, after all. After the firestorm that kicked up last summer after the draft, not saying anything would have been the smart thing to do.

And now the winter is truly upon us in Kansas City. Half of the World Series is set. The GM meetings are next month. The winter meetings are about eight weeks away. Pitchers and catchers report in four months. Thanks for spending the season with us at BP Kansas City. It’s an honor when you make us part of your daily Royals routine.

Keep clicking. We’ll keep writing.

• One name I keep coming back to in my head in free agency for the Royals is Jordy Mercer. And yes, if that’s the name I’m coming back to, it really is going to be a long, cold winter. I suppose he could get priced out of what the Royals would want to do with him, but for a 32-year old without a plus tool, I could see him getting treated like last year’s free agents and settling for way less than he wants. Mercer can handle shortstop pretty well and isn’t a complete zero with the bat, hitting .251/.315/.381 last year and .254/.324/.387 the last three years. So there’s a nice backup for Adalberto Mondesi, who played every game down the stretch, but probably isn’t the 162-game player Alcides Escobar was. I also like him as an option at third against lefties when the Royals shift Hunter Dozier to first in place of Ryan O’Hearn. Mercer hit .286/.345/.410 against lefties last year and has hit .268/.346/.421 over the last three seasons against southpaws. All of these numbers tell me he has a shot to get a multi-year deal to start somewhere, but if it comes down to it and he needs a job, I think the Royals could easily offer him 350 plate appearances. Like I said, this isn’t exciting at all, but it’s one of the few areas where the team might look to hit the free agent market to find something for next year, and this makes a lot of sense as long as the price is right.
• Jeffrey Flanagan wrote a great piece about Kyle Zimmer and the work he’s been doing to try to get back healthy and back to pitching. We’ve heard it all before from him, so let’s take everything with a grain of salt, but he’s at least trying something different, which I think says a lot about both him and the Royals. On the Zimmer front, I don’t think anyone should actually expect anything because it’s the same song and dance every year, but again, the different approach is where the glimmer of optimism comes in. What it also tells me about the organization is that they aren’t the same as they were years ago when every pitcher had to do this or that and everyone was on the same program. If you’ve been paying attention to Clint, you already knew that, but it’s really encouraging that they seem to have turned a corner, even if it is later than we’d have hoped for from them. The real test comes in the next three to five years as their current pitching prospects begin to rise through the organization. A lot of teams have guys perform well in A-ball and below, but as these new prospects get to AA and hopefully above, we’ll see if their methods are any better. With Jakob Junis making it to becoming a quality starting pitcher, there’s already some hope there, but if two or three more can hold down a starting rotation by 2022 or so, that would be ideal.
• It’s natural when thinking about the near future to try to compare things a bit to the ascension of the last championship core. I’ve been guilty of it many times and prior to the season I had talked about how it could basically be a similar feeling a decade later as the top prospects will start to come through to the big leagues in 2021, similar to the 2011 promotions. But I kind of feel like that’s not the case anymore. Yes, many of the big names we’ve been hearing about seem like a good bet to be up in 2021 if things progress the way everyone hopes, but I actually think it’ll be a bit more staggered. If everything works out, that’s much better than what the organization just dealt with in having to plan for a mass post-2017 exodus. Instead, I think we could see guys like Richard Lovelady and Nicky Lopez in 2019 and maybe a Khalil Lee cameo as well. In 2020, Daniel Lynch, Jackson Kowar and Brady Singer might find their way to the big leagues along with a couple relievers and maybe even a 2019 draft pick, depending on how advanced he is. And then in 2021, maybe we’ll see the rise of Nick Pratto, MJ Melendez, Yefri Del Rosario, etc. Obviously a lot can change in three years. Heck, a lot can change in three months. But it does look like there could be multiple waves of the prospects graduating, which, like I said, will help on the back end if this all works out again.
• I think a lot about something Danny Duffy said to me prior to the 2014 season when he told me that he’d talked to the organization about being a reliever. He made his first career relief appearances that season, starting the year in the bullpen and throwing 8.1 innings over six appearances with a 2.16 ERA and 11 strikeouts. He was needed in the rotation and had a great ERA, but with poor peripherals. Then in 2015, he started in the rotation but was shifted to the bullpen at the end of the year where he went 8.1 innings again over six appearances. He didn’t allow a run and struck out 12. And then he pitched out of the bullpen again to start the year in 2016. He wasn’t quite as good, going 21 innings over 18 appearances and striking out 21 with a 3.00 ERA before shifting to the rotation and looking like a fringe Cy Young Award candidate for a time. The last couple years have been trying for him from a health perspective with multiple trips to the disabled list. It just makes me wonder if maybe the bullpen wouldn’t be a bad spot for him as the game has evolved so much from even a few years ago. If he’s utilized the way the Indians utilized Andrew Miller and the way the Brewers use Josh Hader, maybe he can be even more effective than as a starter. Health is obviously a concern with extra use and all that, but it’s just something I keep thinking about after his comments to me from a few years back.

Heading into 2019 the Royals have depth in their farm system despite a lack of Top 100 quality prospects. Unfortunately for them, the depth appears at a spot where, historically, the franchise has failed and where most major league teams in baseball fail, pitching. So how does this group of pitchers compare to that group ten years ago?

The Top 100 Prospect – Both groups likely have one Top 100 prospect in the Royals 2018 1st round pick Brady Singer compared to the 2009 right-hander Dan Cortes. The Royals had acquired Cortes for reliever Mike MacDougal and within a year he was inside Baseball America’s Top 100, appearing at 57 following a strong 2007 campaign in Wilmington. Within two years Cortes would prove to be a headache for the Royals, get dealt for Yuni Betancourt and go on to make 14 major league appearances before struggling to make it back. While Singer hasn’t pitched yet in a minor league game just yet, it’s hard to compare the two, but given Singer’s pedigree and feel for pitching, it would be hard to imagine him not at least equaling the Cortes career.

The Burgeoning Lefty – Heading into the 2009 season the Royals probably knew they had a talented lefty on their hands in Mike Montgomery yet the rest of the baseball world was still waiting. Within a year Montgomery would be ranked inside Baseball America and BP’s Top 40 prospects. This year’s group has a similar lefty, though he is a bit further along in his development as a college draftee, in Daniel Lynch. Currently, he’s sitting outside of the top 100 but I wouldn’t be shocked based on the stuff he was showing in Lexington if he found himself inside the Top 100 prior to the season. Don’t be shocked if he’s rated as the Royals best overall prospect to start the season or as their best pitching prospect though it’s not likely he will pitch himself inside the overall Top 40 the way Montgomery did.

The Top 10 – Other pitchers who were included in the Royals Top 10 included Danny Duffy who would go onto a major league career and an appearance into the Top 100 while the rest of the group largely struggled. That glut of pitching in that Top 10 was largely due to the farm system being weak outside the Top 6 prospects though Danny Gutierrez at the time was coming off a strong season in Burlington and was thought to be a good pitching prospect prior to off-field problems looming large over his career. The grouping the Royals currently have though is stronger with Kowar, another fringe Top 100 pitcher, likely heading to Wilmington after helping Lexington to a championship. Reliever Richard Lovelady is likely to contribute to the major league bullpen while Carlos Hernandez and Yefri Del Rosario are much bigger talents than both Rosa and Wood.

Best of the Rest – This group is quite a bit deeper than that 2009 group was though Kelvin Herrera would go onto make 1/3 of HDH. The Royals currently have a deep group of talented pitchers with their first-round picks Kris Bubic featured lower on my list than he will likely slot elsewhere. One scout gave me a Tanner Roark comp on Jon Heasley; Zach Haake was tossing 98 mph at instructs while Morel and Luciano present a pair of latin pitchers who could be near the top of this list next year should they harness their secondary stuff start to start in Lexington this season. It’s not even close though in terms of that grouping compared to this one in terms of talent as this group is much deeper.

The main difference between this group and the last is the data and open mind that the front office has towards pitching development compared to what they did ten years ago.Things change quickly in a year in terms of these lists and franchises though. Little did BA or the Royals know that the best pitcher they would develop was already in the organization and not on this BA list or even the next season’s group. The next Yordano Ventura could be the #2 player chosen this year’s draft or someone I left off. That’s the fun that comes with the process.

@ClintScoles

Featured Photo – Daniel Lynch by @TheGrandOldGame – Instagram

Early on, it looked like they made a terrible mistake. Maybe moving on from Eiland wasn’t necessarily wrong, but Eldred didn’t appear to be a positive influence on the staff as they appeared unprepared for opposing offenses at times and unwilling to adjust. I know that’s an odd thing to say about a guy who never threw a pitch for the team, but I sort of felt like that was on him and I questioned his ability to do his job. Obviously the lack of talent in the bullpen was a problem, but even so, established pitchers were struggling as well, which is a bit concerning.

It was pretty much a struggle through July. The offense got more fun when Ryan O’Hearn came up and Adalberto Mondesi really got going, but it’s pretty easy to see why the team got better after July 31st. The pitching improved a great deal. After starting 33-73 with a 5.30 ERA, they went 25-31 with a 4.26 ERA the rest of the way. August wasn’t stellar, but the starters had an ERA of 4.90 while the bullpen’s was down to 4.52, their second lowest mark of the season to that point. In September, the starters really kicked it up with a 3.49 ERA and the bullpen posted a 4.39 mark, their new second best. Take a look at the starter and reliever ERAs by month here:

I guess the question is whether or not that was just noise or if there’s something to it. I think simply not having Blaine Boyer and Justin Grimm helped and limiting the innings of Jason Hammel helped quite a bit too. And overall, the numbers weren’t really that much better. There was a spike in strikeout percentage in August, but that dropped significantly in September as well as the swinging strike rate, so maybe the September numbers are a bit of a mirage. I’ll get back to that in a second on an individual basis, but here are their numbers month-by-month.

And finally, before I get into the individuals, I found it very interesting that the team ground ball percentage as a staff in the first half was 41.7 percent, which ranked fifth lowest in baseball. The fly ball percentage of 37 percent was fifth highest. In the second half, the ground ball percentage was 45.3 percent (third highest) and the fly ball percentage was 33.1 percent (fourth lowest). Here’s a look at the ground ball and fly ball numbers by month followed by the home run per nine numbers:

Now let’s talk individuals because it’s one thing to look at team numbers, but they include guys like Boyer, Grimm and Hammel and a bunch of pitchers who don’t really matter to both the future of the team and even a cursory evaluation of Eldred in his new role. The young guys are who Eldred was brought in to work with, so I actually want to see how they did throughout the season. Let’s start with the success stories and move into the…others.

Brad Keller

It’s hard to fully evaluate Keller’s season on a month-by-month basis because the first two months were mostly spent in the bullpen and then he had to evolve a bit as a pitcher, which he absolutely did. This is an Eldred success story if you pin that on a coach. He saw his strikeout percentage jump up in the last two months and his swinging strike percentage go way up in his final month with his walk rate taking a tumble. It all kind of came together for him in September as you can see his ground ball rate jumped back up to where it was early in the year as well. All in all, this is a fun one to look at.

Heath Fillmyer

Fillmyer is a massive success story even if he never becomes a solid big league pitcher. Maybe it’s just my perception because I believed he was a big nothing burger, but he just kept getting better as the season went on. When he first came up, he was a ground ball machine, as you can see below, but after settling into a starting role, he wasn’t quiet that. Still, in September, like Keller, he put together is best effort with season highs in strikeout percentage, swinging strike percentage, walk percentage (well, low there, but that’s good) and a solid enough ground ball rate. His slider is a legitimately quality big league pitch, limiting opponents to a .242 average and .318 SLG with a 35.3 percent whiff rate. The surprise is that his changeup and curve both were solid as well. He may need to pitch backward a bit, but I think there might actually be a future on a big league club for him.

Jakob Junis

It was a truly odd year for Junis, who started off looking like he was going to way outperform projections, then his season took a dark turn and then he ended up about where everyone thought he would. The key for him is keeping the ball out of the air a little better. Through June, he’d allowed 22 homers in 96.1 innings, which is decidedly not good. And he had a fly ball rate of 43.8 percent. From July through the end of the year, he allowed 10 home runs in 80.2 innings. That’s decidedly much better. And his fly ball rate then was down to 29.2 percent. His home run per fly ball wasn’t drastically different. It was good to see him continuing to keep the ball in the park even while throwing a ton of strikes. Just look at those walk rates.

Kevin McCarthy

The reason I think McCarthy was a success for the coaching staff isn’t so much the performance on the surface because he was relatively steady all year. What gets me excited about McCarthy is that he’s an extreme ground ball pitcher (64.3 percent on the year), but he started getting swings and misses in August and September. Look at those rising swinging strikes rate (11.6 percent and 12.2 percent respectively after not topping 9.6 percent in any month). If he can do that while maintaining a fantastic walk rate and his ground ball rate, he might be more than a middle reliever moving forward. It’s at least worth watching.

Danny Duffy

Duffy isn’t young, but he is a part of the future, and his season cannot be classified as anything but disappointing. Injuries played a big role here, so I don’t want to put this on Eldred, but it was a rough go. We know the baseball card numbers, but in August, his swinging strike percentage was down to just 7 percent, which is well below his average. I’m guessing this was injury, but look at this chart. He was just all over the place. I’m not sure it tells us anything, but he had a weird year. You can probably ignore September given that it’s just two-thirds of an inning and seven batters worth of work.

Brandon Maurer

Please help me. There’s something about Maurer that makes me wonder if he can be something next year. After some adjustments, his strikeout percentage jumped from 8.8 percent in July to 25 percent in August and 25.8 percent in September. He still walks too many and he’s terrible, but this is exactly the reason why he’ll get chances until he’s 112. Anyway, I just wanted to throw him in because I’m mean.

Burch Smith

He’s not good. He’s not a big leaguer. He didn’t get better. He’s just not good. But hey, he walked fewer batters in July and August. So there’s that.

I thought about throwing in Tim Hill and Jorge Lopez, but they weren’t especially interesting, though it is worth noting that Hill saw his walk rate cut in half from the first half to the second and his strikeout rate remain mostly the same. He doesn’t get a ton of swings and misses, but his ground ball rate is so good that you’re okay with that as a LOOGY. The big win for him was cutting that walk rate because he was putting way too many guys on early. Lopez is tough to gauge because the sample is tiny, but also because he was in a different role with the Royals than he had been in the big leagues before.

One other player who was of interest was Eric Skoglund. I was pretty adamant he wasn’t a big leaguer, and I might have been wrong about that. He came back in September and the back of the card numbers were very good with a 1.33 ERA and just 11 hits allowed in 20.1 innings, but the underlying numbers were not great. The sample was obviously very small, but he’s worth watching to see if that was a mirage or the improvement was for real.

In all, I really liked the trend of a fair amount of young pitchers. I’m not sure this is the best way to evaluate Eldred as a coach, but is there really a great way to evaluate coaches? It’s kind of on the players. I’d say the improvements throughout the year at least reflect well on him and seeing guys like Junis, McCarthy, Keller, Fillmyer and some others improve in various ways as the season progressed makes me hopeful for him to be able to continue to make an impact as the pitching staff theoretically skews younger over the next few seasons. I’m not sold on him, but I do feel much better about him than I did early in the season

• Speaking of managers, Dayton Moore announced prior to the final game of the season that Ned Yost would be back for the 2019 season. I’m sure some people won’t like that, but whatever. I think it’s a prudent move, especially if the next manager truly is in the organization right now, which I believe to be true. The 2019 Royals, no matter what you’re hoping for after that strong finish, are not likely to be good, but there is a brighter future ahead than what anyone likely saw at this time last year when there was just so much uncertainty around the team. Yost staying to absorb some of those losses and to help get the initial growing pains out of the way makes a lot of sense for the Royals and shows that Yost has the best interest of his successor in mind. That’s another reason why I believe the manager is in house. It sure seems like Yost cares enough about whoever’s fate. Personally, I think Pedro Grifol is the guy. I know a lot have speculated Dale Sveum and Vance Wilson, and I can’t argue with them, but I’ve heard whispers too often that Grifol is the next man in charge for me to shy away from making that prediction now (and on Twitter a few days ago, I guess I’m pretty transparent). And I think it’d be a good fit as he’s bilingual and mixes the analytics with the scouting extremely well. He seems to have a good relationship with Moore and the team obviously knows him well. Plus, it’s pretty clear the Royals, and maybe Yost specifically, have fought to keep him around even when he lost his job as hitting coach. Take it for what it’s worth. That’s my two cents.
• The sample is small for everything Adalberto Mondesi did in 2018, but the trend is somewhat interesting to me. There’s been some talk on the interwebs about how he’s laying off pitches better than before and all that, and this is just an extension of that. Prior to the break, he hit .250/.270/.444, which showed good power, but not nearly enough in the way of getting on base to show off his wheels. And he had a .306 BABIP, so without diving too deep into the back end numbers, he wasn’t especially unlucky. After walking twice in 74 plate appearances before the break, he walked nine times in 217 after. No, that’s still not good. But going from a 2.7 percent rate to a 4.2 percent rate is noteworthy to me. But even moreso, he began coming on strong on August 25th when he really started playing basically every day, and in his final 30 games, he walked seven times in 135 plate appearances. Nope, still not special, but 5.2 percent is much, much closer to acceptable. He hit .312/.351/.624 in that time with 10 home runs and 16 steals and a .354 BABIP, which honestly isn’t outrageous given his speed. He’s never going to walk a ton, but with his pop and his ability to add extra bases after the fact, he doesn’t need to have a 10 percent walk rate to be a star (though it’d be nice). I think he’s on the right track. I’m curious to see how things go in 2019, especially if he doesn’t get off to a hot start, but he’s one of the most exciting storylines of 2019.
• I’ve thought a lot about how pitching and roles are changing in baseball thanks in large part to the Rays sort of having to go on the fly with their opener strategy. And I know I’ve talked a little bit about how the Royals might go about that. As it stands right now, making the silly assumption of health, the Royals have four guys who will enter the season in the rotation – Danny Duffy, Jakob Junis, Brad Keller and Ian Kennedy – and then have a fifth starter spot that’ll be open for some competition among Jorge Lopez, Heath Fillmyer, Trevor Oaks, Scott Barlow and maybe even a couple other guys like Foster Griffin or Scott Blewett if they’re added to the roster. So the Royals aren’t likely to be too innovative given what they have, but they could really benefit from using the opener for a couple of their pitchers. Junis stands out to me as a guy who would really benefit from getting to start his day with the fifth or sixth place hitter and only face the top four or five twice in a game. His third time through the order penalty isn’t crazy stiff, but his .306/.353/.529 is bad enough that it’s worth him not having to get there. Keller and Duffy didn’t really have any noteworthy third time through the order splits (in fact Keller still held opponents below a .700 OPS the third time), but Ian Kennedy struggled actually the second time through the order last season, and maybe if the hitters getting a second look at him are the 6-7-8 hitters and in the fifth or sixth inning, that would be helpful to him. It seems unlikely like I said, but I could see Richard Lovelady, Jerry Vasto, Tim Hill, Scott Barlow and Jorge Lopez all as guys who could be really good in that opening role. The lefties for their ability to get through a lefty heavy top of the order and the righties as guys who might be better in two or three inning stints. I imagine that time will come for the Royals once Yost leaves, but he’s surprised us before, so you never know.
• Someone mentioned on Twitter that it would be interesting to see what the Royals have actually lost in the Rule 5 draft in response to my article about what the Royals have gained over the years. Not surprisingly, the answer is that they haven’t lost much. Best I can tell, they’ve lost 15 players over the years with 11 of them seeing big league team. Such great names as Aurelio Monteagudo, Dick Colpaert and Ryan Baerlocher adorn the list of those gone to other teams, and the best they’ve lost is probably Victor Santos who went to the Pirates in the 2005 draft, but that was after five years in the big leagues posting a 4.99 ERA in 423 innings. So I guess he wasn’t really the best after the draft, but he was the best overall, I suppose. Rodney Myers was taken in that same draft by the Cubs and he actually put together some big league seasons, so that’s a plus for him. I guess the moral of this story is that the Royals have certainly gotten way more than they’ve given in the Rule 5 draft throughout their history and that’s a pretty good thing.

Despite the usual rhetoric, the Royals minor league squads started winning almost immediately, taking championships at multiple levels along the way to a 2015 World Series title. The first championship came at the Low-A level in 2008 at the Midwest League after the Burlington Bees rode a second-half division title into the playoffs and through a perfect playoff run. Ten years later, the Royals front office built another Low-A championship as the Lexington Legends defeated the Lakewood BlueClaws for the South Atlantic League title. Ten years apart and built in similar fashions but how does this recent championship team compare to that one?

Moustakas ’08 Flickr

The 1st Round Pick – Both teams had a 1st round pick who struggled in the early part of their season before finding a groove.
Burlington SS/3b – Mike Moustakas – Yes, Moose started the season at shortstop for the Bees playing 57 games there before making his move to third in June and playing there primarily during the second half of their season. .272/.337/.468 22 HR – Midwest Lg HR leader
Lexington 1b – Nick Pratto – the Royals 2017 1st round pick actually got on base at a higher clip and hit for a slightly higher average, finishing one extra-base hit shy of the 50 Moustakas put up. They did it in different fashions with Pratto striking out at nearly 13% higher clip.

Both players took off during the final two months of their seasons with Moustakas hitting .318/.386/.552 with 10 HR from July 1st to the end of the season compared to Pratto’s .319/.395/.516 with 7 HR. Pratto did perform better in the Low-A playoffs with his 1.148 OPS in six games compared to Moose’s .801.

The new pitcher with a strong finish – The seasons that Danny Duffy and Yefri Del Rosario put up 10 years apart were strikingly similar with both pitchers getting off to slow starts in their first three outings before getting in an outstanding groove.

Duffy – Paul Gierhart/MiLB.com

Burlington LHP – Danny Duffy – 17 Starts, 81.2 IP, 2.20 ERA, 0.99 WHIP

With an 8.49 ERA after three starts, Duffy didn’t give up more than three runs in any of his final 14 starts while allowing just 15 runs in 70 innings against 84 K’s

Lexington RHP – Yefri Del Rosario – 15 Starts, 79 IP, 3.19 ERA, 1.24 WHIP

After a 10.45 ERA in his first three starts, Del Rosario pitched his final 13 outings with just two starts of four runs allowed while giving up just 16 earned runs in his final 74.2 innings including his one shutout playoff starts against 68 K’s

The football player converting to full-time baseball

CF/LF- David Lough – Aside from Moose, a big breakout prospect for the Bees was a former football player who showed off his athleticism in the outfield while hitting .268/.329/.455.
CF/LF Brewer Hicklen – It was Hicklen who led the Lexington team in OPS and stolen bases, having a breakout season after playing baseball while accepting a football scholarship at UAB. He finished at .307/.378/.552.

Both teams added players to help them make their playoff runs with Burlington adding Johnny Giavotella to the top of their lineup along with a fireballing right-hander named Kelvin Herrera earning a promotion from rookie level Burlington, NC getting a bump to the Iowa roster in mid-August. Herrera gave the Bees six innings of two-run ball in his only playoff start while Gio helped carry the Bees offense in the playoffs with a hit in all six games highlighted by five hits, five runs scored and five RBIs with a pair of home runs in the two-game championship series. Meanwhile, the Legends received multiple late-season additions in Daniel Lynch, Jackson Kowar, and Kyle Isbel just to name the 2018 draftees. The two drafted pitchers gave up just three combined runs in their four playoff starts while Isbel chipped in with a .779 OPS in his 39 minor league games.

The teams compare as a whole statistically, with the ’08 Bees having a slight advantage in team ERA 3.49 to 3.61 compared to the Legends advantage in offensive OPS .733 to .722 while scoring 65 more runs. One can see a major difference in strikeouts on the offensive end with the Legends striking out 304 more times during the season. That number didn’t translate on the pitching side however, with the Legends staff striking out just eight more hitters in an extra 17 innings thrown.

Photo via Lexington Legends IG

These comparisons don’t do the Legends a lot of favors as the team was very deep in talent, winning a championship despite their top prospect, Seuly Matias, missing most of the second half of the season. In addition to Matias, the Legends lost Carlos Hernandez who had a sub-3 ERA during his final 10 starts before encountering injury. Comparing the two teams, the Legends starting pitching appears far deeper with Lynch, Kowar, Del Rosario and Hernandez leading the way compared to Burlington’s staff that added Herrera very late to Duffy and one of their better pitchers during the season, Danny Gutierrez. One of the more talented arms on the staff was Juan Abreu who was lost via a free agency snafu by the Royals and made seven appearances with the 2011 Astros. While the gap in terms of pitching does favor Lexington, the gap offensively seems rather large with Pratto, Matias, Isbel and MJ Melendez leading the way while getting All-Star contributions from Sebastian Rivero and a quality season from Hicklen.

Team to team, I give the edge to Lexington as would former major leaguer and Bees alum Clint Robinson, who scouts for another organization, saying that the overall talent on the Lexington club is by far better. “Lexington was better in nearly every facet of the game minus the infield.” That said if the Royals get three established major leaguers like Moose, Duffy, and Herrera alongside four other major league contributors from this squad they will be well ahead of the game.

MLB Contributors on the ’08 Bees
Danny Duffy
Kelvin Herrera
Mike Moustakas
Clint Robinson
Johnny Giavotella
David Lough
Juan Abreu

Featured Photo was taken from the Bees Blog

Follow me on Twitter @ClintScoles for information from Royals instructs next week.

This week we covered the end of Danny Duffy’s season and the impact his varied ailments might have on him going forward. We also talked about the shifting perception of his contract and trade value.

In other injury news, we expressed disappointment in Jorge Soler’s setback during his rehab stint. After a strong start, a flukey injury shut him down and his season is over. We speculated on his role in 2019 and beyond in light of his abbreviated season.

And then we covered some odds and ends: Ryan O’Hearn mashing, Whit Merrifield’s great year, the Drew Butera trade, what to expect from Jerry Vasto and Ben Lively, and the emergence of Brad Keller and some other rookie arms who’ve shown promise this year.

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.

Note: All advanced stats are through Saturday’s action.

Indians Vitals

Royals vs. Indians

Offense

Pitching

Indians Projected Lineup

Projected Pitching Matchups

Monday – 3:10 pm

Plutko has been tasked with replacing Trevor Bauer in the rotation while Bauer recovers from his stress fracture and he’s been fine in two of his three starts, but got roughed up in the other and the Indians have lost all three. Really it’s been a mixed bag as he’s been up and down this year and in and out of the rotation, so it’s hard to say exactly what you’ll get with him. He relies heavily on a nothing special fastball, throwing it more than 60 percent of the time and averaging just about 91-92 MPH on it. His number two is a slider and he mixes in the occasional change and curve. He’s allowed four home runs on his curve out of a total of 10 at bats that ended on it, which isn’t what you’d call ideal. And it’s not like his fastball has some great spin rate or anything. His trouble with lefties gives me a lot of hope for the Royals in this one. He’s allowed a .337/.412/.673 line against them, so I could see Ryan O’Hearn playing pepper with that tall wall in left and Brett Phillips launching one to right and really any of the lefties who are playing well having a field day in this one.

Junis is coming off his first career complete game in an outing that I didn’t expect to go that long. His homerless streak did end in his last start, but his post-DL numbers are very encouraging for his future. In 45.1 innings, he’s struck out 47, walked 12 and allowed three home runs with a 3.12 ERA. That’s some serious quality. Now, some of that is that his complete game was against the Tigers, who he absolutely owns, but you can only beat the teams in front of you. His history against the Indians isn’t what you’d call good. He’s faced them four times and made three starts with an ERA of 8.05 with four home runs allowed in 19 innings. This year has been especially rough, so this’ll be a nice test for him to see if he’s really back on track or if it was a Tigers-induced mirage.

Tuesday – 6:10 pm

The Royals faced Clevinger last week in Kansas City and Salvador Perez hit a monster three-run homer in the first inning, but then they didn’t get anything else off him. That’s actually pretty par for the course for him. He has a 4.67 ERA in the first and has allowed five home runs in 27 games before generally settling down as the game progresses. He’s been good everywhere, but he’s been a little less good at home this season with a  3.44 ERA compared to 2.88 on the road. He’s just a little more hittable at Progressive Field and interestingly just throws more strikes in general there, walking batters at a significantly lower clip. No Royals have hit him well, even Perez with that massive home run, though O’Hearn did go 1-for-3 against him last week, so maybe he’ll be the Royals player to actually hit Clevinger well.

Duffy has now made two starts since his brief DL stint and has been generally pretty good, going 11 innings with 13 strikeouts, five walks and a 2.45 ERA. Some areas of concern for me include his velocity, which topped out at just 93.7 in his last start after hitting near 97 earlier in the season. This is exactly what plagued him earlier in the year when his shoulder was in question, so I think it’s fair to wonder. Another issue has been a ton of pitches, 199 in fact, to average 18 per inning. Then add in very few swings and misses (a 7.5 percent rate), and there’s definitely reason to be worried. The Indians have been a big problem for him this year. He’s 0-3 with a 10.80 ERA in three starts and has walked 10 while striking out just eight in 15 innings. I don’t have high hopes here, but if he can pitch well, it’ll make me feel a lot better about him.

Wednesday – 12:10 pm

Kluber bounced back big time in his last start against the Rays, going seven shutout innings. But even with that start, he’s been somewhat ordinary over his last 12 starts, going 6-4 with a 3.84 ERA and striking out just 67 in 75 innings, which is very low for him. Also, the 75 hits allowed in that time is quite a few. That a stretch like that is considered a big slump for him says so much about how good he is, but they’ll need him to be vintage Kluber to make it through the postseason. He’s actually been just okay in each of his last two starts against the Royals with a total of 11.1 innings thrown, 16 hits allowed and eight runs. An odd issue he’s facing this year is with runners in scoring position where he’s allowed a .277 average and .485 slugging percentage. Even with that, his strand rate is still 78 percent, so you might be able to make an argument that there’s some regression coming for him, which isn’t something Indians fans want to hear. It’s hard to say that because he’s so good that you expect him to defy the numbers, but hey, you never know.

Keller just continues to roll along and pitch beyond his years. Sure it was the Orioles, but he just went eight innings for the second time in his career and has now thrown 50 innings since the break with a 3.42 ERA and 40 strikeouts. He threw a career-high 114 pitches in that last start, so I wouldn’t be too surprised if Keller is somewhat limited in this one just to be safe. With the Omaha season over by the time this is played, the pitching staff will have plenty of reinforcements in the way of call-ups, so I would expect we might only see five innings of Keller in this one. Of course, that’s all we got from him against Cleveland in Kansas City on the home stand, but it took him 96 pitches to get there. Still, he pitched well, allowing just two runs and striking out five.

The Royals are going well, but the Indians are still the considerably better team and they’re trying to get ramped up right now. I think the Indians take two of three, but the young guys are still fun to see.

The Schedules

Royals

The Royals remaining schedule is a bit light. They play seven games against teams currently over .500. All of them are against the Indians, who they just took two of three from and are basically playing out the string as they have a double-digit lead in the American League Central. Yes, they’re jockeying for playoff position, but even that isn’t really much of a race as they’re 6.5 games behind the Astros for the second-best record. So they have it pretty easy and stress free outside of getting the roster playoff ready. Here’s the schedule with their record against each opponent this year:

Baltimore – 3 games (1-2)
Cleveland – 7 games (4-8)
Minnesota – 6 games (6-6)
Pittsburgh – 3 games (0-0)
Detroit – 4 games (9-6)
Cincinnati – 2 games (0-2)

Those opponents have a combined record of 352-445 for a .442 winning percentage.

The Royals have gone a combined 20-24 against these six teams. If they maintain that winning percentage in their last 29 games, they’ll finish with 55 wins, which is undoubtedly more than the Orioles will finish with. If they hold form with the individual records against each team, they’ll finish the season with 51 wins. Now we’re cooking with gas.

Orioles

The Orioles have a bit of a tougher road with 19 games remaining against teams above .500. What may hurt them in their quest to be the upside down top is that their final 10 games against the Yankees, Red Sox and Astros might be meaningless to all three teams, so maybe they won’t be playing their best players, which might give the Orioles a shot. Here’s the breakdown for them:

Kansas City – 3 games (2-1)
Seattle – 3 games (0-4)
Tampa Bay – 3 games (8-8)
Oakland – 3 games (0-3)
Chicago (AL) – 3 games (2-2)
Toronto – 3 games (4-12)
New York (AL) – 3 games (6-10)
Boston – 3 games (2-14)
Houston – 4 games (0-3)

Their opponents have a combined record of 638-561 for a .532 winning percentage. Advantage, Orioles.

They’re a total of 24-57 against those teams. With 28 games to go for them, if they play true to record, that puts them at 47 wins. That’s a big cushion between what the Royals might be expected to do and them. If they play to form by series, they’ll finish with 47 wins. Yeesh. This is going to be tough.

The Teams

From the Royals perspective, I think they’re probably a better team than they have been at any point this season, but that might just be that they’re more athletic and thus more likely to go on little runs from time to time, sort of like this one or the one right after the break. Teams like the Royals, in evaluation mode and with some young talent that might not be star talent, can often have randomly good Septembers, especially when the schedule allows it. Of the teams they play, that describes a couple of them, but maybe not to the extent of the Royals other than the Orioles and maybe Reds.

The newish-look rotation that features three rookies, a guy with 245 career innings and Danny Duffy is a real wild card. They could look amazing for a month (think Kyle Davies for proof that anyone can) or they could fall apart with the extra month of work. The bullpen is still a disaster, so they’ll be good for a couple losses that probably shouldn’t be. In 29 games, I’m not sure I’d be shocked with any win total up to maybe 15 or so. September is weird for baseball and even weirder for bad teams, I feel like.

On the Orioles side, they traded away their biggest star but also their second baseman, one of their starters and two very good relievers. Now, Jonathan Villar has been good for them and Cedric Mullins has been a lot of fun in center field, so the offense didn’t take as much of a hit as it could have, but they still lost a guy in Manny Machado who was and is an absolute beast. But woof, that rotation. And while the bullpen is still probably better than the Royals, it’s not in any way good. Not that Brach was anything special for them, but he was at least a known commodity. I obviously don’t know as much about the Orioles and their potential September callups as I do the Royals, but I think they’re actually somehow less talented, so that’s not great in the Royals quest to reach the bottom.

The Orioles are really bad at home, but on the road, they’re exceptionally bad with a 16-50 record and this upcoming series against the Royals starts a nine-game trip for them. They play a total of 15 road games the rest of the way. Orioles fans would probably tell you they’ll be lucky to win three of them and they might be right.

Basically what it boils down to is this is the biggest series of the year for both teams. Getting swept can all but lock up being the worst for the Orioles, but if they falter and win the series or even sweep, anything can happen. All eyes will be on Kauffman Stadium this weekend as the baseball world eagerly watches the race to the bottom.