Crown Jewels: 40-Man Adds, Royals Defense and a World Series Pick

The offseason business is right around the corner for the Royals.

There is something so magical about the offseason. Your team can be anything you can dream it up to be. No, the Royals aren’t going to sign Juan Soto and trade for Vladimir Guerrero Jr., so I guess it’s not anything, but it’s so easy to concoct deals in your head that get your team from where they were to where you want them to be. That magic hadn’t been there for the Royals before last offseason, not for a bit anyway. I guess that’s not entirely fair given that they won 74 games in 2021 and had three big hitting prospects knocking on the door, but it’s just hard to watch a team lose 100 games and then imagine a world where they’re in the playoffs. Maybe the 2024 Royals will make that a little easier to imagine after they actually did it.

But, and I’ll reiterate this point from last week, it seems like the Royals are going to continue spending some money to fill holes. From what I’ve heard, the ownership group experienced losing 100 games and they experienced making the playoffs and advancing and they prefer the latter. Duh. With so many other teams in financial disarray because of the television deal (did you hear Bally Sports is now FanDuel Sports Network?), it feels like an opportunity for the Royals to reenact their strong 2023/2024 offseason and outspend almost everyone. Is that sustainable? Maybe, maybe not. But while they continue to work to rebuild the development system from the bottom up, it does buy them some time.

40-Man Adds Coming

One of the big moments in the offseason is when teams decide which of their Rule 5-eligible players are going to be added to the 40-man roster. The Royals decisions this year are pretty interesting. They currently have 42 players on their 40-man roster because those on the 60-day IL don’t count toward it. They’ll have to be activated after the World Series, but with eight for-sure free agents and Michael Wacha, that cuts them down to 33 players. I think the only non-tender among their arbitration-eligible players will be Josh Taylor, but I could see them moving on from any or all of Jonathan Bowlan, Nick Loftin, Nick Pratto, Chris Stratton, Nelson Velazquez or Drew Waters.

I think all is pretty unlikely (I highly doubt Loftin is going anywhere, for example, at least not as a non-tender), but there’s a pretty easy path to get the 40-man roster down to 30 or so players early in the offseason. Yes, they have some work to do in adding players, particularly with all these free agents, but it gives them some wiggle room to add players who they may not want to risk losing. In my opinion, here are the best candidates for protection, though best is doing a whole lot of work in this sentence:

Hitters

Cam Devanney
Devin Mann
John Rave
Luca Tresh
Tyler Tolbert
Peyton Wilson

Pitchers

Luinder Avila
Noah Cameron
Eric Cerantola
Chandler Champlain
Noah Murdock
Evan Sisk
Beck Way

That’s 13 players. Heck, they could add all of them if they get really aggressive on the chopping block with their current roster. They both shouldn’t and won’t. But if I was them, I’d maybe a bit more aggressive with adding some of these guys. I look at this list and there’s only one player who I think is guaranteed to get added and it’s Cameron. He was good in AA and better in AAA and, depending on their moves over the next few months, could get a shot to break camp with the big club out of spring training.

The rest all are interesting. If it was me, I’d probably add Devanney, Tresh, Champlain and Sisk in addition to Cameron. That’s five adds, which is probably too many if they’re sitting at 33 when it comes time to make that decision, but I’d make the moves to bring them down to 30 or 31, so there is plenty of room. I think Cameron is obvious, so let me look at the other four and give a quick explanation on my thought process.

Devanney - You know how the Royals went out and spent real-life money and a real-life roster spot on both Adam Frazier and Garrett Hampson? Devanney can fill at least some of that role for cheap and in-house. He’s a good defender who can handle shortstop, which isn’t as important with the Royals because Maikel Garcia exists. But he had a nice year in AAA and I could see his versatility and his age getting him picked in the Rule 5 and the Royals could use him at the end of the bench. He’s got some pop in addition to the positional versatility.

Tresh - Teams like to have three catchers on their 40-man roster even if they don’t have three in the big leagues. I think Tresh will make a solid big league backup someday, and that day might be 2025. Catchers aren’t really great Rule 5 options, so I think they’d be safe if they didn’t add him to the roster, but I’d rather utilize these depth spots on guys like him than bringing in guys like Austin Nola.

Champlain - He was good in AA before getting promoted to AAA and looking like he was overmatched at the level. Still, I think he can be a big league reliever and he’s someone I’d hate for the Royals to lose, so with the space, why not?

Sisk - I don’t know if Sisk is any good, but pitching depth is always something a team can need. The pitch metrics aren’t impressive at all, but he allowed 33 hits in 57.1 innings with 81 strikeouts. As much as everyone clamored for Walter Pennington, Sisk’s numbers were comparable or better in a lot of ways. I would assume a team would take a chance on him in the Rule 5, so why not give it a shot?

I just don’t think the others would get picked in the Rule 5, so there isn’t a ton of harm in not adding them, and they’re all pretty underwhelming. I’ll be interested to see where the Royals go with this decision in a few weeks.

An Uneven Defense

The Royals will tell you all day and all night that they need to win with pitching, defense and speed. I think that even in the modern game where power trumps everything, that’s still true. I say this all the time, but no matter how frustrating it’s been over the years to hear it, Kauffman Stadium really is a park where speed and defense can win. The stadium lends itself to extra base hits, but not home runs because of all the ground to cover. And that was the issue with the Royals defense in 2024.

Overall, the defense looked good. Their 47 Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) ranked seventh in baseball. Their 36 Outs Above Average (OAA) ranked first. Fangraphs defensive value ranked them as the best defense in baseball. It’s hard to say that they had defensive deficiencies when looking at it from that angle. But they did. They had a disproportionate amount of their DRS value from their pitchers. You might recall that both Seth Lugo and Cole Ragans were listed as Gold Glove finalists (quick reminder, voting is complete; the finalists are just the top three vote-getters). Of that 47 DRS I mentioned earlier, 21 came on the mound, which is seven more than the second-best team.

Take a look at their DRS/OAA/Def by position:

You’ll have to take my word for it when I say I don’t exactly know why the numbers don’t add up perfectly, but it’s close enough. Fangraphs doesn’t provide defensive value for pitchers or the outfield on the whole while OAA doesn’t rate pitchers or catchers. But you can see that they were excellent up the middle, which is great while the corners, in most of the metrics lacked. It’s great that the pitchers can field their position (and ironic that the season turned in a bad way on a pitcher error), but they need better from their corners.

I’m actually a bit surprised that right field had one DRS. It’s a counting stat, though, and Garrett Hampson must have had some incredible plays in his 27 innings in right field because he’s the reason it was up there. He, along with Adam Frazier and Tommy Pham, who were the only two with a positive DRS, combined for 6 DRS in 248 innings while mostly Hunter Renfroe and a bunch of others combined for -5 in 1,180 innings.

Left field was a similar story. Pham was surprisingly good in left by the metrics. I would not have believed that. He had 3 DRS and 2 OAA in 89 innings in left. Hampson was good out there because he was actually very good defensively in the outfield. But MJ Melendez was at -7 DRS and -6 OAA while Nelson Velazquez chipped in at -1 and -1 in his 58 innings out there. The point is that they had their spots and they had their players, but the Royals need to get better defensively, particularly in the outfield corners.

If you’re looking at the free agent market for the best defensive outfielder by DRS, you’ve got Michael A. Taylor, Travis Jankowski, Hampson, Alex Verdugo, Jason Heyward, Randal Grichuk, Whit Merrifled, Enrique Hernandez, Jesse Winker (huh?), Frazier and Tyler O’Neill. By OAA, it’s Taylor, Harrison Bader, Hampson, Jankowski, Max Kepler, Heyward, Hernandez, Adam Duvall and Joey Gallo. The options aren’t great, but if they do go out and get a similarly defensively challenged corner outfielder, he better hit. It’s a big reaosn why Jurickson Profar concerns me. He’s not a good defender and I don’t think he’s a guarantee to hit like he did in 2024.

I guess what I’m saying is they either need to get better defensively or, if they don’t, find someone who will make up for it with the bat, which the corner outfielders didn’t do enough of in 2024.

My World Series Pick

While plenty of people wanted Dodgers vs. Yankees in a World Series, that’s only because those teams both have massive fanbases. The rest of the world likely groaned. But what we do love in a World Series is seeing the stars on the biggest stage, so if you can look past the actual teams, this looks like it could be one of the more entertaining World Series in awhile. Just think about it. On one side, you’ve got Juan Soto and Aaron Judge along with playoff Giancarlo Stanton. On the other side, you’ve got Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts with Freddie Freeman hopefully healthy enough to play like the star he is. There’s Gerrit Cole and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

But there are sub-stars too. Teoscar Hernandez is so fun to watch because he seems to love the game. Tommy Edman is annoyingly smart on the field. Max Muncy’s patience is incredible to watch. Gleyber Torres is having a great October for the Yankees. Jazz Chisholm being 5 for 34 is FUN. You’ve got two good bullpens that have come together after some issues at various points throughout the season. And you have two offenses who hunt pitches and crush them. The actual matchup is an excellent one and I’m looking forward to it even if I kind of hope both teams somehow find a way to lose and they award the World Series to the American League team that first lost a 2024 playoff series to the eventual American League champions. Oh, is that the Royals? What luck!

But in all seriousness, this is a really tough series to pick. I think the Yankees are the more complete team if Judge hits like Judge. He showed some signs of it toward the end of the ALCS, so maybe he’s ready to break out. Or maybe the days off between the end of that series and tonight will negate all of that. It’s hard to say. I just would feel better about Cole, Carlos Rodon, Clarke Schmidt and Luis Gil than I would a Dodgers staff that has a whole lot more questions among its starters. The bullpen games have generally worked fine for them, but you know the saying about what happens when you open that bullpen door. Any one of those pitchers can come out struggling.

With these offenses, you can’t really be off. If I’m the Yankees, I’m probably a bit concerned about which Rodon they’ll get and if Gil can be the guy he was for most of the regular season, but they have four pitchers who I think can get you through five or six (or more) with just a couple of runs allowed. I think the Dodgers could get that with Jack Flaherty, Yamamoto and Walker Buehler, but I just don’t think I feel as confident that they can.

Boy, I really went into this thinking I was going to be all over the Dodgers, and I do still think they win it because I think they take advantage of being home more than they’re away and because they’re deeper, but I’ve talked myself into thinking this series goes six or seven games. I hope it goes all seven because, again, aside from the uniforms, this is a dream matchup for baseball fans. So yeah, okay, I’m ready. I’m going to go with Dodgers in seven and the MVP is going to be…Muncy. If they get three good starts out of seven, that’s enough to take the series, and I think they can find three good starts from their three starting pitchers they’ll use.