• 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.

All numbers come from the insanely awesome Baseball Savant. If you haven’t been there, don’t go there unless you have like seven hours to spare because you’ll get sucked in forever. Darin and the team there does an amazing job.

Exit Velocity

Obviously, exit velocity isn’t the be all, end all, but if you’re hanging out at the top of the list, you’re probably doing pretty well. And if you’re at the bottom, well, not so much. Cuthbert’s average exit velocity is so interesting to me because he hits the ball hard, but just doesn’t have much success there. I’m not quite as worried about Phillips as some might be because he spent the last month hitting with a bum shoulder, which I can’t figure out why he was playing in the first place.

Hard Hit %

The list isn’t that different than the average exit velocity list, but it does explain Cuthbert a little more. Yeah, his average is high, but he isn’t hitting nearly as many at 95 MPH or harder. O’Hearn’s assault on the ball is pretty clear in both these metrics, so it’ll be fun to see if he can keep that up.

Barrel %

This list is fun too because it shows the guys who square up the ball the best. How in the hell did Hunter Dozier struggle so much this year? I mean I know he swung and missed too much, but he carried a .296 BABIP and that’s with hitting the ball hard a lot, squaring it up a lot and running pretty well (see below). I don’t get it.

Launch Angle

It’s not always good to have a high launch angle, but the guys who sit in the middle are usually pretty successful. A line drive is typically about 10-25° while a ground ball is below 10° and a fly ball is between 25 and 50°. A popup is above 50°. Obviously, the average launch angle doesn’t mean that most of these guys are averaging a line drive, so this doesn’t tell us a ton, but it’s another metric that we might as well look at while we’re here.

Whiff %

The Royals did some swinging and missing and if you look at the top of the leaderboard, quite a few will be on the club next season and should play big roles. The Royals want to get back to a contact-oriented team, but it looks like we’ll be seeing some swinging and missing instead.

Sprint Speed

The Royals can run a little bit now. Yes, they still have Salvador Perez and Alex Gordon as anchors at the bottom, but adding Adalberto Mondesi and Brett Phillips to Whit Merrifield and somehow Hunter Dozier and Jorge Soler has made this team a pretty fast and fun to watch team. They had eight players who ranked in the top fourth of the league. That seems pretty good to me.

We’ll take a look at how the pitchers ranked in the Statcast numbers later this week (hint, it’s ugly, don’t eat before reading). But for now, we can look at a Royals team that has a shot to at least be fun offensively in 2019, if not downright almost above average. If you want to dream a little, they did hit .255/.313/.425 from August 1 on and scored 4.5 runs per game while pacing for 182 homers over 162 games. That’s, well, not bad. Get pumped.

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.

• Clint has written a couple really interesting pieces looking at the 2009 system vs. the 2019 system and the comparisons (pitchers here and hitters here). One thing that stands out to me is that I do believe there is additional depth in the system at the expense of star power right now as compared to a decade ago. But given the changes the organization has made in those 10 years, I’d actually bet on the depth coming through and maybe putting a more sustained winner on the field than what we saw from that last group that came from the best farm system anyone had ever seen to that point. You certainly can’t argue with a world championship and two AL pennants, but I think an argument can be made (and I’ve made it) that they still underachieved individually. Eric Hosmer never became a star. Neither did Mike Moustakas. They didn’t get an ace out of the system, though with the tragic passing of Yordano Ventura, maybe that was taken away too soon. I believe that their development is so different today than it was 10 years ago that they have an opportunity to turn their additional depth into more winning. Maybe they don’t have the marquee prospect right now, but they should after the June draft and likely should get another one in the 2020 draft with a relatively high pick. We’ve already seen the system working much better in churning out guys like Jakob Junis and Whit Merrifield. Maybe I’m wrong and nothing will be different, but they just do such a better job today in development than a decade ago that I’d actually bet on the depth maybe even putting up better numbers than the star prospects they once had. The biggest thing for me is the pitching development has gone from archaic to much more open-minded, and I will all but guarantee they’ll be rewarded for that in the near future.
• It seems like a lot of people are down on Brett Phillips. And I get it to some extent because he was underwhelming offensively after coming over in the July trade. That might be an understatement. He hit .188/.252/.313 and struck out an astonishing 50 times in 123 plate appearances. So yeah, it was bad. But I find it odd that some of what I’ve seen has people so sure that he can’t hit. He hit .279/.360/.475 in the minors in 2,760 plate appearances. He hit .276/.351/.448 in 98 plate appearances in the big leagues in 2017. He had a 10.5 percent minor league walk rate and is at 8.2 percent in his limited big league action. He swings and misses way too much, and that will be a problem, but I just think it’s pretty silly to write him off. He wasn’t exactly hitting well before he hurt his shoulder, but he went 3 for 23 with no extra base hits and 10 strikeouts after he came back and admitted he wasn’t playing at 100 percent. I honestly don’t know why they insisted on playing him when they had plenty of other outfield options available. I think all that last three weeks did was hurt the perception of him among fans and put him in a position to fail. I’m not saying Phillips is a surefire star or anything, but we have to remember the Royals picked him up in exchange for two months of a guy who had to wait until March to sign because there was so little demand for him. I still like him and if he can be a .240/.300/.410 hitter even, there’s a place for him in the big leagues. I get maybe being a little disappointed in his start with the Royals, but to write him off now seems pretty silly to me.
• As the Royals look to build back up to a World Series contender, one thing they’ve mentioned quite a bit is speed and defense, which I believe will be a hallmark of every good Royals team ever. They’ve got some work to do on the defense side. I did mention a few weeks ago that the outfield could be near elite next season with the right pieces in the right spots, but looking at Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAA), there’s definitely room for growth. Mike Moustakas was the team’s best defender by that metric with Jon Jay third best and Lucas Duda amazingly eighth best. The positive is that Phllips was worth 4.6 runs while Whit Merrifield, Alex Gordon, Adalberto Mondesi (in half a season) and Ryan O’Hearn all rated positively. I’m a little surprised on O’Hearn as he looked stiff and indecisive at first base, but the metrics say otherwise. Alcides Escobar ranked near the bottom for the team, so him hopefully going elsewhere will help, but the big concern for me is Hunter Dozier. He was worth -13.3 runs last season between mostly first and third. You can’t be that rough defensively and hit .229/.278/.395. And even with the optimism over his last couple months, he still hit just .256/.293/.467 in his final 48 games. Dozier is in a big time important season in 2019 for him if he wants to have a big league career, with the Royals or elsewhere. He did look smoother at third as the season went on, but defense is very important to the Royals and their infield defense appears to be more important than ever before as they began getting more and more groundballs from their pitching staff. He’s in the crosshairs this year.
• And finally, just something a little quirky to look at. I wanted to see the Royals record by run differential to see if they had a winning record at any run differential this season. If you predicted they did not, you are correct. They were 1-1 when the difference was 10. You might recall they beat the Mariners in April by a 10-0 score back when they could only win when they threw a shutout. But, alas, the Blue Jays beat them 15-5, so there went that. The next closest they came to a winning record was going 11-14 when the margin of victory was two runs. So yeah. Just another way to look back at the 2018 club and realize just how bad they were.

• 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.

• As the Royals do embark on September callups, quite a few potential additions need to have 40-man roster spots before they can be called up. They did free one on Wednesday with the Duda deal, and it might go to someone like Frank Schwindel, but Jorge Soler coming off the 60-day DL mid-week will require another move, so let’s just say the Duda spot goes to Soler for the purposes of his discussion. Where are they going to find the spots for Schwindel, Josh Staumont (who has to be added anyway to avoid being exposed to the Rule 5), Nicky Lopez, Richard Lovely, Arnaldo Hernandez and anyone else who might be deserving? Well obviously some trades might happen, and maybe they’ve already happened between me writing this and you reading this. So that’ll help. One spot seems easy. According to his Instagram, Eric Stout is out for the season. Put him on the 60-day DL and there’s an easy spot for Schwindel. Bubba Starling is another guy who makes sense as either a DFA or a 60-day spot, but he did just come back for a rehab assignment in Idaho Falls, so maybe he won’t actually get transferred to the longer disabled list. Other than that, it comes down to letting a player go. I’d just cut bait on Jason Hammel, Alcides Escobar and Drew Butera, but I’m not sure the team would at this point. If they decide to add Jecksson Flores, maybe they’d cut bait on Ramon Torres? Andres Machado seems to have taken a step back this season, so he’s another possible guy. I think the real answer here is that there are players not on the 40-man roster who do not have to be added in the offseason to protect them from the Rule 5 who might not get a shot at the big league roster in September. But we’ll see what they decide.
• I think I went about two weeks without praising Adalberto Mondesi in this space, so I’m going to have to make up for some lost time now. I’m certainly not going to put him on the same level as Mike Trout or Robinson Cano as some member of the Kansas City media has done recently (do they drug test because they should), but I will say that he’s showing why everyone loved him before he struggled in the big leagues. For the season, he’s hitting .267/.289/.453. The OBP is very underwhelming, which is a problem to keep an eye out for, but the power is very real with 16 extra base hits and an ISO of .186. But I believe it’s better than that. I think something clicked with him early in his time up this year and since that trip to Milwaukee, he’s played 41 games and is hitting .286/.306/.493 with 15 extra base hits in 146 plate appearances. But it’s not just that. He’s 17 for 21 in steals this year. The metrics indicate he’s playing a fantastic shortstop as well. And something interesting is that he seems to be hunting more strikes and more fastballs. The walks aren’t there yet, but he’s doing damage to the ball a lot more this season. His average home run is traveling 412 feet. He’s going to need to walk more, but even if he doesn’t, if he continues to flash the power, the speed and the defense, he can certainly get by. He won’t be a tier one star or anything without walking more, but if you give me a shortstop who can play that kind of defense, steal 50 plus bases (which is certainly possible and plausible for him) and hit 20 homers with 30 doubles, I’m happy to work around the lack of walks. He needs to stay on the field, but the potential is really starting to shine.
• The Arizona Fall League rosters were announced yesterday, and it’s no surprise that Khalil Lee will be on it from the Royals. He’s definitely the headliner as the team’s best prospect (in my opinion) and because he hasn’t played in a few weeks. It’ll be an opportunity to see him in action and hope he can build on some solid things he had done in a short time at AA. I think he has a shot, if he’s truly healthy, to look really good and turn some heads down there. His power should play up in that atmosphere and maybe he can have an eye opening season like Nicky Lopez last year. Meibrys Viloria is another interesting name as he was added to the 40-man last year when they probably didn’t really need to, but has had a bit of an uneven season offensively this year. The OBP and contact skills are there, but if the power doesn’t develop, he’s likely nothing more than a backup. Lee is the only player on the Surprise Saguaros roster who is younger than Viloria, so it’ll be a nice test for him. And the third big-ish name is Scott Blewett who needs to be added to the 40-man this year to avoid being eligible for the Rule 5. It’s just never really come together for him, so this is his chance to prove his worth to an organization that just drafted a bunch of pitchers who will be competing with Blewett next season in the system. The rest of the roster includes a speedster in Nick Heath and a couple interesting enough relievers in Grant Gavin and Walker Sheller. And hey, with Bo Bichette and Vladito on the roster, I’m guessing they’ll be on MLB Network a fair amount to watch.
• Hunter Dozier has a funny way of seeming like he’s going better than he is. I legitimately thought he was hot the other day until I looked up his numbers over the last few games and saw that he’s hitting just .268/.316/.423 in August, which I guess is a big improvement over his season numbers, but it just seemed like better than that. And this was actually before he went four for seven with two doubles, so his numbers were even lower then. The thing is that his Statcast numbers do make it seem like he should be better. There are obvious perils with looking at average exit velocities, launch angles, etc., but I’m going to do it anyway. He, on average, hits the ball harder than the average big leaguer. He makes hard contact more often than the average big leaguer. He has a really good average launch angle of 13 degrees. And he barrels the ball 10 percent of the time, which is why above league average. He swings and misses at breaking balls way too often (46.4 percent) so that’s causing him issues, but I’m more than okay with him getting two or three months at least next year to hold down third base and let Kelvin Gutierrez continue his development in AAA. If he can figure out a way to be passable against breaking balls, his ability to hit fastballs and off speed stuff (and recognize them) gives me hope. It’s not hope I’d carry if the Royals were expected to be good, but they have time to see if he can figure it out and they absolutely should.

Unfortunately, there are 28 other teams and Junis seems not to fare as well against any of them. Fortunately, the Tigers were his opponent Tuesday and Junis did what Junis does in mowing down the Tigers to open the brief series at Kauffman Stadium.

Complete game turns are pretty rare in modern baseball—Old Hoss Radbourn ain’t walking through that door and finishing 45 games per year. A conflagration of events has to occur—pitch economy, multiple pitches working, a punchless lineup that a small child could dominate, a semi-comfortable lead—for such an event to unfold in 2018.

Welcome to 2018 American League Central Baseball, where mediocrity abounds!

This is not to cheapen the notion of a young man’s first career complete game but rather a nod to what baseball has become. In days of yore, Junis probably would’ve had a handful at this point in his career, back when nobody saw any potential issues with having 25-year olds throw 135 pitches to save the bullpen. In today’s game, only the truly elite ever go beyond around 110 pitches—Junis’ career-high even after this game remains at 106.

After the Tigers struck first blood on a Jeimer Candelario sac fly in the third inning, the Royals poured five runs home in the bottom of the inning to stake Junis’ lead. Adalberto Mondesi led off with an absolutely mammoth home run—410 feet, 104.5 exit velocity, 35 degree launch angle. Rex Hudler’s voice jumped an octave when reading out the mandatory Statcast numbers.

Whit Merrifield followed with a single, which was followed by an Alex Gordon walk and Salvador Perez single to load the bases. Jorge Bonifacio hit a sac fly to score Whit, then Rosell Herrera walked to load the bags again.

This brought up Hunter Dozier who, tired of the station-to-station nonsense, roped a double to right to score Gordon and Perez. Alcides Escobar even managed a productive out with a sac fly to score Rosie for the inning’s fifth run—the eighth time this season and third in August the Royals have produced an inning with five or more runs.

With a four-run lead, Junis set about setting the Tigers down, and in this endeavor he was wildly successful. Three times in his final six innings he set the Tigers down in order; only once did a runner reach scoring position (not counting JaCoby Jones, who hit a soler homer in the eighth inning).

Even when Junis slightly faltered, things worked out for him. After Jones’ homer—five of his 12 career home runs have now come against Kansas City—Candelario singled and the Royals bullpen began to cook.

One pitch—one well-placed sinker, leading to a 5-4-3 double play—and Tim Hill and Kevin McCarthy were no longer needed.

The Good Guys had tacked on another courtesy a Drew VerHagen wild pitch in the seventh, scoring Gordon, who got bloody on a successful steal attempt, moved to third on a Bonifacio single and scored when VerHagen’s slider got way away from James McCann. That left Junis with a four-run lead in the ninth, and he quickly sat down Nicholas Castellanos (strikeout), Victor Martinez (first-pitch groundout) and Jim Adduci (first-pitch popout) to end it.

Your Unusually Happy Tweet of the Night

Leave for five minutes miss an offensive explosion 5-1 #royals

— Eric (@RoyalSooner77) August 29, 2018

The Bright Spot: If you’ve had enough of me fawning over Junis, may I just point out that Merrifield, Perez, Dozier and BERTO all had multi-hit games? Still takes some runs to win a dang-ol’ baseball game.

If you haven’t had enough of me fawning over Junis, I point you to nine innings of six-hit ball with seven strikeouts. He now has 10 of the Royals 45 quality starts this season. Sure, his streak of not allowing a home run was finally snapped (34 innings), but you’ll take a gopher ball given up every five starts or so.

The Nadir: I’m not sure Brett Phillips can hit. He was 0-for-4, pushing the average down to .177. He’s now 1-for-his-last-26 with a couple of walks. Those are prime Alcides Escobar numbers.

The Next Step: A couple of years ago, Danny Duffy and Michael Fulmer opposing each other would be something of a marquee attraction. As it is, Fulmer has been hurt and Duffy has been inconsistent but they’ll start the 1:15 p.m. (CT) finale regardless.

The first three paragraphs looked a lot different up until about 10:40 p.m. (CT), when the Royals suddenly pulled a Lazarus, rose from the dead and shocked the Cleveland Indians in 5-4 fashion. On the one hand, I’m a little bummed, because there was a quality joke in there about Brandon Maurer being reliably awful in big spots, but I’m sure it can wait for another time and hey, a walk-off! On back-to-back homers from a pair of rookies! Happiness! Haven’t seen enough of that this year! Too many exclamation marks!

In a season that’s been devoid of special moments, more than one stood out tonight. There was Salvador Perez, promising to hit a home run for a wheel-chair bound fan and delivering to start the game. And then there were Ryan O’Hearn and Hunter Dozier walking off to end it. Right in the ol’ feels—albeit for different reasons—both times: Salvy, the ultimate good guy, doing an ultimate good guy thing and O’Hearn and Dozier, both young and scuffling at different times this year, enjoying one of baseball’s most fun moments.

Hey, people that say baseball is boring: I just listed two examples of how wrong you are. I’ve got lots more, even if the Royals are gonna lose 110 games this year.

Brad Keller was very good again. He danced around a couple of first-inning shenanigans, surrendering a single to Francisco Lindor and a walk to Jose Ramirez in the first… but otherwise he struck out the side.

All things offensive and Royal-related (for the first eight innings) happened in the first inning. Actually, they happened within the first three batters. Whit Merrifield walked, Alex Gordon singled and Perez ripped his homer.

All things royally offensive happened after, when the Royals put [quick count] five runners on base during innings one-plus-through-eight.

Meanwhile, Cleveland dutifully chipped away at the Kansas City lead. Greg Allen led off the third with a single, stole second (a legitimate feat against Perez) and scored on a Brantley single in the third.

Yonder Alonso led off the fourth with a home run. Not the last time we’ll hear from him. Not long after that, Kauffman Stadium began taking on water—pipes burst, the game was halted and a metaphor for 2018 Kansas City baseball was born.

From Kansas City’s perspective Ryan O’Hearn, trying his little heart out, doubled with two outs in the fourth. LOL, that’s adorable. Brett Phillips walked to lead off the fifth and even moved to third on a Gordon single. You could’ve guessed the outcome even if I hadn’t already told you. And if you think this paragraph reads a little bitter now, you should’ve seen it before the O’Hearn/Dozier theatrics.

After 96 pitches and five innings, Keller was cooked. Brian Flynn replaced him and didn’t give up a hit.

Kevin McCarthy replaced Flynn after an inning, gave up a leadoff single to Gomes (Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!)… and induced a double play by Allen and struck out Lindor.

What many assumed was the death knell occurred in the eighth. Enter Brandon Maurer, cue sadness. After Ramirez singled with one out—an out procured on a diving stab by Gordon to rob Brantley of a hit—Alonso walloped his second homer of the night to put the Indians up a run. The Royals went quietly in the eighth and the usual story—starter pitches fine, offense gets a lead, bullpen blows sky-high late—was already writing itself.

Not this time. Cleveland closer Cody Allen threw O’Hearn a first-pitch fastball up and away and the lefty walloped it into the left field bullpen. Tie game. Bedlam.

Three pitches later, Dozier extended on a fastball on the outside corner. Home run. Oppo taco. Walk off. What comes after bedlam? Pandemonium? That’s what fans were treated to. That, and a dual Salvy Splash.

Your Unusually Happy (and Shockingly Unexpected) Tweet of the Game

The #Royals did a thing that was good!

— Steven G (@KCteven) August 25, 2018

The Bright Spot: For the season, back-to-back jacks to walk it off and beat Cleveland is gonna be tough to beat as a bright spot.

The Nadir: Chance No. 71 for Maurer. At this point, Ned Yost is a bad gambler—come on, just let me put another $500 on the table, I can feel a heater coming!

The Next Step: Bold—and destined to be wrong—prediction: the Royals and Heath Fillmyer beat the Indians and Corey Kluber tomorrow (6:15 p.m. CT). If you saw Cleveland’s dugout in the aftermath of tonight’s festivities, they were shook. Please don’t remind me of this when they win 19-3 tomorrow.

Exit Velocity

This is an easy one to dig into because it’s just how many miles per hour the ball is hit. Taking an average doesn’t necessarily give the best data, but we’re going to look at it anyway. Here are the Royals leaders:

Lots of Royals hit the ball harder than the MLB average, which seems like a good thing. And yet, here we are. The Royals best hitter, Merrifield, is just under the MLB average and their hardest hitter is having the worst season of his career. Perez has the 59^th highest average exit velocity in baseball, so that might start to explain some things.

Hard Hit Percentage

Since the average for exit velocity isn’t a great correlation to success, hard hit percentage looks to maybe give a little more data. A ball is considered hard hit when it’s struck at 95 MPH or harder.

There’s Salvy at the top of the list again, which makes you wonder if he’s been a bit unlucky this season, and there’s a good argument that he has with a .235 BABIP and all those hard-hit balls. His ground ball percentage is up, but not to Hosmerian levels or anything, so his double plays seem partially to just be some bad timing, more than anything. If not for the wear and tear of catching, I’d argue he might be due for a nice second half bounceback. I’m not so sure if that’ll be the case since it’s him, but it’s possible. His hard-hit rate ranks 37^th in baseball with Moose coming in at 86^th.

Barrels Per Batted Ball Event

This is a little complicated, but a barrel is defined as when a ball is hit at the right exit velocity and launch angle to lead to a minimum .500 xBA and 1.500 xSLG. Basically, it’s a ball hit basically perfectly. Barreling balls is good.

Again, the Royals are well above league average here, but their top man, Perez, ranks 63^rd. But also again, it seems like Perez has gotten the short end of a fair amount of line drives this season.

Launch Angle

Launch angle, to me, is one of the most overused stats out there without context. It just needs more clarification behind it for anything regarding launch angle to be relevant other than if you’re describing just how high a popup was or something for emphasis. Still, we’ve got some context with the hard-hit balls in the previous categories, so here is the Royals launch angle leaderboard.

The guys who should be hitting the ball in the air are, for the most part, and the guys who can get by on the ground are, for the most part. I’d like to see Dozier lift the ball a little better given his batted ball numbers. If he can get a little more in the air than he did before the break, he could hit eight to 10 homers in the last 65 games.

Whiff Percentage

The Royals were once lauded for their contact ability. They shouldn’t be anymore, though they do have some players who are still very good at making contact. It’s just that they have a lot who aren’t.

Jorge and Adalberto, the future.

Sprint Speed

Man, the old Royals players are sloooooooooooooooooow. I wrote about this earlier in the season, how unathletic this team is. Things are getting better, though. Mondesi is a burner and fun to watch. Dozier moves surprisingly well. Merrifield is always fun. Bonifacio can move a little bit, so can Soler. They’re not necessarily going to be better in the second half, but adding Mondesi, Herrera and Bonifacio to the team and getting Soler back, along with trading Moustakas out for a quicker guy will at least make them a little more exciting from a speed perspective.

By now you’ve probably figured out that the headline of this piece had a double meaning. Let’s hope for those of us watching this team that the offensive numbers end up a little less offensive in the last two and a half months.

Find all this great data at Baseball Savant. It’s an incredible site that will cause you to lose serious track of time.

The Royals lost, they do that a lot. Tonight they lost in a way that was slightly different given how 2018 has gone—by planting hope against a far superior team and then squandering it away in predictably Royals fashion.

Fast-forward to the fourth inning, because Ian Kennedy and Lance McCullers Jr. didn’t allow much more than a couple of walks in the first three frames. That’s when the Royals broke through thanks to Hunter Dozier, who rewarded the trust placed in him—after all, he could’ve been sent down when Lucas Duda returned, but instead Paulo Orlando was optioned—with a three-run home run to score Salvador Perez and Alex Gordon, who each singled.

Kennedy gave two runs back in the home half. Jose Altuve’s one-out double started the troubles, which Kennedy compounded with a wild pitch that moved Altuve to third. Carlos Correa drove him in with a sac fly, then Yuli Gurriel drove a change-up into the Crawford Boxes for a solo homer.

A leadoff single by Mike Moustakas in the sixth, a one-out single by Josh Reddick in the seventh… victimless crimes, ultimately.

The Royals had a chance to add one in the ninth when Lucas Duda hit a one-out single and the fastest man on the team, Adalberto Mondesi, pinch-ran for him. Everyone in the building knew Mondesi was taking off sooner or later, none moreso than Brian McCann behind the plate. Mondesi got the jump and beat the ball there, but Carlos Correa channeled his inner Javier Baez and slapped a perfect tag on Mondesi—review ruled him out, and out he was. That made it 3-2 going into the ninth.

Where Brandon Maurer was given the ball. Royals Twitter was… displeased.

find somebody who loves you as much as Ned Yost loves pitching Brandon Maurer in high leverage spots

— Brandon H. (@BHIndepMO) June 24, 2018

Brandon Maurer but why #royals #raisedroyal

— wait wut (@theantifascist) June 24, 2018

Oh you have got to be kidding me with Brandon Maurer for a save chance

— Ryan Landreth (@ryan_landreth) June 24, 2018

On the one hand, you hate this move for all the baseball reasons you can think of—Maurer entered play with an 11.37 ERA and was in Omaha a couple weeks ago and had not ONCE looked like a professional pitcher of baseball’s this season. On the other, maybe if he looks competent for a few weeks, some sucker will take him off Kansas City’s hands.

This was not his fault.

I mean, it was his fault, because that’s what it says on the line score—the game-tying run was charged to Maurer, because those are baseball’s scoring rules. But what happened was less about him than it was about luck and baseball and how sometimes things just don’t go your way.

After Maurer gassed Correa—two upper-90s four-seamers, followed by two nasty sliders for the punchout—Gurriel dribbled (can’t really think of a better word for it) a grounder through the hole between Moustakas and Alcides Escobar for a single, followed by a duck-fart of a single to center from Josh Reddick that moved pinch-runner Jake Marisnick to third. All Evan Gattis had to do was lift a sac fly to tie the game, but he nearly won it had it not been for Alex Gordon’s catch-of-the-year candidate—given the difficulty and relative high stakes compared to what Kansas City usually encounters—that forced Reddick to scamper back to first. Maurer kept playing with fire by walking Marwin Gonzalez but a first-pitch ground out from McCann sent the game to extras.

Tenth inning… meh.

Eleventh inning… slightly more excitement, mostly of the Royals own construction. Alcides Escobar (the guy who has played 400+ straight games because of his flawless defense) short-hopped a throw that Dozier couldn’t corral at first to put Marisnick on, but after he was moved over on a Reddick bunt, he was stranded at second by a surprisingly competent Burch Smith (two innings of no-hit ball).

It all went haywire in the 12^th though. Collin McHugh struck out the side, so the Royals were playing for a tie regardless but of course the (Justin) Grimm Reaper struck again. After issuing a leadoff walk to George Springer, an Alex Bregman pop up got down behind Hunter Dozier and Ryan Goins and in front of Rosell Herrera, with Springer moving to third and Goins issued an error. Grimm put Altuve on but Correa delivered the walk-off blow to even the series.

Just did the math. Justin Grimm and Brandon Maurer appearing in the same game gives the @Royals a negative win probability.

— Seth Atkins (@SethAtkins) June 24, 2018

That kinda sucks. However…

And with that, the Kansas City Royals are the sole owners of last place overall in Major League Baseball This season has been success beyond our wildest dreams — Matt LaMar (@LaMar_Matt) June 24, 2018

The Bright Spot: Poor old Ian Kennedy. Seven innings, four hits, two earned, five strikeouts… and the best he can do is a no-decision. Get that man a scotch on the house. The Nadir: Whit Merrifield was 0-for-5 with four strikeouts, his first career four-K game as a big-leaguer. He had not struck out three times in a game this season prior to Saturday; in fact, he only had eight three-strikeout games in 298 career games. Whitley’s had better days.

Whit Merrifield had never struck out four times in a major-league game until now. But does the golden sombrero count if it’s donned in the 11th inning?

— Maria Torres (@maria_torres3) June 24, 2018

The Next Step: Jason Hammel faces a team that he owns a career 2.85 ERA against on Sunday, while Gerrit Cole comes in after getting an extra day off following his season-high 116 pitches on Monday. 1:10 p.m. (CT) at Minute Maid Park you could potentially see something special—a bad Royals team take a series off the defending champs.