5 Things That Definitely Probably Might Happen for the 2024 Royals

You can't predict baseball, but the Royals play a game that matters tomorrow, so I'm going to try.

Baseball is a tricky game. The second you think you have everything figured out, you get hit hard in the head by the reality that we don’t know what’s coming next. You could write a prediction for Albert Pujols in ink in January and not have to worry about it. Until you couldn’t. People sitting behind the first base dugout when Chuck Knoblauch was a second baseman were safe. Until they weren’t. History is littered with certainties that never came to be. That’s why predicting baseball is one of the hardest things to do. There was once a very active account on the artist formerly known as Twitter dedicated to proving that. Even that account was active. Until it wasn’t.

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So why am I sitting here on the eve of the 2024 season so willing to put predictions out there? Because it’s fun, that’s why! What fun is baseball if we only react to things? Sure, that’s a lot of what this newsletter is. I write about what happened the day(s) before. But sometimes it’s fun to look ahead. Last year, I was wrong about some stuff. I said that Brady Singer would get Cy Young votes and Vinnie Pasquantino would get MVP votes. Whoops. I was right about some stuff. I said that Bobby Witt Jr. would go 30/30 and Zack Greinke would show his age. It’s always so interesting to me to go back and see what I thought and why I might have thought it. So let’s get to it.

The Royals WILL Be Better in 2024…By A Lot

I’m talking wins and losses on this one. They won 56 games a year ago. People will tell you that everything went wrong, but it didn’t. Witt broke out. They traded for Cole Ragans and he was an ace. They unearthed James McArthur. Maikel Garcia proved he could play third at the big league level. They acquired Nelson Velazquez and he punished baseballs for two months. So no, not everything went wrong, but a whole lot did. They lost Pasquantino for the year early. Michael Massey hit like a pitcher for a month. MJ Melendez carried a frying pan to the outfield and didn’t hit enough if he was an Alex Gordon-level defender in the first half.

They obviously made a lot of moves that we’ve talked about for months now. As I wrote previously, I believe they raised the floor of the team significantly. And it’s now at the point that I think the floor for wins is somewhere around 68. Don’t forget, though, that baseball can be cruel, so injuries or age catching up to guys can lead to something we don’t expect. Still, there is a semi-solid floor on this team and if the young players like Melendez and Pasquantino and a few others step up, the ceiling for this team is somewhere around 85 to 88 wins. Generally when I’m making my season predictions, I look at the floor and look at the ceiling and pick somewhere in the middle.

*drumroll for my official prediction*

That’s why I think they’ll win 75 games in 2024. That’s a 19-game improvement. It would not be the biggest improvement ever. They would need to get to 91 wins in order to tie the record and 92 to break it. I think that’s pretty unlikely, but hey, I guess you never know.

Bobby Witt Jr. WILL Make the All-Star Team

This one feels somewhat obvious, but also if you think about the shortstops in the American League, it’s no guarantee. Here’s who he’s up against right now: Bo Bichette, Carlos Correa, JP Crawford, Gunnar Henderson, Corey Seager and Trevor Story. I left off some of the less interesting names, but there’s always room for Javier Baez to rebound or Jeremy Peña to take a step or Anthony Volpe to do the same. So there are a lot of shortstops in the American League who are very good.

Of course, few are as good as Witt and maybe none as overall talented. Witt last year finished with 5.7 fWAR, which was behind only Seager and Francisco Lindor among all shortstops and Seager played about 330 fewer innings at the position. That’s with a slow start for Witt. Another slow start can’t be discounted because he’s been a bit of a slow starter throughout his career, so we’ll see, but Witt proved that he’s one of the best players in all of baseball so he should be able to crack that team in Arlington in 2024.

Someone You Like WILL Get Traded

Half of the 26-man roster that we’ll see announced tomorrow wasn’t even in the organization on Opening Day last year. Of those 13, 10 of them weren’t even in the organization at the end of last season. So in between regular season games, the Royals have turned over 38.5 percent of their roster. That’s crazy. It was needed, but that’s crazy. JJ Picollo has proven that he is transactional. He still hasn’t made a trade that involved someone you didn’t expect. I guess maybe moving Jose Cuas qualifies there, but his moves have largely been players who sort of had to get moved.

I think that changes this year, and I’m not sure if it matters if the Royals are contending or not. There is a non-zero chance that the Royals have a surplus of starting pitching by midseason. That’s wild to think about it, but it’s true. They’ve got five starters who they like right now. They’ve got Daniel Lynch IV in AAA, who could go either way. Kris Bubic comes back from Tommy John in the middle of the summer. I really like Mason Barnett. I like Chandler Champlain too. Anthony Veneziano could be a real option. Matt Sauer could be a real option. Angel Zerpa could be a real option. They won’t all be. Heck, maybe none will be, but I could see a world where a guy like Singer is off to a good start and they have reinforcements and he’s moved in a trade.

It feels so bizarre to think they could actually trade a starting pitcher, but I think it’s possible. I also think it’s still possible that Melendez or Garcia or Loftin or Nick Pratto or really anyone gets traded at some point. The only thing bolted down is Witt and probably Salvador Perez at this point. Pasquantino is also someone who I think is unlikely to go and I’ll get to that shortly, but other than that, anyone is fair game. Some are less likely than others, but anyone is fair game.

Hunter Renfroe WILL Struggle and WILL Be Money the Royals Eat in 2025

I understand why the Royals wanted a veteran outfielder, I really do. I don’t even hate that they went after Renfroe. For the price, it makes sense. He’s making $5.5 million this season with a $1 million buyout if he chooses to opt out. It was just the year before last that he hit .255/.315/.492 with 29 home runs for the Brewers. And the year before that, he hit .259/.315/.501 with 31 home runs for the Red Sox. For $5.5 million, that would be an absolute bargain. But he gets to choose if he opts out. And while he was great for that price in 2021 and 2022, he hit .233/.297/.416 in 2023. That’s not good enough.

It’s possible that he rebounds. He was better for the Angels before going to the Reds and tanking in the final month with sporadic playing time. But the batted ball metrics for him last year don’t paint a positive picture and I just don’t think he’s the type of player who ages especially well. He’s a big guy who is getting slower as he ages (aren’t we all?) and with the struggles with the quality of contact, it’s just hard to think that he’s going to actually bounce back, which puts them on the hook for $7.5 million in 2025. You don’t have to believe in Tyler Gentry, but it just feels like they should have waited out the market and signed Adam Duvall or Tommy Pham to a straight one-year deal because I think they’ll find themselves regretting this move by the end of 2024.

John McMillon WILL Lead the Team in Saves

He didn’t make the Opening Day roster, but that was because he was working his way back from injury and didn’t get the reps in spring training. The Royals didn’t feel like he was where he needed to be, so they sent him to AAA. I anticipate that won’t last too terribly long and he’ll be in the big leagues by mid-May. Will Smith will begin the year as the primary closer and there are plenty of pitchers Matt Quatraro and Brian Sweeney can trust to get saves throughout the year, but I think once McMillon comes up, he takes the role and runs with it.

I think it’s plausible that we see five Royals relievers pick up five or more saves. Last year, the Diamondbacks had the most pitchers with five plus saves with four. But Smith early, along with McArthur getting some big saves and then some combination of the other three veterans - Nick Anderson, John Schreiber and Chris Stratton - along with McMillon could easily get them to five pitchers to do it. I think the offense will be better, but still won’t be great and if the starting pitching is good enough, there will be plenty of save opportunities to go around, so I could absolutely see Smith with nine or 10, the rest with five or six and then McMillon coming in for three months as THE CLOSER and picking up 15+.