Building the Opening Day Royals Lineup

But let's only use players on the team, okay?

Spring training lineups can often be sort of meaningless. Sometimes a player who will never hit in the top half of a lineup will hit at the top to either get them some extra at bats or to give the team extra opportunities to evaluate them. Sometimes it’s as simple as most players are getting the day off and someone has to be in there. But sometimes you can start to look at some meaning of maybe a method to the madness and you generally start to get that method with a handful of games remaining. What makes this year so difficult to evaluate is we started the spring with a handful of games remaining. But still, this is what Mike Matheny ran out yesterday in Surprise.

David Lesky @DBLesky

#Royals lineup vs. Nick Lodolo: Merrifield RF Witt 3B Perez DH Benintendi LF Santana 1B Mondesi SS Melendez C Taylor CF Lopez 2B Lynch P

Bobby Witt Jr. hit second the other day and I didn’t bat an eye. Why? Because Nicky Lopez wasn’t in that lineup. But you might notice that Lopez was, in fact, in this lineup and he hit ninth. I find that very interesting. It could be absolutely nothing. Maybe the Royals staff thought Witt’s timing wasn’t quite there and wanted to get him an extra at bat or two while they feel good about where Lopez is (though I think it’d be hard to argue that). Or maybe they’re truly starting to think that the best option is to use Lopez as almost a second leadoff hitter with Witt being a power bat at the top. Matheny seems to like the idea.

Anne Rogers @anne__rogers

Asked Mike Matheny what he likes about Whit Merrifield and Bobby Witt Jr. at the top of the #Royals lineup. "What's not to like?"

Hard to argue with that (there’s sound on that video below that you’ll want to hear).

MLB HR Videos @MLBHRVideos

Bobby Witt Jr. - Kansas City Royals (2)*

Time will tell, but it got me thinking about the best possible Royals lineup. For these instances, even though MJ Melendez was in yesterday’s lineup, I’m going to use the probable starting nine of Andrew Benintendi, Hunter Dozier, Lopez, Whit Merrifield, Adalberto Mondesi, Salvador Perez, Carlos Santana, Michael A. Taylor and Witt. Melendez and Nick Pratto will have their time, but I don’t think it’s going to be for the first few weeks, especially with rosters likely sitting with 16 pitchers until May 2.

Up until yesterday, I was pretty confident that the lineup would be:

Merrifield
Lopez
Perez
Benintendi
Santana
Dozier
Mondesi
Witt
Taylor

At least that’s what we’d see to start. And honestly, I was fine with that. We all want Witt to hit more, but I don’t hate the idea of a young guy getting the chance to get his feet wet. If Witt is truly one of the best hitters on the team, he’ll find his way to the top just like Lopez did last year when he proved that he deserved to be getting the second-most plate appearances on the team. So now I’m not so sure if that’s the plan or not, but either way, let’s take a look at the number of plate appearances from each spot for the team in 2021:

735 (4.54/game)
716 (4.42/game)
701 (4.33/game)
682 (4.21/game)
665 (4.10/game)
645 (3.98/game)
629 (3.88/game)
619 (3.82/game)
601 (3.71/game)

It’s easy to see that you’re sort of splitting hairs arguing between two spots right next to each other, but when you start looking at second vs. eighth or ninth, it’s a big difference, both day-to-day and over the course of a season. And while I don’t think the Royals are improved enough to fight for that sixth playoff spot, maybe a few things break their way and they actually do find themselves within shouting distance. It would be quite unfortunate if someone was getting an extra three plate appearances every five games that maybe cost them a game or two along the way.

You can’t just plug numbers into the old Baseball Musings Lineup Analysis tool and take it for gospel, but it’s still fun. Using last season’s numbers, this is what the tool says is the best Royals lineup.

Lopez
Witt
Merrifield
Perez
Benintendi
Mondesi
Dozier
Taylor
Santana

I…don’t hate that. Lopez’s OBP and lack of power works best at the top of the lineup if he can maintain the gains he made last year and at the bottom of the lineup if he drops 15-20 percent. I think it’s a bit odd to have Santana at the bottom given his profile, but he also was terrible in 2021, so it makes some sense.

Now let’s take a look at the lineup using ZiPS projections because Witt’s numbers are from the minors, which, yes, he might duplicate, but also it’s hard to predict that.

Santana
Witt
Merrifield
Perez
Benintendi
Mondesi
Dozier
Taylor
Lopez

That’s also sort of interesting, but also only flipped Santana and Lopez. I definitely don’t hate the two through eight there. I haven’t exactly been shy in discussing my concern about Merrifield at the top of the lineup. Among regulars, his .317 OBP was fourth on the team behind Lopez, Benintendi and Santana, but the fall is a continuing trend for him. Since his first full season in 2018, he’s gone from .367 to .348 to .325 to .317. I should say there’s no guarantee that trend will continue. He’s such a hard worker and has the chip on his shoulder that a guy like him likely needs, but he’s also now 33 and if he does halt that decline, he would be the exception and not the rule.

The issue the Royals have with building their lineup with this particular group of players is that they don’t have a lot of punch in the middle. Witt will help that. Perez is obviously a legitimate power threat. But outside of those two, there are simply questions. Dozier had a .179 ISO last year even with a BRUTAL first half and is at .205 over the last three years, so he’s important here. If Santana can bounce back and do what he did in the first half, he can be helpful. And the addition of Pratto and Melendez will theoretically help if they can hit the ground running.

Why am I mentioning this? It’s because I sort of think Benintendi should hit at the very top of the order with Witt behind him. But his .166 ISO was only behind Perez, Mondesi and Dozier last season. It’s modest, but he also was one of the best on the team at driving the ball, even if that is damning with faint praise. Can the Royals afford to take him out of a spot behind guys who get on base and make him a table setter? I believe they can. And I think it’s because I believe in Merrifield’s ability to put the ball in play to move runners even if he isn’t elite at getting on base.

The question then becomes where do you put a player who posted a .117 ISO with the OBP declines? If he can rebound on the BABIP front and boost his average 20 points from where it’s been the last two years, maybe the top of the order is right, but I actually sort of like the idea of him hitting in a spot you won’t expect - fourth. I love the idea of Perez staying in that three spot because he’s going to have someone on base often early in the game with Benintendi and Witt ahead of him. If Perez’s best attribute offensively is his ability to put the ball in the gap and over the wall, you want him to at least have one opportunity to come up with men on base rather than leading off a second inning.

Ideally, I’d actually like to see Merrifield a bit lower in the lineup even. If Dozier or Santana can prove they’ve bounced back, they both are better at getting on base that I’d like to see one of them fourth. If both, I’d love to see them fourth and fifth. In that case, drop Merrifield to sixth and then finish out the lineup with Mondesi, Taylor and Lopez.

The issue, and yes, this is me writing through it, is that Lopez had a .365 OBP last season. How do you put that at the bottom of the lineup and give him 115 fewer plate appearances through the course of a season? That leads to so many questions of whether or not Lopez can repeat. He had an xOBP of .313 last year. Let’s not get into whether or not the Royals could live with that due to his defense in a lineup that also features Taylor. If he regresses to that, he needs to be at the bottom of the order. But if he doesn’t, he probably needs to be at the top and pushing Benintendi back to the middle. This is what makes the question so difficult here.

On one hand, I kind of want to make Lopez prove it again. On the other hand, I wonder if I’ll ever fully believe it. If he does it again in 2022, will I want him to prove it again in 2023? I assume I would buy it, but I don’t know for sure. My crystal ball is in the shop. That’s probably not fair, but it’s just the reality of how I feel at this time about the guy. I believe in the approach, but I have a lot of concerns with his inability to drive the ball allowing him to keep finding holes. His .347 BABIP was high but not outrageous given that he can run and he hits the ball the other way. But his average distance on batted balls was just 130 feet, which only outpaced Kelvin Gutierrez, Jarrod Dyson and a few pitchers. It’s the same argument I had about Joey Gathright. If the outfielders aren’t kept honest, how many opportunities are there to drop a hit in?

This is probably a bigger question for a different day, but Lopez’s ability to repeat truly can change the way the lineup produces in 2022. All of this is to say that if Witt hitting second is a real possibility (and again, I’m actually fine if it’s not to start the year), I like the idea of Lopez hitting ninth, Merrifield hitting in a weird cleanup spot and Benintendi at the top. This lineup…

Benintendi
Witt
Perez
Merrifield
Santana
Dozier
Mondesi
Taylor
Lopez

…can be expected to score about 4.5 runs per game. Let’s drop that as a team to 4.4 runs per game given backups playing and that puts the Royals at about 713 runs, which is an increase of 25 runs from 2021. Using the formula that roughly 10 runs is a win, that’s a boost of 2.5 wins on the offensive side. The nice thing about the lineup above is there are reinforcements in the minors who are close. If Santana doesn’t hit, Pratto is there. If Dozier doesn’t hit, Melendez is there. If Lopez declines to the point that he’s hitting at 2019/2020 levels, Kyle Isbel is there. So that means there’s more potential in this lineup than even that number.

For what it’s worth, if you flip Benintendi and Merrifield in my above lineup using the ZiPS numbers, you get basically the same output, so maybe it’s not worth making the change, but I’m accounting for one player in decline and another theoretically in his prime getting more plate appearances. I don’t think we’ll see it happen, but that’s what I think would make for the best lineup. Of course, what I’d really love to see is this at some point in 2022:

Benintendi
Witt
Melendez
Perez
Pratto
Merrifield
Isbel
Mondesi
Lopez

But time will tell on that one. I don’t expect Matheny to run with my idea, but I do like it. I’m also the guy who wanted the Royals to hit Jorge Soler leadoff, so I think it’s fair to say I like to shake up the leadoff spot. Whatever they do, it’ll have to be better than last year if they have any hope of contending.