Charting The Royals Somewhat Unlikely Path 90 Wins

Don't laugh. It could happen. It probably won't. But it could!

This is the time to dream if you’re a fan of a bad team. The cliche that everyone is 0-0 and tied for first (and last) is true and one that can at least be somewhat comforting. But the truth is that it’s a little easier to dream when your team actually makes some moves in the offseason to improve the quality of the roster. You know, the opposite is heading into a season losing many of the stars that were part of a World Series win and then signing Lucas Duda.

It’s kind of hard to even remotely search for optimism in that case. But going out and signing two legitimate big league starting pitchers and adding three legitimate big league relievers and looking at an offense that was pretty solid in the second half and getting back arguably their best hitter, well yeah, you can at least start to put on some blue glasses.

I’ve written before that how you set your baseline depends entirely on you. I know I’m repeating myself, but the team that won 56 games was also seen by a couple of other metrics of being more of a 64- or 66-win team. If you’re a “the standings tell you what they were” person, they’re coming off a 56-win season. If you’re a “the underlying metrics tell you more about the future than what happened in the past” person, then you’re seeing them as a team in the 62-66 range in wins. And if you’re looking for a way for the Royals to get to 90 wins, you’re probably never going to get there if you’re the first person while there’s at least some precedent if you’re the latter.

Last season, the Texas Rangers won the World Series and did it with exactly 90 regular season wins. They had won 68 games the year before.

So mathematically, we know they either need to be 34 wins better or somewhere in the range of 24-28 wins. Either is a tall and likely insurmountable task, but, again, this is the time to dream about those things. How do they get to those 90 wins that likely will give them the AL Central crown? The answers are 11-fold.

Let’s start with the group of things that we’ve seen but just need to see more of.

1. Bobby Witt Jr. has to be what he was from June on for the entire season.

2. Cole Ragans needs to be what he was in 2023 for 25-30 starts in 2024.

3. Vinnie Pasquantino has to come back and hit the way he did before his shoulder started barking.

4. MJ Melendez (if he’s on the team) has to hit the way he did in the second half.

5. James McArthur proves he’s the machine we saw in September.

This is the group that feels the easiest because we know it’s at least possible. We saw Witt hit like an MVP-candidate for two-thirds of the season. We saw Ragans pitch like a Cy Young candidate for roughly one-third of the season. We’ve seen Pasquantino be a legitimate top-30 hitter in baseball. And we saw Melendez hit like a middle of the order bat. But let’s actually break these down and look what they all mean.

Witt’s Rise to Superstardom

This is one of the two most important factors because a star can cover up more than you realize. While his defense and baserunning made Witt a 1.1 fWAR player through the season’s first two months, that’s a pace of just 3.3 for a full year. It’s certainly not a number you’re upset to get from a starting player, but it’s something you want more than for a player who is supposed to be your star. But from the start of June, he was a 4.6 fWAR player, which is closer to seven wins over the course of a full season. That would have placed him as the fourth-most valuable position player in baseball.

There is some argument here, but a fully replacement level team that sits with 0.0 WAR will win around 48 games. Getting seven wins from one player gets the Royals to 55 with 25 roster spots to go. Sure some will be negative, but the point is that Witt becoming what he looked like for the majority of 2023 raises the floor of the Royals significantly. It’s not that terrible teams can’t have great players, but it puts the emphasis on the rest of the team being terrible to drag the great player down.

Ragans Delivering a Cy Young-Caliber Season

With the Royals, Ragans went 5-2 with a 2.64 ERA, 31.1 percent strikeout rate and 9.4 percent walk rate. He did it over 71.2 innings in 12 starts, so he averaged about six innings per start. Only 14 of 44 qualified starters averaged around six innings per start. Only three had a strikeout rate as high as Ragans did. And none posted an fWAR as high as the pace for Ragans had he made 30 starts. That’s not only an ace, but one of the very best pitchers in baseball. And extrapolating his numbers from 12 starts to 30 would give him this line:

180 IP
125 H
222 K
68 BB
2.64 ERA
13-5 Record

The wins and losses wouldn’t look great, but you’re hoping that on a better team he can get a winning decision more often than he did with the Royals in 2023. The point here is that you’re not only talking about someone who can sit at the top of the Royals rotation, but someone who can sit at the top of any rotation and likely get votes for the top award for pitchers. Is it likely that he keeps this up? There’s nothing in the numbers that indicates what he did was a fluke, but there is year-to-year fluctuation. But even if he put up a year with a 3.50 ERA, 28 percent strikeout rate and 10 percent strikeout rate, he’d still likely be worth 4-5 fWAR. Again, like Witt, that’s a great baseline.

Vinnie’s Return

In some ways, it’s a little odd to see the Royals offensive issues were at their worst when Pasquantino was in the lineup at the start of the season. But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a dangerous hitter and looks to be fully healthy for spring training this year. I think trying to play through the injury and some bad luck hurt his line at the end of the day because he had a batting average that was 32 points below his xBA. The batted ball metrics were all encouraging and he just wasn’t getting the hits he “should” have. And while he didn’t strike out as much as he walked, it was close and he did make a lot of contact.

There’s probably an argument that he might be a more effective hitter if he didn’t make as much contact, but that’s for another day. The reality is that if he can mix his .295/.383/.450 with the increase in ISO he showed in his 260 plate appearances last season, the Royals could have a big-time threat in the middle of the lineup to pair with Witt to help actually aid in run scoring. This is obviously a big if because we don’t know how he’ll come back from the surgery and the sample is so small, but he did hit .292/.382/.569 in the minors. It’s certainly in there for him.

Melendez’s Big Second Half

Melendez hit .273/.352/.485 in the second half with 10 home runs, a 10.5 percent walk rate and a reasonable 26.2 percent strikeout rate. Over 600 plate appearances, the power output paces out to 23 homers, 28 doubles and seven triples. That, without a doubt, plays. And with Witt and Pasquantino along with Salvador Perez in the middle of the lineup, Melendez doesn’t have to be a superstar bat. He just has to be a nice piece to fit somewhere in the middle of the lineup.

Yes, I’d love to see the strikeouts cut even more. He was at just 21.7 percent in his monster 2021 between AA and AAA, so you’d think there’s room for improvement, but even if he does keep striking out at that rate, he can still be a successful bat. I’m also very interested to see how he handles a corner outfield spot with an offseason of actually only being an outfielder. I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily optimistic, but I don’t think it’s impossible with his athleticism that he comes in as an average outfielder. I say all this still thinking there’s a good chance he gets moved, but until he’s off the team, he’s on it.

James McArthur and His Dominant Month

When the Royals acquired McArthur, he had a 7.31 ERA in 16 AAA innings in Lehigh Valley. That’s coming off a year where he had a 5.05 ERA in 57 AA innings. Coming off a year where he had a 4.48 ERA in 74.1 AA innings. There was no reason to believe he was worth much of anything but a flyer. I remember saying at the time that McArthur felt like a guy who the Rays picked up and randomly put up a monster season in relief the next year. So he, of course, gave up seven runs in an inning in his big league debut. But then a funny thing happened. He was sent down and called back up. He wasn’t much better, but he did walk just one in six innings.

Then he came back in September and this was his line:

16.1 IP
5 H
0 R
19 K
0 BB
0.00 ERA
0.93 FIP

It’s 16.1 innings, so there’s plenty of small sample size issue here, but come on. That’s an awful lot of zeroes in the right places. I get the feeling he’s miscast a bit as a closer, but if that’s the role he needs to assume, he showed he could get outs in the ninth. He also showed he could go multiple innings. I don’t think we’ll be talking about McArthur in the Cy Young race or anything, but if he can be even 70 percent of this, the Royals bullpen will be in good shape.

And now the stuff that needs to happen that we don’t know if it can or not.

1. Brady Singer needs to rediscover his 2022 form. Or at least something close.

2. Two pitchers with big stuff need to step up in the bullpen. It can be John McMillon, Jake Brentz, Josh Taylor, a starter turned reliever or one of the minor league deals.

3. Somebody who hasn’t really hit needs to hit. That can be Michael Massey or Kyle Isbel or Maikel Garcia.

4. One of the young starters needs to take the job of Jordan Lyles.

5. Get lucky.

Singer’s Return to Form

These are a little more difficult to feel like they can actually happen, though I suppose Singer rediscovering his 2022 form could go in the above section since we’ve seen it. I still just wonder how much of that pitcher even exists at this point after seeing the sharp velocity decline in 2023. Maybe it was just a blip. I find that a little hard to believe, but we’ll see.

Relievers Stepping Up

I think people are too quick to say this player or that player has to do this or that. Yes, some guys are the likeliest to do it, but I don’t care which relievers step up. The reality is that Nick Anderson, Will Smith and Chris Stratton are nice additions, but if they’re your best relievers, the bullpen has a ceiling and it’s maybe a bit above average. If there are two or three relievers better than them in your bullpen, you probably have a pretty good group.

McMillon had very brief success before getting hurt, but they claim he’s fully healthy. Brentz was good in 2021, but got hurt in 2022 and missed all of 2023. He’s 29 now. That’s not to say he can’t get back and be what he was two years ago, but we’ll see. Taylor struggled last year, but he had a 31.3 percent strikeout rate after putting up a 28.7 percent rate in 2021, the last time he was fully healthy. Maybe it’s none of those three. Maybe it’s Will Klein or Anthony Veneziano or Jonathan Bowlan or Chandler Champlain or any number of possibilities. But two guys need to knock the veteran acquisitions down the depth chart.

More Offense

Again, it doesn’t matter who really. We saw Massey hit 15 home runs in 461 plate appearances and put up a .152 ISO after showing power in the minors, so he seems to be a guy who would be the most likely to add some pop to the middle. But it could be any of the fringe players on the roster. Heck, maybe it’s Freddy Fermin pushing Perez to more of a DH role and showing that last year’s .281/.321/.461 wasn’t a fluke.

If that’s the case, he’s the bat that could lengthen the lineup. Basically what it comes down to is that if you feel fine with Garcia in the leadoff spot (though he could use some more juice as I wrote a couple of weeks ago) and then you like Witt, Paquantino, Perez and a bounceback from Hunter Renfroe along with Melendez keeping up what he did in the second half, the lineup goes six deep.

It needs to get a little deeper than that, especially on days when not everyone is in there. The amount of thunder in a lineup can impact a game beyond the first at bat. If a pitcher has to work hard to get through an entire lineup, they’re more likely to be tired a second time through and might leave a pitch up. Or maybe they’re pitching well, but the opposing manager doesn’t want them to see someone a third time, so they get to the bullpen where it can be a game of roulette at times. So they need to get at least one bat deeper no matter who it is to help, and it might need to be two bats.

A Young Arm Stepping Up

I think Lyles as the fifth starter is probably generally whatever for a team simply in need of innings. But, in this scenario, we’re trying to get the Royals to 90 wins. I think if Lyles makes 30 starts, that doesn’t happen. So someone needs to step up and take his spot sooner than later. Again, it doesn’t matter who does it, but there are no shortage of choices at this point, which is very nice. Whether it’s Daniel Lynch IV or Angel Zerpa or Veneziano or whoever, someone else needs to be the fifth starter by the end of May.

It’s nice that the depth in this rotation is them now rather than them being counted on as part of the initial rotation because you feel a lot better about hoping one figures things out than you do in counting on them to be good. And as an added bonus, it would be nice if whoever does figure it out does it well enough to maybe even be the third-best starter in the rotation instead of the fifth. And i don’t care who the second-best is either as long as someone legitimately is. It’s nice that you can make an argument for any of Singer, Michael Wacha and Seth Lugo to fill that role.

Luck

The Royals aren’t a great team. That’s obvious. I think their ceiling even with all of this happening is 86 or 87 wins. But it’s a long season and if they’re an 86-win team, all they need is a few bounces to go their way over six months to get four more wins. There’s no rhyme or reason to luck, but they’ll need some of it to get 90 wins.

Can it happen? I don’t see why not. Will I be predicting it to happen? Absolutely not. But the nice thing about the moves made by this team this winter is that they went from needing a large number of things to all happen to get there to needing some things that we’ve actually seen happen and then a few more that we haven’t. I still think this team is probably around 72-76 wins as it’s currently constructed, but they do have some young players who could take a leap and become more than what we’ve seen and that at least gives them a chance. And what’s this time of year for if not for thinking about those small chances?