Crown Jewels: Outside the Box Trade Ideas and a Player to Watch in 2023

The end of the week has me thinking about some ways to reliever that logjam on the roster.

And now we wait. Baseball is kind of funny in the offseason because it’s generally a slow burn throughout the months between November and mid-February, but there are a few times when the flame flickers a bit brighter. The GM meetings bring a flurry of rumors, but then it’s the winter meetings where teams are all together and you see all sorts of big moves. We already talked yesterday about how those meetings came and went with the Royals being exceptionally quiet and how I don’t think it’s the worst thing for them. Anyway, now we’re at the point where signings will just trickle in between now and sometime during spring training. And so we continue to wait as Royals fans.

JJ Picollo said in some of his comments that he thinks they’ll be a little more active later in the game. I’m fine with that honestly. There are always bargains to be had who can help bridge some gaps they have on their roster. Last year isn’t a great example because nobody could sign from early December until mid-March, but you see guys sign late in the game all the time and provide value to their teams. Sometimes that value is on the field, sometimes it’s in a trade later and sometimes it’s both. While I understand the inactivity to this point, I don’t think they can just walk into the 2023 season with an identical roster to last year. They need to make some moves still, and I think they will. But I can tell you based on some responses to yesterday’s article that some fans aren’t happy.

What If They Traded a Starter?

This isn’t going to be popular and I don’t think it’ll happen, but would it be wise for the Royals to be shopping Brady Singer? Get that gasping out of the way, close your mouth and release your pearls. Here’s my thought process. Singer was great in 2022. He was, without a doubt, the best starting pitcher on the team. The Royals have a ton invested in him in terms of time and, yes, money. So how can they turn around after he finally breaks through and move him?

Here’s how. One year ago, Singer was coming off a year that made many believe he was a fringe big leaguer. I think that thought (that I shared) was probably a bit premature in hindsight, but he did struggle enough that he had to earn his rotation spot in the spring. And then didn’t. I think some of that was likely the short spring and he proved he belonged, but I believe anyone who says the Royals treated him unfairly before the 2022 season is forgetting what his 2021 looked like.

So he had this excellent season and the Royals even bought back a year of his service time in the process with his trip to AAA to give him four more years of team control. It may seem counterintuitive to then move that player, but I think there are some flags that show there might be some regression coming. I don’t think the Statcast percentiles are perfect, but there’s a lot of blue here.

He doesn’t get as many swings and misses as you’d like. He doesn’t get hitters to chase as much as you’d like. He gives up some harder contact than you’d like. His xERA was 3.97 compared to his actual ERA of 3.23 and his FIP of 3.58. I think some of these metrics miss his ability to get called strikes, which is an actual ability that swing and miss obviously doesn’t capture, so take it with a grain of salt. But he strikes me as a pitcher who might have some year-to-year variance. That said, with four years of control, it’s hard to know what he might fetch on the market in a trade. We don’t typically see pitchers with the success he had and the time remaining before free agency get moved too often.

So I think the proper course of action here is to work with Singer on a long-term deal. They have plenty of time between now and the start of the season. That’s my first choice in this situation. But if Singer saw the starting pitching market this year and thinks, “hey, I can bet on myself, make a bunch in arbitration and then hit the market and set my grandchildren’s grandchildren up for life, why not?” I don’t think I’d be opposed to shopping him because the return could be immense. There is also the issue that all the reasons I see that could make him a little volatile are seen by everyone, but in this market, someone is going to get left without a chair in the pitching musical chairs. I would assume someone would pay a pretty penny for a 26-year-old coming off the year he did with his pedigree and the control remaining. Again, it wouldn’t be my first choice, but it could make sense.

And What About Salvy?

If Dayton Moore was in charge, this wouldn’t even be a thought. And I know that someone will undoubtedly comment that Dayton might as well still be in charge and while that may end up true, I can confirm to have seen him and Picollo in the same room, so they are different people. The reason I bring this up is two-fold. The first is that I’ve had more people who are in the game or connected to the game ask me about what it would take to get Salvador Perez than ever before. Is that because of a new general manager that they think maybe he can be moved or is that because they’re hearing something? And the second reason relates to some comments from Picollo about MJ Melendez and how they aren’t giving up on him catching. There are any number of reasons that can be significant and we can unpack those another time, but maybe just maybe they don’t want to give up on that because they’re willing to move on from their longtime franchise icon.

I’ll say that I still find it very unlikely, but in a world with the starting catching options out there limited to probably Omar Narvaez, Christian Vazquez, Sean Murphy and whichever of the three Blue Jays catchers gets traded, I could see there being some interest. Among contenders, the White Sox, Mets, Padres and Guardians all had 10 home runs or fewer from the catching spot. At the bottom half of the league in OPS were the Guardians, Astros, Mets, Brewers, Rays, White Sox, Twins, Yankees and Padres. The Cardinals were also in there but they made their acquisition. I think a few of these teams are already out, but I wonder how much some of these teams would want to make an offensive splash for some power. There are huge roadblocks. Perez’s contract is one big one, but also the fact that he rates as a subpar defender.

I think framing as a skill is silly because it bothers me that tricking an umpire is part of the gig, but it’s the reality. And we all know Perez isn’t good at that. He does have a very strong arm and threw out 34 percent of runners in 2022 after throwing out a league-best 44 percent in 2021. But it’s worth noting that his pop time of 1.99 seconds, while above average, is still roughly middle of the pack, ranking 46th out of 85 catchers with at least five throws to second. With the bases a bit closer together, maybe that has an impact on his throwing.

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Still, a .211 ISO from your catcher who you can put out there every day is important and I wonder if there isn’t a market for him if they are actually willing to make that move. I just wonder if they’d have to eat any of the $64 million he’s owed over the next three years including his 2026 buyout. I’m not sure it would be a popular move, but if they could get a nice return, people wouldn’t care too much if it helped them win sooner. Again, I don’t see it happening, but I don’t think it’s impossible like I would have said a few months ago.

Michael Massey is For Real

When the Royals brought Michael Massey back to the big leagues for good on August 3, it was an opportunity for him to audition for a job in a crowded middle infield in 2023. While he’s only a second baseman, he’s likely fighting for some time there with both Nicky Lopez and Adalberto Mondesi, at least until Mondesi gets hurt. And I thought he showed out exceptionally well, even though he slumped after a fast start. He was hitting .321/.356/.482 after 60 plate appearances but hit just .205/.286/.325 the rest of the way. I’ve talked about sequencing so much here in this newsletter and you’d probably feel a lot better if he finished strong rather than started strong even if there’s no real reason for that.

Still, I think he showed enough to me that he should go into spring training as the starting second baseman. He’s an excellent defender there and I think the shift rules will only help him. His arm isn’t the best, but not being able to play off the dirt will eliminate some of those throws from short right field that gave him trouble. So I’m not worried about his glove. But while the offensive numbers weren’t eye-popping, his ability to find the barrel was. I should probably write more about this, but he had a 13 percent barrel rate, which is nearly double the big league average. Some players surrounding him at 13 percent include Julio Rodriguez, Willy Adames, Bryce Harper, Ronald Acuña Jr. and Juan Soto. Those are some good names. It’s not the be all, end all, but I think that number matches the eye test.

He had an xBA of .243 and xSLG of .450. He’s hurt by a low walk rate and his home park cost him some home runs for sure, but the underlying metrics indicate that he can be a really nice bat in the lower half of a good lineup. I certainly have concerns about the contact, though he’d never swung and missed as much as he did at AAA and the big leagues. The question is if he can get back to his 11-ish percent rate there or if he’s going to be around 15 percent.

If he can get back to previous levels, I think he’ll be a perennial 2.5-3 fWAR player, which is very, very valuable, especially in pre-arbitration years. If he can’t, he’s probably still somewhere around 1.8-2 wins, which is also useful, though easier to discard as he gets more expensive. I had a scout tell me in 2021 that he thinks Massey is an impact player. I’m not sure I agree with that, but he’s very good and will be a nice fit in this lineup in the number seven spot moving forward. If he can make more contact, second is certainly an option, but I’d rather see him be a solid guy to help make the lineup deeper.