Bold Predictions for the 2023 Royals

Sometimes you have to be bold, right?

The 2023 season starts on Thursday, which means all that’s left to do is get through the next few days healthy enough and the season can start and we can actually have something real to evaluate. Of course, we’ll get through a week and someone will inevitably compare the baseball season to the football season and say that six games into the season is basically like seven minutes into the second half of the first game of the year. That someone may or may not be me when people jump to conclusions. Think back to the 2011 season after Alex Gordon proclaimed that he was going to dominate. After one game, he was 0 for 5. After three games, he was hitting .154/.154/.231. After five games, he was hitting .375/.400/.667.

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I guess what I’m saying is if you’re going to be bold, do it before the numbers have a chance to make you look good or bad. And that’s what I’m doing today. Some of these will be very positive for the Royals. Others…not so much. Hopefully with the good ones, we can look back and say I nailed them and the bad ones were just a bad dream. Let’s start with a good one.

Brady Singers Gets Cy Young Votes

The 2022 season was a special one for Singer. Well, it was special once he came back to the big leagues and stuck in the rotation. He threw seven shutout innings in his first start back and then did the same in his second. But it was the second half of the season when things got interesting for him. This is totally using selective endpoints from in his 12 starts after the break and excluding his final once, which was a clunker, he threw 76 innings with 62 hits allowed and 76 strikeouts against just 16 walks.

Aside from a very bad two innings against Mexico in the World Baseball Classic, Singer has pretty much picked up where he left off this spring. He struck out 13 and walked just one in 7.2 Cactus League innings. He’ll go tomorrow night in Texas to prepare for his start in the fourth game of the season, but I think there’s a step to be taken for him this year. He doesn’t get as many swings and misses as a traditional ace does, but among pitchers with at least 150 innings last season, his CSW% (called strikes and whiffs) was 11th in all of baseball at 30.3 percent. Of the top 30 on that list of 62, he was one of two (with Adam Wainwright) to have a whiff rate below 10 percent.

The question becomes if it’s sustainable to stay that highly ranked, and I think the answer is no, but I think he will get more swing and miss this season as he incorporates his changeup into his repertoire more. That will make his slider deadlier and his sinker even more difficult to pull the trigger on. And when it’s all said and done, Singer’s name will be on the Baseball Writers of America website when the Cy Young vote is revealed.

Vinnie Pasquantino Gets MVP Votes

I wrote last season that Pasquantino would be a top-30 hitter in baseball in 2023. A few days later, I was looking at some stats and I realized that he already was a top-30 hitter, at least by wRC+. So that’s not terribly bold. But I think he takes a step forward because he’s a very smart hitter and I love the way he finished the year. Sometimes a finish to a season can be fool’s gold, but in 52 games after the break, he hit .328/.409/.489. After returning from in injury in September, he hit .361/.449/.482 in 23 games. The power was not quite there, but I believe he puts it together in 2023 and gets a 10th place vote or two.

Part of this rationale is the fact that shifts are now restricted. This doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll translate exactly, but he had a .422 wOBA without the shift last season. That’s in 20 plate appearance, so take it with a grain of salt, but he was at .362 with a shift. The most similar batters to him in 2022 were Freddie Freeman, Jose Abreu, Alejandro Kirk, Max Kepler and Corey Seaguer. Okay, they’re not all MVP candidates, but three of the five have either been candidates or won the award.

I made a similar prediction back in the offseason between 2011 and 2012 when I said that Salvador Perez would get MVP votes before Eric Hosmer. Salvy has gotten votes in three seasons. Hosmer did get some in 2015 and 2017, but Salvy’s first were in 2013, so I got one right. It doesn’t have a lot of bearing here, but I like to be right and remind people that it does happen sometimes.

Bobby Witt Jr. Goes 30/30

For me, this is about health. I wrote about this back after the season ended, but I am completely convinced that the hamstring injury Witt dealt with in July torpedoed his season. I’ll repeat, but before the injury, he was hitting .258/.301/.459 and hit just .248/.285/.382 after. And the batted ball metrics supported that too with a 90.8 MPH average exit velocity and a 41.5 percent hard-hit rate to go along with an 8.9 percent barrel rate. These are all very positive indicators. Those dropped significantly after the injury.

We know he can hit bombs. He had 20 last year (and 30 steals), but I think we also know there’s more in there. A scout I spoke with during spring training and he said what he saw was a hitter who could actually do damage on the high fastball. That’s something Witt struggled with in his rookie season. I’m not saying Witt is Mike Trout or anything, but that’s a hole that Trout had to close also and was able to do it. I think that Witt’s in for a big season, knowing he’s the shortstop and with some work on his swing to help him be a little less susceptible to so many zones on the plate.

The plate discipline is still a bit of a concern for me, but I’m interested to see what his walk rate does if and when he starts doing more consistent damage to the baseball. I loved the fact that he was hitting rockets the other way this spring and believe that’ll carry over. The steals I don’t even think about. He might swipe 50 with the new rules. But I believe he will add 10 home runs.

Zack Greinke Shows His Age

If there’s one player to never doubt, it’s Greinke. He doesn’t have the stuff anymore, ranking 114th out of 140 pitchers with 100 or more innings in Stuff+, but he’s smarter than just about everyone out there. And he almost always has something up his sleeve. Still, I’m concerned about how many balls are put in play against him without a shift to help him. To his credit, he already knows it’s going to hurt his changeup, but the guy with the lowest strikeout rate in baseball among pitchers with 40 or more innings last season could find himself in trouble.

Maybe the Royals can finagle he schedule so he only pitches at home. He did have a 1.91 ERA with only one home run allowed in 66 innings in Kauffman Stadium last year compared to a 5.32 ERA on the road with 13 home runs allowed in 71 innings. And if they can do that, I’ll feel better, but I have a very real fear that the lack of strikeouts is going to hurt him a lot more this season than it did last year. Of course, if I’m judging by the way a guy finishes, like I mentioned with Singer and Pasquantino, Greinke did post a 2.43 ERA after the break. That came with 31 strikeouts in 59.1 innings, though, so I have my concerns.

Hey Zack, prove me wrong.

The Royals Throw Their First No-Hitter Since 1991

I have absolutely no stat to back this up other than that they’re due, but I think the Royals have the right people in charge to make the right decisions to take a solid start from someone and turn it over to the right relievers in what I believe will be a very good bullpen to keep a no-hitter in tact through nine innings. There will be debate about it because it won’t have been thrown by one individual pitcher, but I can absolutely see a world where someone like Brad Keller is on, but gets to like 110 pitches in July and the Royals don’t want to risk losing one of their better trade pieces, so they pull him after seven and some combination of two relievers finishes things.

The Royals Buy at the Deadline

They won’t really be competing for anything but they’ll see an opportunity to make a move to get a headstart on their offseason. It’s actually sort of similar to what we saw last year when they brought in some younger guys in exchange for veterans both for the return and to clear spots on the roster. This year will be a little different in that they’ll believe they are close and will take the trade deadline as an opportunity to go get that starter they believe they will need.

I don’t know who it will be, but the names you’ll hear a lot of are Zac Gallen, Mitch Keller, Jesus Luzardo and a big surprise on the trade block, Logan Webb. I think the Royals farm system will show out pretty well this year, so they’ll have some pieces to move and they’ll find someone who they can slot at the front of their rotation with Singer in the hopes that they can get some consistency at the top and maybe be able to handle someone in a Wild Card series.

That means they’ll likely move someone who they don’t want to have to move, but MJ Melendez might the key to any trade. As a Boras client, it seems unlikely that he’ll be someone who will sign long-term, so they will look to cash in on him at the perfect time and I imagine the return will be someone who can start important games for this team.

The Royals Sell at the Deadline

They’ll buy long-term, but sell short-term and the team will have a very different feel to it once again after the trade deadline. They’ve built a deep bullpen that had them send down three relievers who all not only would have likely made the team in years past but played prominent roles. If they truly are going to be more “transactional” (man I’m really starting to despise that word), they’re going to trade from their surplus.

I would imagine Scott Barlow and Aroldis Chapman go. Amir Garrett probably too. It wouldn’t surprise me too much to see Josh Staumont get dealt provided he handles the option well and pitches well when he comes back. Taylor Clarke could go too. Honestly, anyone but Dylan Coleman could get moved.

They’ll also shop Hunter Dozier, Franmil Reyes and I’m guessing Nicky Lopez at the deadline. All won’t go, but many will and while they likely won’t get back a blue chip prospect for any of them other than maybe Barlow, they’ll restock some depth in their farm system that has been thinned out greatly with a bunch of callups last year. The system will still depend on guys like Gavin Cross, Cayden Wallace and whoever their first couple of picks are in 2023, but these moves will help quite a bit to add to the whole organization.

The Season Will Be a Success And They’ll Win…

…73 games. I really like to take my time and assess the team when I make my prediction for the season. I’ll have my whole league predictions up on Thursday morning, but I have the Royals at 73-89. There are some who will say that any non-playoff season is a failure and certainly any sub-.500 season is an abject failure, but the Royals shouldn’t be graded on that curve. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The organization made terrible mistakes in the past that have gotten them to that point. That’s not something that is easily fixed in a season.

They revamped the coaching staff and the way they’re developing pitchers. They did what I think is a very nice job of turning the bottom of the roster from a disaster zone to something resembling competent. They’re not there yet, though. The rotation is going to be too big of a problem for an offense that can be good but hasn’t proven it yet to overcome. And while they should be able to protect the leads they can turn over to the bullpen, I have a feeling they’ll be in a fair number of games with double digit run totals before the bullpen even gets involved.

So they’ll be fighting an uphill battle for wins on too many nights, but the season will be a success because they will finally know what they have and what they need. And that will make the 2023/2024 offseason one of the most important this franchise has seen. If they determine the core is in place for a championship-caliber roster, they must supplement that with both savvy moves and moves that may not be so savvy but can make the roster good enough to win a title. The hope is that this is the last year 73 wins can be successful, but my bold prediction here is that it will be enough for good vibes that they absolutely have to capitalize on.

So those are my bold predictions for 2023. Let me know yours in the comments!