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.

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

Who You’ll Hear About

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

• With the likely limited events of the upcoming offseason, it has me looking ahead to 2019/2020, which is pretty dangerous, but depending on how some of the young guys do this year, the Royals might be looking for some stopgaps to get from the end of the 2019 season to the middle of 2021 or so. A few names to keep an eye on in free agency, to me, are Mitch Moreland, Todd Frazier, Jedd Gyorko, Jarrod Dyson, Ben Zobrist (if he doesn’t retire), Mike Fiers, Erasmo Ramirez and any number of relievers. While things can certainly change over the next 12 months, any of these players might find a year in Kansas City attractive if either just for a job or maybe some nostalgia as their careers wind down. Knowing that outfield and corner infield appear to be the areas where the team might need a boost in 2020 is sort of comforting because there are passable options out there. Of course, there always seem to be passable first baseman (a la Lucas Duda), but even so, this is a short list for what the Royals might go after in 2020 in order to remain respectable while waiting on the next wave that should start to show up in the next couple seasons.
• One thing that I hadn’t really considered until really just now is how much bad the Royals are replacing on their 2018 roster heading into 2019. Of course, that doesn’t mean the replacement won’t be as bad or maybe even worse, but with the losses of Mike Moustakas, Jon Jay, Lucas Duda, Ryan Goins, Abraham Almonte, Cheslor Cuthbert (likely), Drew Butera, Paulo Orlando, Alcides Escobar (hopefully), Kelvin Herrera, Jason Hammel, Burch Smith (hopefully), Blaine Boyer, Brandon Maurer (hopefully), Justin Grimm and Enny Romero, the Royals are actually ridding themselves of -3.8 WARP. So simply replacing that with guys who really belong on AAA and are the definition of replacement level will bring the Royals four more wins. Go out and get some one-win players to replace them and that’s how they get from horrific to simply bad without really having to do anything. The top of the roster still needs an overhaul, and that’s something that might happen naturally too if Adalberto Mondesi keeps up his second half work, Whit Merrifield continues to be this player and Jorge Soler comes back healthy. But the biggest issue for the time being is that the bottom of the roster was just so horrible in 2018 that it weighed down everything. I think a good first step is bringing that up and then going from there. Of course, there will be bad players on the roster. It’s a matter of minimizing them as much as possible.
• Gold Glove finalists were announced yesterday and while the award is a silly one, it has gotten better. The days of Rafael Palmeiro winning it while barely playing first base are over, as they actually utilize some analytics in the process. The Royals had two finalists and if you watched the team for more than a handful of games, you know it’s Alex Gordon and Salvador Perez. By pretty much all accounts, Gordon was the best left fielder in baseball. Again. And he’s doing it as now one of the slower players in baseball, so he’s getting by with instinct, arm and just some natural talent there. So I think it would be a huge upset if he doesn’t win given that he’s got the history and the name and the numbers to back it up. Perez had his streak snapped last year, so he’s going for his fifth again this season and compared to Gomes and Maldonado (last year’s winner), I do think he comes out on top as well. He really upped his caught stealing numbers and that means something to the voters. So my guess is even in a terrible season, the Royals have two familiar Gold Glovers.
• As the Royals transition from their last good team to hopefully their next, there are a few different types of players they have on their roster. One of them is the type we’ve talked a fair amount about and that’s the guys who really seem to have a short time to make an impact and an impression. One of those guys is Brian Goodwin. With Brett Phillips, he has some time, but Goodwin seems like one of those guys who can either become a part of the future in 2019 or can become a footnote of players who just happened to be on the Royals roster at some point in time. I was actually somewhat impressed by him last season in his short time with the Royals. He seemed to play a solid center field and flashed enough power to keep teams honest. The UZR numbers backed up the solid defense, though the sample is still way too small for defensive purposes. I don’t think Goodwin is a starter on the next Royals playoff team, but he’s still young enough that he can play a valuable role, and I’m very excited and curious to see how he fares in 2019 for them.

The last month-plus of Royals baseball has been particularly encouraging, for a variety of reasons. There have been many solid developments among the starting pitchers, there has been timely hitting, there has been excellent defense, there has been speed (my God, has there been speed) and there is plenty of promise for the future.

And on this night, there was a walk-off hit from Salvador Perez—on the 12^th anniversary of his signing with the organization, no less—and the 14^th victory in 17 games at Kauffman Stadium. That’s high-quality #RoyalsDevilMagic that is.

The thing about this particular 100-loss debacle is how much fun September has been. Ryan O’Hearn, Adalberto Mondesi, Brad Keller, Alex Gordon and more have been downright enjoyable to observe on a regular basis, and even if only parts are sustainable going forward, it’s put an optimistic coda on a year that seemed destined to disappoint since the day Lorenzo Cain’s signature dried on a contract in Milwaukee.

[Miss you, LoCain.]

Things started poorly. Lindor led off with a single, went to second when Ryan O’Hearn dropped Glenn Sparkman’s pickoff attempt (not O’Hearn’s finest night at the bag) and moved to third on a balk. Ramirez lifted a sac fly into left to score Lindor three batters into the game.

The Indians would not score again, although had Brett Phillips not made a leaping grab of a Melky Cabrera liner to end the first that might not have been the case.

They’d try, of course. The Royals certainly gave them ample opportunities, like a second inning that saw Yandy Diaz lead off with a double, Brandon Guyer hit a one-out single to move him to third… and then two flyouts calmly ended the threat?

Or back-to-back one-out singles by Josh Donaldson and Cabrera which went nowhere in the sixth.

Or Melky doubling in the eighth with two down and Rajai Davis on first, only the speedy Davis didn’t score on that play and then Adalberto Mondesi made a play that, quite frankly, shouldn’t have been possibly on a back-hand pick and throw from deep in the hole at short. That kid is special and I don’t care how much his plate discipline could stand to improve.

It didn’t take much plate discipline to do what he did in the third inning. With two outs and on a 2-0 count, BERTO cranked a homer into the right field bullpen to tie it up and lock the game into a seemingly endless series of pitching changes and close-but-not-quite run-producing chances. Theatrics at the end of the night aside, large swaths of this game were unspeakably boring.

The Royals were in the drivers seat come the fifth, which Brian Goodwin led off with a double, followed by a curveball to the noggin of a ducking Cam Gallagher. Phillips failed to lay down a bunt and popped out to Yan Gomes behind the plate, while Whit Merrifield and Mondesi both lined out to center to end a great chance for the Royals, with Greg Allen making a terrific catch on a low Mondesi liner to keep the Royals off the board.

Let’s see… [attaches pince-nez to nose] no threats, no great defense, let’s go to extras! Business picked up as soon as we got to free baseball. Jason Hammel entered to pitch the 10^th for the Royals and, after a solid Merrifield play to retire Lindor at first, almost immediately found himself in trouble thanks to a one-out single-and-steal by Allen and a walk to Ramirez. Things got worse when the duo stole third and second.

They got exponentially better when Hammel struck out Brandon Barnes to end the inning.

In order to get to Salvy’s walk-off, first you get past a Jorge Bonifacio ground out and Merrifield flyout. Then you’ve got BERTO walking and swiping second, then taking third on Alex Gordon’s walk. Salvy roped his single into left and the Royals were winners to open the series.

Your Unusually Happy (Although Appearing with More Frequency of Late) Tweet of the Game

In the twilight of a long, sad Royals season, Sal Perez walks off the division champs. There is nothing not to like about Salvy. #Royals #MLB

— Mike Gillespie (@MikeGillespieJD) September 28, 2018

The Bright Spot: Whit and BERTO running. Sparkman throwing a career-best five innings of competent ball. Manufacturing runs in a way to make Whitey Herzog proud. Five scoreless relief innings. A real cavalcade of happiness tonight.

The Nadir: Phillips is hitting .189 and that popped-up bunt was brutal.

The Next Step: Mike Clevinger, who has been good all season, will face Ian Kennedy, who has been good for two straight starts, in the final Friday night contest at Kauffman this season. 7:15 p.m. (CT) for those interested.

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.

• 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.