So I encourage you to click all the links, watch the video and read the articles because it’s all really interesting to see what the team at the home office is doing with some of the latest and greatest stats. One of my biggest complaints with certain stats is outlined in the second link. Many metrics of both batting and pitching treat every outcome as if the player’s skill caused that.

Take FIP for example, which is one of my personal least favorite stats. If a pitcher gives up 17 absolute rockets that are caught and strikes out 10 hitters while walking four, he throws a no-hitter with a FIP of around 2.30, but is he really likely to continue that success? I don’t think so. I know that’s a tangent on a pitching stat, but still, DRC+ addresses that with the recognition that certain outcomes are more indicative of a player’s skill than others and account for that.

Anyway, you’re here for Royals stuff, so I won’t blab on any more. Okay, well maybe I will, but it’s only because I want to give you some context for the numbers you’re about to see. The DRC+ leaderboard looks about like you’d expect. Mike Trout is at the top. Mookie Betts, JD Martinez, Jose Ramirez, Nolan Arenado, Justin Turner, Christian Yelich and Alex Bregman are also in the top 10 (along with Luke Voit and Max Muncy because things get weird sometimes). One thing I find interesting is that in this top 10, all but one of these players performed better than their “d” stats. Mike Trout, for example, hit .312/.460/.628 in reality, but his dAVG, dOBP and dSLG was .306/.444/.602. It’s a small difference obviously, but he was probably fortunate. Ramirez was the only player who actually underperformed, and it was by a very small margin.

Okay, Royals. I get it. There were 23 hitters on this leaderboard for the Royals. The limitation right now of this board is that if a player played for two teams, his whole season is on here, but there are worse things than that. Here are the DRC+ numbers next to their wRC+ numbers:

Okay, so first it’s easy to see some disagreement between the numbers. It’s also easy to see some of the bigger disagreements are on guys with smaller samples, so that’s not terribly surprising. It looks like Salvador Perez’s gap of 18 points and Alcides Escobar’s gap of 13 are exceptions here in that every other player with a gap of at least 10 points had fewer than 300 plate appearances, some far fewer. Also, peep those Ramon Torres and Paulo Orlando numbers. Easy to see why they’re gone.

Looking at some of the outliers, Perez hit .235/.274/.439, but his d numbers were .266/.305/.475. Why did he fail to reach them? I don’t know, but we did talk quite a bit throughout the season of how hard he hit the ball throughout the season, so that certainly played a role. Ryan O’Hearn is a huge drop from wRC+ to DRC+, though he’s still tops on the team in either metric. His “d” numbers were .264/.347/.512 compared to .262/.353/.597, so basically the power was the difference there. I think it’s fair to say the fact that he had a 25 percent home run per fly ball rate played in here, though based on some lower level minor league numbers, he might be able to get at least relatively close to that again.

One player who I plan to write more about at some point at some time is Adalberto Mondesi. He’s a bit of a mystery as this new metric paints him as a basically average hitter rather than one considerably above average. His ability to swipe bags makes an average-ish hitter above average, but I think there’s something to be said for a very good, but not great, barrel rate to go along with decent average exit velocity and hard hit percentages. He also probably benefited from some luck on fly balls with a crazy home run per fly ball rate. It’s probably a reason that we’re seeing a lot of fantasy articles about how he’s being overrated in drafts. I think there’s reason to believe there might be some regression and DRC+ is just another way to look at that possibility.

I’ll leave you with one more table (and then a few words after it) to show the biggest gap between actual OPS and dOPS, just to see some of the method to the madness for these Royals:

This is a good way to look at who might bounce back if they can retain a similar style to how they hit in 2018. It’s going to provide the same information as the DRC+, but maybe in a way that’s a little more familiar to you for right now.

Based on this information, I think it’s fair to think Perez and maybe Cuthbert find their way to a better 2019 than 2018, but we might see some drop off from Soler if he’s healthy and probably an expected decline from O’Hearn after his crazy season. There’s still a lot more to unpack with this new stat, but I’m a big fan so far.

• 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.

• Prospect lists are starting to come out, and it’s not a surprise that the Royals sytem isn’t highly regarded yet, but the prospect people out there are starting to come around on how the system is developing nicely. A BP subscription is required for the top prospect list on the home site, but the prevailing opinion is that the system has some serious potential. It’s no surprise to see Seuly Matias at the top of these rankings after he was the Royals only top-100 prospect prior to last season and then went out and showed off that prodigious power. What is a surprise is that John Sickels had him ranked number 11 after this season when he was number nine last year. If a guy with the power and potential of Matias is ranked 11th, the system is in pretty darn good shape, I think. And not that you asked, but here’s my top ten…for now:
  1. Khalil Lee
  2. Nicky Lopez
  3. Daniel Lynch
  4. Seuly Matias
  5. MJ Melendez
  6. Jackson Kowar
  7. Brady Singer
  8. Nick Pratto
  9. Yefri Del Rosario
  10. Kyle Isbel
  It should be noted that I’ve moved people around about 40 times here, which shows just how many interchangeable parts there are because the system lacks a true elite prospect. But there are some steady guys like Lopez, Isbel and Kowar in there and some potential star power like Matias, Lee and Melendez. It’s not there yet, but the system is definitely on the rise and will get the benefit of the number two pick in a few months.
• Yesterday, Clint talked about some minor league free agents who have ties to the Royals and a few they might want to look at. So I did some highly professional stat scouting and want to add a few guys to his list the Royals might have interest in as minor league free agents. Josh Martin has had some minor league success in Cleveland’s organization as a relief arm. He was a Padres Rule 5 pick prior to the 2017 season and didn’t stick, but he’s had success. He’d be worth a look. Johnny Barbato was horrible with the Tigers this year, but he was dominant in Toledo and carries a mid-90s fastball. Maybe he’d be horrible, but on a minor league deal, this 26-year old would be an interesting guy to look at to help shore up the bullpen. Tyler Higgins was in the independent league last year before the Mariners picked him up and he was fantastic for Tacoma down the stretch, throwing 35 innings in 28 games while striking out 38 and walking just nine. It’s not like there’s a ton of upside with any of these guys, but that’s why they’re minor league free agents. They’re certainly worth shots. And if you like the guys who have been there, done that, Jose Ramirez and Jake Petricka are out there and Zach Lee, a former top prospect, can be had as well. There are certainly some options for the Royals to sift through. Hopefully, they can find the next Ryan Madson and not the next Justin Grimm.
• The first group of projections is out as Steamer has been released, and there are some interesting ones for the Royals. I have a feeling most fans aren’t going to be pleased with projections for guys like Adalberto Mondesi and Ryan O’Hearn after their fantastic finish to the season. The issue for both is that they have a limited track record prior to this year and what they do have to look back on is unimpressive. Mondesi’s projection is to hit .252/.291/.434, which is actually pretty good considering what he did prior to 2018. O’Hearn’s is at .234/.309/.420, which is also pretty good considering his limited upper level minor league success prior to his callup. Some other notable projections are Whit Merrifield (.274/.329/.405, I’ll take the over on all that) and Jorge Soler (.243/.335/.437, yeah, that’s probably about right). The SLG leader is Salvador Perez at .451. Soler’s .335 OBP paces the offense. And 2.9 WAR is projected for both Perez and Mondesi. On the pitching side, it’s not pretty, but really why would it be? It’s based on past results, comparable players and aging patterns, so it’s no surprise that the projections are poor. Tim Hill and Richard Lovelady are the only two Royals projected for a sub-4.00 ERA and the next two projected are Jesse Hahn and Reid Redman, so yeah, there’s that.
• The AL Central is such a disaster. You’ve got the Tigers in the beginning stages of a lengthy rebuild. The Royals are right there with them. Both teams could pop up quicker with some surprises, but neither team is likely to be good until 2021 at the earliest. You’ve got the White Sox, who seem to have quite a bit of talent but are missing enough that they’re still no good. They might spend this year, or at least try to, but they’re not there yet. Then you’ve got the Twins, who are kind of in no-man’s land. They have some talent, though the building blocks they thought they had in Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano had such bad 2018 seasons that they have no idea if they really are building blocks. And then there’s the Indians with a stranglehold on the division, a Cy Young candidate, another pitcher on the fringe and a couple other really good starters to go along with two of the top 15 players in baseball in their infield and they’re talking about trading players to start reloading. The Indians will probably win 90 games even if they do deal Corey Kluber, but come on. I understand the economics of baseball and all that, but go for the damn kill here. The Red Sox, Yankees and Astros are all top top tier right now, but the Indians can go toe to toe with them and win a World Series. To even suggest they might tear it down now seems shortsighted and silly to me and annoys me way more than it should. I don’t really have a point here other than that, but I had to get it off my chest.

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.

• 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.

And they’ve been this underwhelming even while becoming the first team ever to have four pitchers reach the 200 strikeout mark. Their top four starters are top notch, but a struggling bullpen has led to some issues. The potential is there for true greatness with Brad Hand, Andrew Miller and Cody Allen, but it just hasn’t been there due to both injuries and poor performance. It’s worth noting that these four games will be tune-up games for the Indians, so their starters aren’t likely to go deep into games, though I guess you never know.

Indians Vitals

Royals vs. Indians

Offense

Pitching

Indians Projected Lineup

Projected Pitching Matchups

Thursday – 7:15 pm

This was pretty much inevitable for Tomlin at some point and the fact that it has held off this long says a lot about him. He doesn’t have good stuff and spends so much time in the strike zone, so eventually he was going to bitten by the long ball more than he had before and this season he’s allowed 24 homers in just 65.2 innings, a total that might make Chris Young blush (sorry, Chris). He still has phenomenal control, but he’s just not missing nearly enough bats and he’s getting hit awfully hard with a barrel rate of 11 percent, nearly double the MLB average. It’s bad. He’s been in and out of the rotation in September, so he’s only a few days removed from throwing 76 pitches in a game, which means if they decide to go awhile with him, he can probably do it. But that said, do you really want him to? He’s allowed a .365/.412/.738 line to lefties while Ryan O’Hearn has absolutely mauled righties. If you’re picking up what I’m putting down and you play daily fantasy, you’re welcome. Of course if you didn’t already know that, you probably shouldn’t be wasting your money.

Sparkman will get his third career start in place of Jorge Lopez who was shut down after his rib injury and bad start his last time out. I do believe Sparkman can be a worthwhile reliever and am doubtful of him long-term in the rotation, though, so I guess it’s similar to a Lopez start. He relieved Lopez in his last outing, throwing 55 pitches over four innings and generally being okay, though the lack of swings and misses has me concerned about his future in any role. Still, it’s nice to see the mid-90s fastball and you’d think a secondary pitch could emerge that we just haven’t seen yet from him in the big leagues. This will be his first time going against Cleveland, so it’ll be a nice test for him even if he does only get bits and pieces of the regular lineup.

Friday – 7:15 pm

I feel like a lot of people are surprised at the season Clevinger is having, but if you watched him last year, you shouldn’t be. The stuff plays, and now that he’s got his walk rate under control, it plays even better. He’s deceptive too, which makes him incredibly difficult to hit. So while it’s surprising that he’s gotten to this point, I don’t think it is based on last season. He’s also been hit harder by lefties than righties, though not to the extent of Tomlin. That said, 13 of the 21 homers he’s allowed have been to lefties and 33 of the 58 extra base hits. He’s had some first inning struggles, allowing six home runs and 17 runs in his 31 starts, and the Royals know all about that having scored three in the first against him a few weeks ago at home before getting shut down by him the rest of the way. Including that start, he’s faced the Royals four times this year and gone 2-0 with a 2.33 ERA with just two home runs allowed (to Alex Gordon and Salvador Perez). So my guess here is that the Royals will be happy if they do treat this as a shorter tune-up.

If we’re being honest, I’d have never guessed that Kennedy has thrown more than 100 innings this season. I actually forgot he existed while he was on the disabled list. All that said, it’s hard to argue with the results in his three starts since he’s been back. He’s gone 19 innings, allowed 17 hits, six runs (four earned) with 16 strikeouts and five walks and posted a 1.89 ERA. He’s generally actually been really good. Of course, he’s been facing teams with nothing to play for but the offseason, but still, it’s better to be good in your only sample than bad. He’s faced Cleveland once this year and was outstanding, going six shutout innings and striking out eight to pick up his first win of the season. It was roughly four degrees that day, so that helped, but again, good results are better than bad.

Saturday – 6:15 pm

Kluber probably isn’t going to win another Cy Young, but he definitely belongs in the conversation as he currently leads the American League in innings pitched and has some excellent results. For him, a mid-season funk of sorts probably cost him the award. He went 8-4 with a 3.94 ERA in 15 starts from June 16^th to September 18^th, which bumped his ERA from 2.10 to 2.93. Now, he was outstanding in his last start against the White Sox, going seven shutout inning with 11 strikeouts, but the overall numbers are probably a cut below the other candidates. The question that I think is fair to ask with Kluber is just how worn down he is. Since the start of 2014, he’s thrown 1,127 innings and faced 4,463 batters. That’s a lot. This year against the Royals, he’s 3-1 with a 3.24 ERA in four starts, but he’s been hit hard at Kauffman Stadium where he’s posted a 6.35 ERA and allowed eight runs on 16 hits in 11.1 innings. This game is, in fact, at Kauffman Stadium.

Junis had his first meh start of the year against the Tigers last time out, and it might be part of marring a really strong finish for him after allowing four runs on eight hits in three innings the time out before that one. But no homers allowed is a good thing, given the season he’s had, so he gets one last chance to go into the offseason on a high note. I’ll run the numbers as I do every start for him, but since coming off the DL, he’s gone 3-2 with a 3.38 ERA in 12 starts spanning 69.1 innings with eight home runs allowed. He’s struck out 66 and walked just 14. That’ll play. He’s been hit hard by Cleveland a couple times this year, but his last time out against them earlier this month, he allowed just two hits over seven shutout innings. More of that would be a nice way to finish his year.

Sunday – 2:15 pm

The 2018 season wraps up with the Royals seeing Carlos Carrasco somehow for the first time since April 6^th when he went six innings and gave up two runs on five hits. Now, think back to that time. Giving up two runs against the Royals then was basically like giving up five or six to a real team, so maybe that wasn’t such a great start. Of course, he is a legitimately very good pitcher and has found his way to another fully healthy, very good season. He strikes out a ton of hitters, doesn’t give up a crazy amount of hits and doesn’t walk guys. No, he isn’t an ace, but he’s a heck of a number two. If you’re looking for a weakness, he’s actually been at his worst when he’s first starting a game, though that’s if you can call that his “worst” as he’s given up a .253/.287/.406 line. Still, though, he’s allowed 10 of the 21 homers he’s allowed all season in just 35 percent of the plate appearances. He’s 10-6 with a 3.55 ERA in 23 games against the Royals in his career. Whit Merrifield has really enjoyed hitting against him in 16 plate appearances, putting up a .500/.533/1.000 line. That’ll play.

And the season wraps up with Eric Skoglund throwing the first pitch, so that’s…something. Though I should be fair to say that he’s been really good since he came off the DL and I was actually disappointed that his last start got cut short because of the rain delay in Cincy. In four games, he’s gone 15.1 innings and given up just eight hits and two runs to lower his ERA by 1.3 runs. He’ll be making his third career start against the Indians. The first two were both last year and didn’t go so well. He lasted 3.1 innings combined and allowed 11 runs on 11 hits with three strikeouts and four walks. So yeah. Happy last day of the season!

This is the toughest series of the year to predict because who knows how the Indians are going to play it? Do they want to stay completely fresh and everyone will play or do they want to take the opportunity to rest guys and play their bench a little bit before the postseason? My guess is we don’t see guys for too long unless they need the reps like maybe Josh Donaldson. I’m going to go out on a true limb here and say the Royals take three of four and give us some warm and fuzzy feelings to take into the offseason.

The starting pitching, though, is rough. They have a lot of young arms to go along with Matt Harvey and 1-14 Homer Bailey, but they’ve all been somewhere between bad and average, so there’s a ways to go. But at least the bullpen has some promise with Raisel Iglesias at the back end.

Reds Vitals

Royals vs. Reds

Offense

Pitching

Reds Projected Lineup

Projected Pitching Matchups

Tuesday – 5:40 pm

The Royals get to face one of the 2015 World Series heroes in this one, though they did face him once after the World Series, so it’s not Matt Harvey’s first time seeing the Royals blue since that fateful night. Still, it’ll be fun to relive some of that Game Five magic in this one where the Royals presumably broke Harvey to the point that he was dealt to the Reds after being DFAed. He hasn’t been bad in Cincy, though, with a 4.46 ERA and a solid strikeout to walk ratio. He’s still too hittable and not nearly what he was through 2015, but he’s been serviceable. He’s had a bit of an interesting September for the Reds, posting a 4.63 ERA that’s pretty well in line with his season number, but he’s gotten a ton of whiffs while also giving up his share of homers. It’s all just sort of incongruent, but I guess that’s the story of his career lately. He just doesn’t have the same putaway stuff he used to, and when hitters go up in the count on him, they have a chance to do serious damage. He’s allowed a .462 average and .923 SLG on 1-0 counts and a .556 average and 1.500 SLG on 2-0 counts. Lefties have raked him for power with a .222 ISO, so in that ballpark, I’d expect at least four Ryan O’Hearn homers.

Skoglund has now made two starts since coming off the DL (and one relief appearance) and the results have been quite good with a total of 13 innings pitched, seven hits allowed and just two runs with only three walks. Of course, he’s also only struck out six, which isn’t good at all. I still have plenty of doubts about Skoglund long term, so it’ll be good to get to evaluate two more starts of his since the Royals have shut down Brad Keller to get him an extra one on the final day of the season. One of the most shocking Skoglund stats that I thought I’d share is that opponents are actually at their best against him when they’re behind in the count with a .318 average and .541 SLG. That can’t happen.

Wednesday – 5:40 pm

Cody Reed also has ties to the 2015 World Series squad as he was dealt in the deal for Johnny Cueto, and he’ll make his seventh start of the season against the Royals in this one. Aside from an April start, Reed had pitched out of the bullpen exclusively in the big leagues until August 30, and he’s been outstanding in his last two, going 11 innings with no runs allowed on seven hit and with 16 strikeouts against just two walks. I really liked Reed as a Royals prospect and it seems he might be starting to show off some of that potential. He works heavily with a slider, throwing it nearly 41 percent of the time since his return to the rotation, and it’s been outstanding, holding opponents to a .186 average and .279 SLG and has been responsible for 21 of his 25 strikeouts. Watch out, righties. He hasn’t faced many lefties, but he’s been basically 50/50 fastball and slider to them and they’ve crushed his fastball. Given the roster, some lefties will have to play, so they better be hunting fastballs. He does tire out quickly with his OPS allowed going from .599 in the first plate appearance to .761 in the second to a whopping 1.194 in the third. If the Royals can wait him out, they can hit him.

I continue to have no idea what to make of Fillmyer. I think his slider is big league good, but he just gets roughed up sometimes and in situations that make me wonder how he ever has good starts. But then he goes out and has some good starts. He’s gone at least seven innings in three of his four September starts and was solid against Pittsburgh last time out. He’s actually started getting some more swings and misses, with his swinging strike rate jumping from just under six percent to just over nine percent in the second half. It’s still not quite enough, but I could see him faring very well in a swingman role on a better team. The Reds, as a team, are not exactly world class against sliders, so if he has it working, it could be another good start for him. Of course, his 7.22 road ERA makes me wonder.

Neither team is good, and I expect this series to be about whichever team is more into it. I’ll go ahead and say the Royals split it with the Reds, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if the Skoglund and Fillmyer both get hit around too much for the Royals offense to keep up.

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

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

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

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

The Kansas City Royals bullpen is another matter entirely.

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

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

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

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

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

Alas.

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

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

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

— Rustin Dodd (@rustindodd) September 18, 2018

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

Your Tweet of Despair

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

— Roberto (@RobertElledge89) September 18, 2018

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

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

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