Comparing the 2021 and 2022 Royals

Predicting a season record during spring training is hard work.

To evaluate where a team is going from one season to the next, there are quite a few variables. It starts pretty easily with their win total from the previous season. There is a lot more to it when you factor in what other teams have done in order to make life harder or easier, but it all starts with where they finished. For the Royals, they were a 74-win team, which is decidedly not good, but also decidedly not terrible. Improvement over previous years? Absolutely. Good enough? Not even close. But just to give a bit of a look into what I think about, I’m trying to figure out if that 74-win team is the right starting point.

You might be hearing Bill Parcells in your head right now saying that you are what your record says you are, and while I generally agree with that, the season is just so long that there is more to it. For example, the Royals were 16-9 at one point. Then they lost 11 in a row. Then they went 13-6. Then they lost 11 out of 12 and 26 out of 33 to end the first half. But then they finished 38-35 with a pretty tough schedule after the break. In their 73 games after the break, they played two against the Brewers, 10 against the White Sox, six against the Cardinals, three against the Yankees and seven against the Astros. Those are all playoff teams. They went 16-15 in those games.

They also played seven against the Mariners and three against the Blue Jays, both teams that won 90 games without making the playoffs, and six against the Tigers, who finished 68-61 after a brutal start. They went 9-7 in those games. But my question, and I’m not working to answer that here, is if the second half should be weighted heavier than the first and if doing well against winning teams should count more as well. Whether or not they should count the same or more or whatever, it’s nice to see that they finished the season so well. And a lot of that is because of the personnel.

In the first half, 30 of the team’s 89 games were started by Mike Minor and Danny Duffy. While Duffy was awesome for the Royals last year, both he and Minor are not a part of the future of this team and after the Minor trade and Duffy signing with the Dodgers, neither are even part of the present. So that means that while we saw three starts from Daniel Lynch, two starts from Jackson Kowar, no starts from Carlos Hernandez and eight starts from Kris Bubic before the break. That quartet combined for 41 of the 73 games started during the 38-35 finish. Some combination of those four will join Brad Keller, Zack Greinke and probably Brady Singer in the rotation.

Another thing to think about is what the record “should” have been, which you can at least get some sort of thought about by looking at Pythagorean record. Just like just about anything, there are limitations to the method, but it does a pretty good job, I think. Based on the runs the team scored and the runs they allowed, they “should” have been 71-91, so they outperformed their Pythagorean record by three wins. And that trend lasted all year. They didn’t have a single month with a positive run differential. They were -3 in run differential in the second half, which probably means they “should” have gone 36-37.

So when I start my analysis to try to predict my 2022 record, those are the sort of things I think about. It’s not that my prediction matters in the grand scheme of things, but I like to try to be close. Last year, I got to 76 wins, but that might have been the hardest year I’ve ever tried to predict with just the 60-game season the year before. So of course, I was basically right on. No, I wasn’t exactly right, but being within two games out of 162 is something I’m proud of at least.

Let’s compare the two years.

Pitching

Starters

As I said, Minor and Duffy started just over one-third of the first half games while young arms started who were hardly heard from started more than half of the second half games. When the season ended, the Royals rotation was:

Singer
Lynch
Angel Zerpa
Jon Heasley
Bubic
Kowar

But I don’t think that’s a great look at the comparison because the last couple weeks were kind of a blur with starters getting shut down. At the end of August, the rotation was basically:

Minor
Keller
Bubic
Lynch
Singer
Hernandez

They got a start from Jakob Junis in there, but he’s now with the Giants. I have a weird feeling they’re going to go with six starters if the rosters are expanded to start the season, so here’s the weird comparison:

Greinke > Minor
2022 Keller > 2021 Keller < Second Half 2021 Keller = 2022 Keller (got that?)
2022 Bubic ≤ Second Half 2021 Bubic
2022 Lynch > 2021 Lynch
2022 Singer ≥ 2021 Singer
2022 Hernandez ≤ 2021 Hernandez

Let me explain a bit. The Greinke one is obvious. I think he’s better than Minor. Okay, so that part is easy. Now let’s break this down. I’ve said so many times that Keller was anywhere from solid to good from 2018 through 2020. Then he comes out and stinks up the joint to start 2021 and it becomes a reckoning from people who just knew it couldn’t hold up after 350 innings of being solid to good. But then he turned things around with his slider being so good for him and he had a nice finish to his season. He may not keep the strikeouts, but the results we saw in his last handful of starts were the results we saw from 2018 to 2020. It’s easy to pick things apart, but I think that’s more who he is, so he’s better than the 2021 version of Keller on the whole, but probably is the guy we saw late.

I didn’t get so complicated with the rest of the four. I think Bubic is probably about as good as he was in the second half, but with maybe a bit of a dropoff. He had a 3.68 ERA on the strength of a great September, so maybe you add some to the ERA, but I like Bubic a lot. I think Lynch makes big strides this season. He, like Bubic, is quite cerebral and I think there’s too much talent for him not to make a jump from his rookie year. If you were watching the broadcast on Sunday, he mentioned to Joel Goldberg that one of the biggest things he took away was the fact that the big leagues are hard, so I think you’ll see a jump. And Hernandez was good, but I want to see more of it. I think he’ll be a solid starter, but not as good on the whole as he was.

Yes, I skipped Singer because I have my feelings about him. This is probably way too reactionary, but the signing of Greinke changed my thoughts on Singer. He has now mentioned multiple times how honest Greinke is and I think Singer needs that. As much as he annoyed me last season, he posted basically the same FIP as his rookie year of 2020 when he was solid. If the presence of Greinke (and the reported work all offseason on a third pitch) can help Singer to be less stubborn on the mound, his competitiveness gives him an edge where I think he will play up from his baseline of stuff.

Overall, I think the rotation is better than the full version, but probably pretty similar to the second half version that posted a 4.51 ERA. That was middle of the pack in baseball after the break, ranking 15th. Their 4.59 FIP ranked 15th. I think this is probably a middle of the road rotation, and I think could squeak into the top of the middle third. If they’re going to make the playoffs, they probably need to save a quarter run off the ERA from the rotation.

2021 Rotation < 2022 Rotation ≈ Second Half 2021 Rotation

Bullpen

I’m not going to get as deep into the bullpen as I did the rotation, mostly because the cast and characters are largely the same. While ERA isn’t the best indicator for a reliever, I’m going to use it because it’s quick and easy. The Royals bullpen had a 4.22 ERA as a team in 621 innings. The ERA ranked 12th in baseball and the innings were also 12th. In the second half, their 3.41 ERA ranked fifth and their 277 innings ranked 15th. So first of all, there’s a correlation between the starters giving more innings and the relievers doing well, but we knew that.

They also gave 228.2 innings to pitchers with an ERA of 4.00 or higher. That’s 36.8 percent of relief innings. Of those innings, only 48.1 remain in the organization. Three belonged to Kowar, who had a nice outing ruined in his third inning of work. Tyler Zuber struggled for 27.1 innings, but he’s now on the 60-day IL. And then 18 belonged to Joel Payamps, who is probably the first man out if any of the young relief arms or non-roster guys work their way to the big leagues to start the season.

Now, that’s not to say they won’t have players who struggle, but the biggest culprits of the bullpen’s issues are gone. Wade Davis retired. Zuber is still around, but won’t be available for awhile and he’s likely a roster casualty at some point. Kyle Zimmer signed with the Reds. Greg Holland (who I’ll contend could have been used better) signed with the Rangers. That’s 188.2 of those innings.

Instead, you’re looking at a bullpen of Scott Barlow, Josh Staumont, Amir Garrett (who would have been on that list, for what it’s worth), Jake Brentz, Dylan Colmean, Domingo Tapia and Joel Payamps plus another pitcher or two. So I’ll make this as simple as I should have earlier.

2021 Royals Bullpen < 2022 Royals Bullpen ≥ 2021 Royals Second Half Bullpen

The bullpen should be better on the whole, but might be about where the second half bullpen was.

Offense

Catcher

The trio of Salvador Perez, Cam Gallagher and Sebastian Rivero were the only three to catch for the team in 2021. And while Perez had a career year, he did a. lot of the damage at DH. Still, Royals catchers hit .275/.318/.485 because Perez was mostly behind the plate. To me, whether the catching numbers can actually improve depend on how much time MJ Melendez spends behind the plate. If Melendez breaks with the team and the two split the at bats, I would say there’s a chance the numbers actually get better. That’s even with a decline expected from Perez. But I don’t think Melendez will be up for a bit, so…

2022 Catching < 2021 Catching

Infield

This is tough because of the revolving door at third, but first was mostly Carlos Santana. Second was almost all Whit Merrifield and shortstop was almost all Nicky Lopez. We got the occasional Adalberto Mondesi and the occasional Hunter Dozier at third, but that was changing regularly. The infield as a whole hit .261/.317/.398. That was below average. Now the infield is set to be Santana, Lopez, Mondesi and Bobby Witt Jr. I think it’s significantly better defensively because of Witt. And I think there’s potential for it to be better offensively, but it’s hard to predict. In terms of value, I think it’s close, but…

2022 Infield = 2021 Infield, but with big-time upside

Outfield

Royals outfielders hit .243/.296/.385 last season. That’s bad. But even with the revolving door that included Jorge Soler and Dozier in right field, they had 13 defensive runs saved in the outfield, which was good for ninth best in baseball. So the gloves helped a bit. Obviously that’s sort of the whole story with Michael A. Taylor who is back in center, but I think there’s more offensively out of Andrew Benintendi than what he showed in his first season with the Royals. And as it stands right now, the Royals are looking to Merrifield as their right fielder. I think he’ll be better defensively than what they had last season and almost definitely better offensively than the group that hit .220/.284/.363.

2022 Outfield > 2022 Infield

Designated Hitter

The Royals got most of their DH numbers from Perez. He took 163 of the 620 DH plate appearances and hit 15 of the 35 home runs. They did get some power out of the others with Dozier hitting well in limited DH at bats and Soler and Ryan O’Hearn hitting a few homers out of the role. This year, it looks like it’ll start with Dozier as the main DH, Santana getting some time there and Perez getting his days off there. This goes back to the catcher spot. If Melendez is up sooner than later, that’s probably more time for Perez to DH and keep fresh behind the plate, so I think you could expect an improvement. My guess is the end result is pretty similar.

2022 DH = 2021 DH

So ultimately I think the team is in a better position to win close and low-scoring games and just doing the quick and dirty math in my head, I think they’re probably about equal to the second half club and maybe five wins better than the first half.

But it’s not just the team on the field.

Opponents

The White Sox remain good, if not better than last year. And they should still sign Michael Conforto to get even better, for what it’s worth. The Twins have remade their lineup and while they still need another starter or two, they’re better than the 73-89 team they were. The Tigers made a bunch of moves before the lockout and, as I said before, were actually pretty good last year after a terrible start. And then there’s the Guardians who can’t hit and refuse to spend money, but they can still pitch. It’s a tough division.

The rest of the AL is tough too. The Rays are always good. The Blue Jays might be the best team in baseball on paper. The Yankees haven’t done much, but they’re still good. The Red Sox are still solid. The Astros probably take a bit of a step back, but they’re still good. The Angels are always a threat to maybe be good. The Mariners won 90 games and have gotten better. The Rangers spent more than half a billion dollars on upgrades. There just aren’t many gimmes in the league where the Royals will play 142 of their games. That makes things tough. And they have to play the NL West in interleague, so they get the 107-win Giants, 106-win Dodgers and a Padres team that should be better too.

Strength of schedule isn’t really a thing in baseball, but the Royals schedule is harder on paper this year than it was last year. Of course, there is so much variance in baseball that you can’t pay too much attention to all of this. You can catch a good team going bad or a bad team going good and get surprised by the result, so it’s not a huge deal, but it’s at least something worth paying attention to throughout the year.

So looking at the team on the field and the teams they play, I wonder a bit if the Royals improvements don’t put them in a similar spot to last year. I want to see a little more spring action and get some reports from people who are there before I give my official Royals prediction on the season, but I’m thinking they get better without breaking through. I’m currently sitting somewhere around 77-80 wins, but we'll see if that changes over the next couple of weeks.