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

As I have it from the Royals press release, Matheny will be a special advisor for player development, which I know has many who observed his Cardinals tenure in stitches. He won’t be on the bench. He won’t be assisting Dayton Moore in any official capacity. He’ll just… kind of be around?

And yet we all know what this is—Break Glass in Case of Managerial Change. This is the same kind of positionless position Matheny used to springboard himself into the managerial spot in St. Louis in the first place. Heck, it’s how we got Ned Yost. This act is familiar to every manager whose end is near or whose future is uncertain, and with Ned set to turn 65 next year, it’s not terribly unfair to wonder how long he plans to keep going here.

The gist I get, from spending time talking to Cardinal fans or (shudder) going to Cardinal-centric websites, is that Matheny cared a lot about his players and embodied the Leader of Men mantra that Very Serious Baseball Men™ place exceptional value on. As much as we turn players into numbers rather than people, from all appearances Matheny seemed to care greatly about the person wearing the uniform beyond his WPA or tOPS+. And he made the postseason four straight years to start his tenure, although crediting him with not completely steering the ship into an iceberg as soon as he took over seems rather back-handed—the 2012 Cardinals had talent and a pipeline of up-and-coming youngsters to keep things moving in a good direction, even with the unfortunate passing of Oscar Taveras.

He also lost complete and utter control not only of the clubhouse but seemingly of the intricate little things required to be an effective manager. He was clueless as a tactician. He couldn’t run a pitching staff to save his life, and that’s giving him the benefit of the doubt for what guys like Jordan Hicks, Alex Reyes and Luke Weaver were able to do at various times under his tutelage. He played favorites. I’m no Yadier Molina stan, but hey… Yadi’s out taking shots, and I’m not sure there’s many more respected players in baseball than Yadier Molina. He’s inflexible. He wore out position players. He let veteran doofuses harass talented youngsters because Baseball Reasons and also encouraged those same vets to become clubhouse snitches. He also seemed to go out of his way to antagonize other players, including a high-priced free-agent signing and a talent they basically gave away for nothing who hit .343 for his next franchise.

Sounds like a treat!

It should be noted that Mike Shildt took the same guys Matheny barely scratched a .500 record with and went 41-28 and nearly drug the Cardinals to the playoffs last season. Maybe Mike Shildt is modern-day Casey Stengel, maybe he’s not. But one day Matheny was in St. Louis and everyone hated everyone else and they played mediocre baseball, and the next day he was gone and things were fine. I think there might be a tendency to overthink this, that perhaps there were other mitigating factors at work—don’t do that. When Mike Matheny was fired, the St. Louis Cardinals became a markedly better baseball team.

Now he’s Kansas City’s problem. This concerns me for several reasons and excites me for none. Nothing I have read about Mike Matheny, Manager makes this sound promising. No Cardinals fan I’ve spoken to enjoyed the Mike Matheny Experience.

If what we believe will happen comes to pass—that Matheny is the successor to Yost once the latter is out to pasture—one wonders what the resulting ripples might be. Free-agents are already reticent to come to small-market Kansas City—how might they feel about Matheny after he froze out Dexter Fowler? Young players may not enjoy cutting their teeth in a clubhouse if some middling reliever is gonna trash them at every turn or rat them out to the boss. And we have no proof that Matheny can “coach ‘em up,” as the parlance goes—what kind of manager will he be if/when he doesn’t have a team at the height of its powers?

I imagine it will look quite a bit like the first half of his final year in St. Louis, only worse.

For now, I go back to what I started with—that there’s only so much damage he’ll be able to do in an advisory capacity. Perhaps he’ll take a year to get indoctrinated into the Royal Way and his crash course in Baseball According to Dayton Moore will be perspective-altering. Perhaps he will develop a rapport with the next wave of Royals and they’ll rally around him in a year or two as they begin to make their big-league debuts (this seems to be what happened for the Atlanta Braves and Brian Snitker in some capacity, although Matheny would certainly be more fly-by-night). In an advisory role, I guess he’ll have some voice in development, although how much and to what end will likely be the subject of much debate—I’m sure there’s an example you could point to of a player who is better for Mike Matheny having passed through his life, but I’m not sure who and I’m not sure that same player wouldn’t also lament certain aspects of life under Matheny.

So… yeah. Even though this was rumored for a long time now, I’m nowhere closer to understanding just why. Why add Mike Matheny? He’s not a brilliant baseball mind. He’s not a well-respected teacher. I guess he’s a leader, except for the part where he got fired from his last gig in part because he lost his clubhouse. He’s just a dude who has been around baseball for a long time and happened to be unemployed.

If he’s a player, you could see taking a flier on him and hoping he turns into something you can trade for value ahead of the deadline; if not, you cut him loose in spring training. That’s not going to happen with Matheny; now we just get to watch and wait. Exciting!

(It’s November. This is what passes for news.)

Ned Yost’s manager page doesn’t show much evolution. Rather, it’s a detailed look at how a manager bends to the personnel available. The Rate+ numbers through the years underscore where Yost felt his team held the advantage, and areas where he believed they were lacking. There are some trends, though. Overall, it’s a nifty way to get a sense of how Yost has been managing. There’s nothing Earth-shattering to those of us who follow the team and watch the games, but it’s interesting to see how Yost stacks up against the league in his proclivities. 

Sacrifice Bunts

Ahhh, yes. Start with a good one. With a decent nucleus of bats for the last four-plus years, Yost generally didn’t feel the need to rely on the sacrifice bunt all that much. Although for some reason the 2016 team led the AL in sac bunt attempts. For 2018, the Royals didn’t lead the league; they were tied for third.

Quantity doesn’t always equal quality and, although the Royals had what was defined as a 52 percent success rate in laying down a sacrifice, it was still enough to place the Royals and Yost among the lead leaders in success. Thus, on Yost’s managerial page, his Rate+ on sac bunts is a robust 162. That means the Royals were 62 percent more successful in laying down a sacrifice than the average AL team. (Obviously, success when it comes down to laying down a bunt is in the eye of the beholder. Really, you should rarely bunt. If ever.)

This is my least favorite portion of the page simply because it relies of successful sacrifice bunts. Baseball reference tracks all sacrifice attempts. It would be more interesting to pack all the attempts together to get a real feel for how often a manager ordered his team to give up an out.

Besides, we have seen enough of Yost in action to know he often allows his players the ability to freelance at the plate with runners on base. (Which is a special kind of insanity.) Who knows how many bunts Yost actually called last year.

Pinch Hitters

Yost simply doesn’t use pinch hitters. The Royals have finished dead last in pinch hitting at bats in four of the last five years, 2018 included. The year they didn’t finish last (2016), they finished second to last. As such, we can glean from Yost’s managerial tendencies that he goes to his bench for a bat roughly once every other game. In 2018, he used a pinch hitter 25 percent less than the average league manager.

Pinch Runners

This is where things get kind of interesting. Yost’s league adjusted pinch runners used per game was at it’s lowest point in six years last season

The Royals used to pinch run. A lot. In ’13, Yost went to Elliot Johnson and Chris Getz along with Jarrod Dyson. The next year, it was plenty of Dyson and Terrance Gore. Of course, the common denominator (or should I say the common base clogger) in those years was one Billy Butler. With Butler off the roster for 2015, Yost was roughly league average when it came to utilizing a pinch runner. In ’15 and ’16, the Royals used 40 and 38 pinch runners, respectively, but you can see how the league changed when it came to that part of the game.

Last season, Yost went to the other extreme. He called for a pinch runner just 7 times. None of them scored and only once did a pinch runner steal a base. Adalberto Mondesi swiped both second and third against the Twins on August 5.

Intentional Walks

Damnit. This was an aspect of Yost’s strategy that really had me on board the last several seasons. 

After eschewing the intentional walk in recent years, Yost suddenly became some sort of a true believer. The Royals issued just eight IBBs in 2016. This season it jumped to 28. I’m not sure why the evolution in strategy and the numbers are so slight that if asked, I doubt Yost could offer an explanation. Again, personnel matters. 

Steals

The Royals have always deployed their speed to their advantage. All part of the plan.

The managerial tendencies section doesn’t break out splits, but you obviously know that the Royals Rate+ on steals of second last year was inflated by Mondesi and Whit Merrifield running wild in the second half. It’s difficult to imagine exactly where the Royals were on the spectrum before the dynamic duo at the top of the order kicked on the afterburners.

One area of the game where the Royals have never been shy has been swiping third. They are always well above league average. Fun stuff.

Again, there’s nothing contained in Yost’s managerial page at Baseball Reference that you probably didn’t already realize. Still, it’s interesting to place those tendencies in context of the league and other managers. A fun diversion for a long offseason.

I know that probably sounds pretty snarky and mean-spirited, but it’s true: if the Royals took the team that finished the season, lock stock and barrel, into the spring of 2019, they would be fine. Fine. Not world beaters, division champs or much better than slightly below .500, but perfectly serviceable, with a young player, at least league-average and possibly better, at almost every lineup spot and rotation that wouldn’t immediately send an unsuspecting bystander into a sudden spasm of vomit. Given the trash fire that was the 2018 Kansas City Royals from April to June, that’s about as ringing an endorsement as you’re likely to find.

The Royals wouldn’t pass up a Manny Machado, Bryce Harper or (almost sure to be opting out) Clayton Kershaw; that’s stupid, and Dayton Moore might be many things but stupid is not one of them. They just won’t pony up the numbers, rumored to be astronomical in some cases, that might be required for a player of that trio’s caliber signature. They’ll buy low, look to extract value and flip an asset in decline (a player they don’t need, likely on a short deal) for an asset on the rise (a young prospect, international bonus slots, etc.). They struck at the right moment with Jon Jay last year and there’s every reason to go back to that well for a team that’s two quality starters, an entire bullpen and at least one impact bat away from contention.

With this in mind, I’d like to take this opportunity for prime offseason content farming and look at some of the names the Royals should be dialing up once free agency opens (or right now, none of these guys are still playing and breaking the rules is a part of doing business in baseball).

Versatile Infield Bat That Couldn’t Hit for Beans a Year Ago

Logan Forsythe, Marwin Gonzalez, Sean Rodriguez, Luis Valbuena

Before you send that tweet, just know that I know that most of these guys were varying states of dog crap last year. Just super-aware on that end.

The argument against both Rodriguez and Valbuena is the same argument anyone with a mind makes against bringing back Alcides Escobar: there are holes in their swings you could drive an actual truck through. Valbuena has been a sub-.200 hitter the last two seasons and Rodriguez hasn’t been the same since a car crash that tore up his shoulder in February 2017. Gonzalez was the weak link for the Astros, Forsythe thought so highly of that the Dodgers traded him for Brian Dozier and whatever Dr. Frankenstein device that was required to resurrect his corpse.

Their presence isn’t about finding someone to shore up first, or third, or wherever. It’s about making sure that Hunter Dozier and Ryan O’Hearn—two guys who exceeded many expectations in their first real extended run last year—don’t grow complacent, to challenge and push them in camp and who knows, maybe even contribute. All four can play multiple positions. In a time where bullpens keep expanding, teams can’t afford many backups who aren’t multidimensional. These guys fit that bill, warts and all.

C’mon, I gave you Lucas Duda last year, and he yielded… something. Hit the right guy in the right rebound campaign and reap some trade deadline benefits!

(Honestly, when I put it like that, it’s just so easy I don’t know why these dopes need it spelled out for them.)

Back-end starting pitcher

Bartolo Colon, Doug Fister, Matt Harvey, Tyson Ross, Josh Tomlin

Just the thought of Bartolo in my life every five days has plastered a big old smile on my face. May Big Sexy pitch forever.

Anyway, three spots in the rotation are set, or seem to be, heading into spring training: Danny Duffy, Jakob Junis and Brad Keller should be the top three in some order, with a host of people—Ian Kennedy, Jorge Lopez, Heath Fillmyer, Erik Skoglund, Nathan Karns, etc.—looming as potential candidates for the last two slots unless Ned Yost embraces the opener (as always, don’t rule anything out with Ned). Kennedy we’ve covered here and elsewhere—I think he’d be better served sliding into a relief role at this stage in his career. Karns can’t stay healthy. Skoglund and Fillmyer look great one day and terrible the next. Lopez looked great two days—Sept. 2 and Sept. 9, against Baltimore and Minnesota (combined losses: 199)—and absolutely rancid in most of the rest.

There’s some room for improvement, or if not that, then a little bit of consistency.

Big Sexy is a gate and television attraction; if he’s pitching, I’m watching and if he isn’t awful, well that’s just dandy. Tomlin and Fister are far removed from their respective apexes, but both have upside still—Fister spent two seasons pitching in Texas and Boston (not exactly kind to pitchers) and Tomlin was just surpassed by better, healthier, (FILL IN THE BLANK) pitchers in Cleveland despite remaining one of baseball’s most accurate strike-throwers.

The upside plays here are Harvey and Ross. Would Harvey, given anything resembling a choice, come to Kansas City? Unclear. Is there enough potential to make a Hail Mary offer and take a flier on a guy who was considered to be a linchpin of one of the best young rotations in MLB all of (checks notes) two-and-a-half years ago? Heck yeah buddy, heck yeah.

I can’t quit Tyson Ross and I don’t want to. He’s a power pitcher, but he’s become essentially a two-pitch guy (over 70 percent fastball-slider the last two seasons); he’s got other things in the arsenal (sinker, cutter, change) he could mix in if, you know, Cal Eldred is up for a challenge. Dadgummit, Tyson Ross is gonna be heard from on a contender at some point and there’s no reason that contender couldn’t buy him from the Royals for a back-end top-30 prospect next July.

Relievers

Randall Delgado, Aaron Loup, Adam Ottavino, Oliver Perez, Drew Storen, Jonny Venters, Justin Wilson

Elmore Leonard villain Tim Hill and Wily Peralta made me feel something resembling comfort last year. Kevin McCarthy and Brian Flynn had moments. As mentioned, Kennedy belongs here. If Brandon Maurer is offered arbitration, I will consider it nothing short of a declaration of war on my sanity.

[Hmmm, this is already over 1,000 words.]

Keep Hill, Peralta, Kennedy and McCarthy, non-tender Flynn in hopes of bringing him back on a minor league deal with a spring training invite (he had moments, but not that many) and then go for high-end reclamation projects (Delgado, Storen, Venters) at reduced cost but with potential for a high yield. Wilson, Perez and Ottavino should have offers from contenders, based on recent success. Loup is a guy, albeit one who has gotten major-league hitters out for a number of years in a row. Delgado, Storen and Venters could actually help.

Tl;dr: Give me Forsythe, Bartolo, Ross, Delgado, Storen and Venters. I swear, that plus what the Royals bring back would win at least 72 games next year. I’M NOT CRAZY.

Indeed, they were shifting a lot, ranking second among teams using this particular alignment through the first month of the season. Then, they decided to pull back as they felt the shift was costing too many hits against their pitchers. Still, the Royals didn’t completely turn their back on this new school defensive alignment.

The final numbers are in. No team increased their use of the shift more in 2018 than the Royals.

The only other team to see such an increase in percentage of plays shifted would probably be the Marlins, who ranked dead last out of all teams two seasons ago, only to break into the top 10 (at number nine) this season.  

You could say the Royals increase in utilizing the shift on the field represented a shift in organizational defensive philosophy. The Royals have long employed an analytics department and have over time incorporated their input into game preparation. This was perhaps the most outwardly obvious sign the team was serious about crafting the data available to them to gain a competitive advantage.

Not only did the Royals utilize the shift much more than they had in the past, but they deployed their infielders, particularly the shifted position directly between first and second base, differently. In the first two seasons were positioning data is available, against left-handed batters the Royals had the fielder between first and second drop deeper into the outfield. This year, against those lefties, that position generally remained on the infield.

The Royals insisted they didn’t shift as much in previous seasons because, with their superior defense, they didn’t need to. Perhaps there was some merit in this thinking. But second base has always been a position of need until Whit Merrifield established himself. Mike Moustakas and Alcides Escobar have been together on the left side of the infield since 2011. Shifting because Eric Hosmer was no longer on the team seems like a stretch. The likelier explanation was probably since the Royals opened the year knowing they had no realistic shot at a winning record, it felt like the right time to try something new.

Whatever the reason, this was an instance where the Royals were using the data available to them to leverage their matchups. Still, it can be a hard sell. Particularly among pitchers who see balls fall for hits that would have been caught with a traditional defensive alignment. The same could be said for a veteran manager. By the time the Royals had played a couple months, it seemed the old school wasn’t too pleased. From Jeffery Flanagan at MLB.com:

Yost, however, was skeptical.

“It’s hard to tell,” Yost said. “The numbers are there. But the numbers can be deceiving, too.

“If you shift and a guy hits a ground ball right to third — where you had the guy anyway — they consider that successful. It’s a little skewed in their favor.

“We’re looking at it … but for the guys that can fist it the other way, we’re coming back around on it [and not shifting]. It’s not a hard-and-fast [rule] for us now. We’re constantly looking at it.

” … Does it keep someone from hitting homers? Maybe. I’m just not sold on it yet.”

If the shift didn’t work for the Royals, as noted above, it wasn’t for lack of trying on their part. It was the results they couldn’t control that made it seem less than successful. When the Royals defense deployed with three fielders to one side of second base, their pitchers induced a ground ball just 41.9 percent of the time. That was tied with the Red Sox for lowest ground ball rate in baseball when playing with the shift. That, of course, runs counter to the whole purpose of playing three infielders to one side of second. You do that with the goal of having the opposing hitter put the ball on the ground. A line drive or fly ball usually renders the shift moot.

Overall, Royals pitchers got a ground ball on 43.1 percent of all balls in play. That was right at league average and just slightly higher than when they shifted. Perhaps they chose the wrong time, with the wrong makeup of their pitching staff to decide to alter their approach to defensive lineups on the field. Perhaps it would have gone better with a staff that had a proclivity to induce grounders at a greater frequency. More shifts with more grounders almost certainly would equal greater success.

Furthermore, Royals pitchers surrendered hard contact 32.2 percent of the time when their fielders were shifting. That was the fourth highest rate in baseball and the highest in the AL. Hard contact for the batter doesn’t always guarantee success, but it certainly helps the cause. Again, compare that to the Royals pitchers 29.4 percent hard contact rate on all defensive alignments. The Royals surrendered a lot more hard contact when three infielders were positioned to one side of second. Why would that be? The evidence doesn’t exist to point to one reason in particular. Sometimes the baseball gods work in mysterious ways. In this case, the penalty was on the Royals when they shifted.

Still, the shift may work, but when your pitchers are generally below league average, you’re going to get below league average results, no matter where the infielders play. Hopefully, the results from the 2018 edition of the shift won’t deter the Royals from continuing to embrace the evolution of the game going forward. And at some point with an improved pitching staff, they should see improved results.

• 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 protestations from the manager that he hadn’t thought about or discussed his future with the Royals, it was clear the two sides wouldn’t let this drag out beyond the final out of the regular season. The Royals wanted Yost back. Yost wanted to return. He’s already the sixth-highest paid manager in the game. His tenure with the team and accomplishments will keep him near the top of the managerial fiscal pyramid, so there was likely little haggling over salary. The negotiation took, Rustin Dodd of The Athletic reported, all of two minutes. 

The pain of April and May eventually gave way to the promise of September. With the Royals playing close to .500 baseball over the season’s second half and with the necessary injection of youth once the veterans were shipped off, it wasn’t a surprise Yost found himself wanting another crack. He’s built teams before. It’s a process he enjoys. The Royals are still in the early part of their rebuild, but it’s not difficult to be enthused by what he saw over the season’s last couple of months.

Besides, knowing Yost the way we have come to know him over these years in Kansas City, it’s not his style to leave things undone. He came back for 2018 knowing his core would be scattered, but it wouldn’t be right to leave the cupboard bare for a new skipper. He returns for 2019 knowing positive steps have been made, but there is still plenty of work to be done. Should Yost decide to cede the reigns, he won’t do so until he’s convinced the club is firmly on the right path and his right successor is picked out.

For the Royals, the idea of bringing back Yost has always been the right move. Moore pointed to it in his comments and has mentioned it before: Continuity and stability counts. The lineup of the regular season finale featured just two players – Salvador Perez and Alcides Escobar – who were regulars on the World Championship team. And with the baseball gods willing, Escobar won’t be back with the team next year. With an expected cut in payroll forthcoming, there won’t be a ton of moves to be made this winter when it comes to making additions to the roster. The 2019 Royals will probably look a lot like the version we saw this month. This group heads into the winter with the knowledge their leader will be back. The building, and hopefully the progress, will continue. 

It turns out Yost is the right manager at the right time for these Royals.

While the sabermetricians and the old school baseball fans are the Jets and the Sharks of 21st century baseball, both fail spectacularly when it comes to assessing the impact of a manager. In-game management is just one skill; don’t overlook the intangibles. Yost is as good as they come at handling a clubhouse. He’s managed damn near every type of club imaginable, and usually done so with success. 

There are the usual managerial peccadilloes that we have become used to over the years. Those aren’t going away. There will be odd lineups, questionable bullpen matchups, and bizarre in game strategies. But what goes on behind the scenes, off the field, it often more important. Yost is a player’s manager who has always commanded his clubhouse. Players enjoy a certain amount of freedom and respect Yost enough to rarely, if ever, to cross the line. And Yost’s respect across the game has only increased after the back to back pennants. Players like playing for Yost. They want to play for him. There’s currency in that. 

Ultimately, that’s why Dayton Moore wants Yost back. The continuity is nice and all, but Yost, at least behind the scenes, is a great manager. Yes, great. He may not be around the next time the Royals reach the promised land of postseason baseball, but if everything goes according to plan, the next time a flag goes up beyond the left field fence, Yost will have played a part in that team’s foundation.

Not a bad little idea Ned had. That’s actually the kind of Nedism that probably earned him at least one more year at the helm, as his extension was announced prior to game 162, Sunday afternoon. Rather than another start to put an exclamation point on an exemplary season for Brad Keller, who had nothing left to prove, Yost instead put Skoglund on the mound against the division champs and said, “Let’s see it.”

Even though it didn’t result in a win—and I can’t recount how many times I’ve typed something to that effect this year—it gave Skoglund a nice end to the campaign and provided another building block, however slight, as the franchise seeks to frame up the future.

‘Twas an auspicious beginning for the Royals. Skoglund booted a Francisco Lindor bouncer to open the game and of course, Lindor made him pay with a steal of second, a steal of third and of course, coming across to score when Alcides Escobar failed to haul in Meibrys Viloria’s throw.

Good old Esky, one more rancid play in a season full of them. There will always be 2015.

Lindor led off the third with a homer in the third but the Royals broke through in the fifth. Brian Goodwin led off with a single, stole second and moved to third on Escobar’s groundout. Brett Phillips walked and then Viloria singled to score Goodwin.

That’s more or less the things that happened, baseball-wise, that you probably care about—Ryan O’Hearn made a nice diving stop in the second inning—but two moments stood out. In the eighth, Whit Merrifield singled, swiped second and moved to third on a throwing catcher by Eric Haase. He locked up the MLB lead in hits (192) and steals (45)—the seventh player in MLB history to do that—and will enter next season with a 20-game hit streak intact.

In the ninth, with two outs and a runner on first, Escobar stepped to the plate. Hero, goat, All-Star, sub-replacement player—Esky has worn many hats over his Kansas City career. He received a well-deserved ovation and as I was thinking, “Boy, a walk-off homer would be the perfect cap to his career,” he hit a little dribbler to the mound and like that, his tenure—and the 2018 season for the Kansas City Royals—came to a close.

Your Tweet of Despair

About Esky’s last game as a Royal… anybody else able to confirm this? Because it’s too terrifying to contemplate.

Esky isn’t done. Dayton basically just said on #Royals radio in so many words there is an excellent chance Esky will be back in utility role.

— Chris (@bballkansas) September 30, 2018

The Bright Spot: Merrifield finished the season as the big-league leader in hits and stolen bases. Please stop the “Trade Whit!” narrative; he’s worth more to the Royals than to anyone else. Remember when he wasn’t an All-Star? That was stupid.

The Nadir: No Royals baseball for six months. While the losing got old after a while*, baseball is fun. Baseball is fun and good to watch and little moments like Whit Merrifield getting a standing O as much for surviving as anything else make the day-in, day-out drudgeries worth it.

*- It got old after about six games.

The Next Step: 2019. What will it hold? Promise, if September was any indication. Maybe they’ll lose 100 games again, but they won’t do it in the same soul-crushing fashion they seemed content to do in April, May and June. Until then, thanks for reading me roughly half the time. Clint, David and the other dudes will be around all offseason, and I’ll hop in from time to time to give my opinion about whatever happens. Adieu.

One of the more underreported subplots as the 2018 season draws to a close has to be Yost and his contract situation. He’s in the final year of a two year extension signed after the Royals won the 2015 World Series. 

Jon Heyman from Fancred reported a couple of weeks ago that the team is interested in bringing back the franchise leader in games managed and won.

The Royals plan to offer manager Ned Yost a one-year extension, and they obviously hope he takes it. Yost suggested earlier this year he wanted to keep going, but of course, it’s been a long year (with another rebuilding year or two to go), so there will be a discussion and no guarantee he accepts.

In other words, the call whether to continue as the Royals manager is entirely up to Yost. That makes sense. Although the Royals manager is something of a lightening rod for criticism, the job is his as long as he desires. You may not like the way he builds a lineup or manages a bullpen or relies on particular veterans past their prime, but you can’t deny that Yost has the continued respect of the clubhouse and the goodwill of two American League pennants. Don’t forget the loyalty of Dayton Moore. There’s more to managing than just filling out a lineup card and the Royals front office obviously believe that Yost is the man to shepherd the early stages of this most recent rebuild. 

In order to understand the current situation, let’s look at how the Royals and Moore have handled Yost’s contract in the past. Yost joined the organization in January of 2010 as a special assistant, but quickly took over the dugout responsibilities once Trey Hillman was dismissed that May. A month and a half later, Yost signed a deal that covered the 2011 and ’12 seasons with a club option for 2013. 

You’ll of course remember that 2011 was the year the high draft picks and the total commitment to The Process began to bear fruit. That was the season players such as Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Salvador Perez and Danny Duffy made their major league debuts. So let’s start the meter here as 2010 was mostly about salvaging the mess left behind by the unfortunate Hillman era.

The Royals won 71 games in 2011 and the Royals front office brass saw enough about how Yost would handle the youth that would form the core of back to back AL pennant winners. When spring training 2012 opened, they went ahead and exercised his 2013 option.

It was just a slight improvement in 2012 to 72 wins, but the big jump came in that 2013 season. With James Shields in the fold, the Royals improved by 14 wins to finish above .500 for the first time in a decade. Yost managed that season as a lame duck in the final year of his original deal signed back in 2010. Liking the progress that was made in his first three full seasons, the Royals inked Yost to a two-year deal that was announced at their season postmortem on the first of October. 

That deal would cover 2014 and 2015. We know what happened there. In fact, the Royals rightly rewarded Yost after the World Series run in 2014 with an extension for the 2016 season.

At this point, the contracts and timing of the extensions made perfect sense. As noted above, Yost wasn’t under a long-term contract in only one season of his first three with the Royals. In many ways that 2013 season was a pivotal one in the development of the championship squad. The improvement shown convinced the front office they were close to competing, something that wasn’t conventional wisdom at the time. Although the Royals would never discuss this because it’s well in the past and it involves revisionist history but had that 2013 team fallen off the rails, the Yost contract situation would have given the team options to explore other managers. Once the team rolled through the 2014 postseason, the calculus changed and the balance of contract power shifted to the field manager.

After the world championship in 2015, Yost signed another extension, this one covering two years through the current 2018 season. Again, this made sense, even if the length was somewhat surprising to those of us who thought Yost wouldn’t want to invest the time it would take for The Process 2.0. Still, the deserved reward for a title is two years and plenty of job security.

*Through September 18.

So now here we are. The rebuild is well underway and the Royals, despite a strong second half showing, are plummeting to what could be a club record for losses. 

If the past is any indicator, we should have clarity on Yost’s future with the Royals as soon as Monday, October 1 or thereabouts. Basically, it should be announced whenever the Royals assemble the media for their annual end of the season press conference. The one year where Yost was the lame duck manager, he signed a new deal immediately after the season. The Royals won’t let this situation linger – they would basically be without a manager and in managerial purgatory as they head to another crucial off-season – and I’d bet at this point Yost has a fairly strong idea about what he’d like to do for 2019. 

According to a report from USA Today published last month, Yost earns $3.7 million, making him the sixth-highest paid manager in baseball. Cot’s Contracts doesn’t have the dollar information available for Yost’s past contracts, but it wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility to figure Yost earned modest pay increases ahead of his 2015 extension where he certainly cashed in on his team’s success. His current place on the managerial ladder has to do with his longevity and his success. 

There’s no controversy, nor is there any guesswork. If Yost wants to manage the Royals in 2019, it will happen. Of course, Yost isn’t tipping his hand at this point. It’s difficult to guess what he’s going to do, but I see no signs he’s looking to walk away. The losses have certainly been difficult, but Yost has handled the setbacks as you would expect from a veteran manager. Besides, it’s not like the defeats or the record have been surprising. And as mentioned, the Royals have played better baseball in the second half of the season. They’ve played fun baseball. Yost, more than just about anyone in the organization, has a grasp of the rebuild and how long it will take to return to the postseason.

It’s good the Royals are looking to keep Yost around for another season. Sure, some of the in-game decisions and lineups and bullpen choices can baffle from time to time, but it’s clear Yost is trusted by nearly everyone associated with this club. My thinking has evolved to the point where that matters more than any questionable bullpen move. The weird lineups and the bizarre decision to gift 500 plate appearances to Alcides Escobar, the soul crushing bullpen and a struggling early season rotation is more a reflection of the front office than Yost. Looking to point the finger at someone for 100 losses? Given the roster assembled, I’m not sure Yost can wear all those. 

Much like the 2010 season split by Hillman and Yost, the 2018 season represents the starting line of The Process 2.0. The meter has been reset and now we can gauge success by progress. Let’s see how the youth movement takes shape and how the wins build from here. Yost, from his past success, deserves that opportunity.

Will Yost return for more? That, apparently, is entirely up to him.

If you’re the type to look retrospectively for warning signs (hello!) you’ll see in those 11 starts an unhealthy 4.0 BB/9 and a .263 BABIP. His career numbers in those categories are a 3.3 BB/9 and .294 BABIP. It could be said Duffy was able to navigate the elevated walk rate because he was getting more than his usual share of outs when batters put balls in play. But without making adjustments with his control to cut the walks, at some point regression would come calling.

That’s what we’ve seen in Duffy’s last four starts. He’s knocked down the walk rate a bit to 3.2 B B/9, but the BABIP has jumped to .384. After Saturday’s start, the Royals announced Duffy was dealing with shoulder tendonitis.

From Rustin Dodd at The Athletic: “It’s been like that for four starts, been battling through it,” Ned Yost said.

Four starts, you say? What a coincidence. Indeed, in his last four outings, Duffy has thrown three clunkers and had one decent start against the White Sox where he danced around 10 base runners in a little over five scoreless innings. 

His downfall just happens to coincide with a recently elevated pitch count. Duffy has thrown 110 or more pitches in a start 13 times in his career. The most pitches he’s thrown in a start since returning from Tommy John surgery is 114. He matched that number in back to back starts in the middle of last month.

What you have is a pitcher who threw an unusually high (for him) number of pitches in back to back starts on normal rest. The very next start, if we are to believe Yost, Duffy started to battle through his shoulder issues. Is there something to this? It’s worth investigating.

What alerted viewers to Duffy’s struggles on Saturday was his diminished velocity. With his fastball averaging around 94 mph in his earlier starts, the lefty was working between 88 and 92 mph. Clearly, something was amiss. 

All of his pitches were coming in a tick slower, with the four-seam fastball, as noted earlier, way off in velocity. However, if we are to believe Duffy has been battling through shoulder issues in the three starts prior, it’s difficult to see in his release speeds. His fastball has been fairly consistent after a slow start to the season. There are a few minor peaks and valleys, but nothing that would raise a red flag like Saturday’s start. He seemed to be coping well with the high pitch counts.

The pitch credited with Duffy’s resurgence, the curve, has been pummeled in his three August starts. It’s his second most frequently thrown pitch and opposing batters are punishing it to the tune of a .500 batting average and .800 slugging percentage. According to PitchF/X data collected by Brooks Baseball, Duffy’s curve is generating a little less movement from July to August on both the horizontal and vertical plane. He’s lost at least an inch on both since June. Is that enough to account for the ineffectiveness of the pitch? And if so, is this bout with shoulder impingement the reason he’s not able to break off the curve in the same manner as previously in the season?

Duffy received an injection after his ejection (I just like how that sounds) on Saturday, with the thinking that if his shoulder responded well, he wouldn’t have to miss a start. That obviously didn’t happen. He will now miss at least one turn in the rotation.

In a season where the Royals find themselves plummeting to 110 losses, the rotation is now in shambles. Okay, okay… There’s a little hyperbole in that statement. The rotation was in shambles long before April was over. Yet somehow, the starting five improved as the season has progressed. Addition by subtraction, or something like that. When you remove Ian Kennedy and Jason Hammel and replace them with a pair of Rule 5 picks, in theory you shouldn’t get better. 

So now the Royals will need to find the innings to cover the spot formerly filled by their Opening Day starter. It’s possible Duffy is just out for one start, and the Royals are targeting August 21 as his date of return, but this feels like it will take a little more time. Of course, we can only go on the information the Royals provide, but they’re not the most forthcoming when it comes to injuries.

Whoever had Jakob Junis as the last man standing, come forward to collect your winnings.