Crown Jewels: Options in the Bullpen, Big Front Office Hire and My Fake HOF Ballot

The Royals are making moves in the front office now that they've made their moves on the field.

I somehow missed writing Crown Jewels last week because I got stuck in a weird situation where I legitimately forgot what day it was. I guess that’s what happens when you take time off from the real job. But I didn’t get to wish everyone a Happy New Year ahead of the ball dropping, so consider this your late wishes. The calendar turning is interesting to me because I struggle so much for weeks about what to call the previous baseball season. It feels weird to call it “last season” when it’s like November 5th. But it isn’t the current season. I settle on “this past season” quite a bit, which now that I’ve told you, you’ll now notice it every time. But once it hits the next calendar year, it becomes a lot easier to refer to last year as last year.

Thankfully for us, the Royals looked ahead a lot quicker than me and rebuilt a really bad roster into one that still may not be great but it appears a whole lot more competitive. I will still maintain that I don’t think they’re done. I guess they’ve said as much in their quest for another lefty bat and maybe one more reliever. Even with the roster looking significantly better, it’s still not a great fit. They have too many corner outfielders and maybe not enough true corner infielders. As active as they were before this past season became last season, the rest of the league hasn’t really been, so there could be a pretty crazy last 40 days before pitchers and catchers report and 83 days before Opening Day.

The Bullpen and Options

This is sort of similar to some of the things I was saying last year with the bullpen and we saw how that worked out, but this team actually has some legitimate depth. After acquiring Nick Anderson, Will Smith and Chris Stratton along with selecting Matt Sauer in the Rule 5 draft, there are very real options for the Royals in their bullpen. If you go by Roster Resource on Fangraphs, the bullpen is setting up like this:

James McArthur
Will Smith
John McMillon
Nick Anderson
Chris Stratton
Carlos Hernandez
Steven Cruz
Matt Sauer

Reasonable minds can disagree here. I’ve got Josh Taylor and Jake Brentz in the big league bullpen as of this particular moment for left-handed depth, but this is sort of the point that I’m getting at. There are actual options. If we agree that McArthur, Anderson, Stratton and Smith are in and Sauer probably is, that leaves just three spots for the big league bullpen to start the season. I think McMillon is in too if he’s healthy given what he showed, but other than Smith and Stratton, every single pitcher in the mix has at least one option year remaining. That’s a bit misleading since Sauer can’t get optioned if they don’t want to lose him, but they have some very real flexibility in addition to their depth.

I mentioned 10 pitchers when you put the eight on Roster Resource with the additional two. But here are the other pitchers with the number of options remaining:

Jonathan Bowlan, 1
Will Klein, 3
Daniel Lynch IV, 2
Alec Marsh, 2
Anthony Veneziano, 3
Angel Zerpa, 1

They’ve also signed Dan Altavilla, Luis Cessa, Tyler Duffey and Sam Long to minor league contracts. That gives them 20 relief options that don’t even include some guys not currently on the 40-man like Mason Barnett, Chandler Champlain, Jonah Dipoto, Andrew Hoffmann, David Sandlin, Evan Sisk, Jacob Wallace and Beck Way and I’m probably missing a few. It may not work out again just like it didn’t work out last season, but there are plenty of options that will be in the 2024 Royals bullpen, in more than one way and that’s a great position to be in for a team needing to find the right combination.

Royals Add to the Front Office Again

I don’t remember if it was late in the season or when the offseason started, but a source told me the Royals would look to be active in adding to their front office roster. It must have been right before the end of the year because they hired Brian Bridges a few days later. And they’ve made some other moves throughout the organization that don’t get headlines, but they made another big move this past week when they hired Johnny Dipuglia. He will be the special assistant of international scouting.

It’s easy to look at the Nationals now and wonder what a team would want with someone from their scouting staff, but I’d argue that’s very shortsighted. Dipuglia was with the organization since 2009 and had been with the Giants, Cardinals and Red Sox before that. With Washington, though, he was in charge when they made international deals for players like Victor Robles and some guy named Juan Soto. He was a part of signing Anibal Sanchez, Hanley Ramirez and Xander Bogaerts with the Red Sox as well. It is worth noting that their international game hasn’t been as strong recently with just six international signees on the top-30 prospects according to MLB Pipeline. But he has been very successful in a spot where the Royals have struggled mightily for a long time.

Whatever role Dipuglia has with the team, he’ll be familiar with a couple of his coworkers. Earlier this winter, the Royals promoted Jim Cuthbert to director of pro personnel and Daniel Guerrero to director of international scouting. Both worked with Dipuglia with the Nationals, so it’s interesting to see the front office taking a bit of a Washington flavor.

They also announced the hire of Fred Guerrero as the coordinator of player evaluation. Guerrero was with the Twins for 20 years starting as a Dominican scout supervisor in 2004 and has been the director of Latin American scouting and US integration for the past 10 seasons. His list of players he’s been involved with signing include Luis Arraez, Jorge Polanco, Miguel Sano and others. It’s just very interesting to see the increased international emphasis now under JJ Picollo.

Those on the scouting side are judged by the players they bring in and how those players perform. But as with the Bridges hire, I haven’t talked to anyone who doesn’t see this as a huge hire for the Royals. They’ve struggled so much on the international side in recent years. Just three of their MLB Pipeline top-30 prospects are players they’ve signed internationally. They need help and Dipuglia has a reputation of being very successful in providing that help.

And on a related international note, the Royals are expected to sign Yandel Ricardo, a shortstop out of Cuba, when the window opens up a week from Monday. He’s a switch hitter with a good approach and room to fill out to add more power. He’s a bit older than many of the signees having turned 17 in October, but at 6’2” and 185 lbs., there’s a pretty good chance he doesn’t stick at shortstop. But, depending on where you’re looking, he’s ranked as one of the 15 or so best international free agents, so that’s a pretty big one for the Royals. The downside of the international market is that you generally don’t see the results too quickly, so we won’t know for awhile, but the signs are good for a turnaround.

If I Had a Hall of Fame Ballot

Some day maybe I’ll have a real-life Hall of Fame ballot. That day isn’t today, so I’m just going to write about who I would vote for. Now, I will say that if I actually had a ballot, I would do far more research than I’m doing here, though I have thought a fair amount about this. Let’s take a look at the ballot using the image that is used by the incredible Ryan Thibodaux, who has tracked this forever.

Okay, there’s one completely obvious choice - Adrian Beltre. Beltre became a Hall of Famer at the end of his career, which is sort of the opposite of so many others. He was a .271/.325/.454 for a 105 OPS+ hitter through the age of 30, which spanned his first 12 seasons. For a comparison, Eric Hosmer, who is decidedly not a Hall of Famer, hit .278/.336/.435 for a 108 OPS+ through his age-30 season. Beltre had always been an excellent defender, so his value wasn’t only in his bat, but if you had told someone at the end of his tenure in Seattle that he would be a sure-thing, first ballot Hall of Famer, I think you’d be laughed out of the building.

But he signed a one-year deal in Boston and was great and then went to Texas. Over the final nine years of his career, he hit .307/.358/.514 for a 130 OPS+, reached 3,000 hits, 1,700 runs batted in and nearly got to 500 home runs and he played excellent defense the whole time while becoming a beloved figure as well. Put it all together and he’s an easy decision. So that’s one down.

My next three that I’d add are Carlos Beltran, Todd Helton and Joe Mauer. If I had a ballot, the first thing I would do is find the obvious and then I’d find the next group that I would have to convince myself not to vote for. These three are in that group. I think there are arguments to not vote for any or all of these three, but I went into it with the preconceived notion in my head that they were in. It’s sort of like instant replay in these cases because the call on the field has to be proven against, which makes it tougher to change my mind.

The numbers for Beltran are so impressive. He had 2,725 hits, 435 home runs, 1,587 RBI, 312 steals (with a ridiculous success rate), 1,582 runs scored and played outstanding center field defense for more than half of his career before shifting to a corner. When you factor in where he ranks as a switch hitter, it gets even more impressive. Only five switch hitters have more hits than Beltran. Only three have more home runs. Only two have more runs batted in. When you get to the more advanced stats, he was worth 67.8 fWAR in his career, which ranks 71st all-time. His 70.1 bWAR ranks 101st all-time. When you consider that the game has been around for more than a century, that’s crazy. He’s the most slam dunk of the next three to me.

I was the iffy-est on Helton among this group. His .316/.414/.539 line is elite. But he did play his career in Colorado, which boosts offense. But he also had a 133 OPS+, which takes the park into account. But he did hit .287/.386/.469 on the road, which is not HOF-worthy, but players tend to not hit as well on the road no matter what their home park is. Where I struggle is if he did enough as a first baseman to get in. Still, if you compare him to some others in the Hall, like Orlando Cepeda and Eddie Murray, the numbers compare. What he’s missing from Murray are the counting stats, but I just think he did enough.

And with Mauer, I think he gets dinged way too much for having to move off catcher later in his career and not putting up enough numbers as a first baseman. But he caught the majority of his games the first nine full years of his career out of 14. And as a catcher, he hit .328/.409/.481, winning three batting titles and an MVP in the process. I wonder a little if he should be hurt by having to move off catcher because of concussion issues. Had he been forced to retire instead of moving to first base after 2013, he’d have been a career .323/.405/.469 hitter with solid marks behind the plate and would likely be considered a surefire HOFer because his career ended early due to injury. But then the .278/.359/.388 years as a first baseman did happen. Ultimately, I’d look at him as one of the best catchers ever and say yes to him.

I’ve spilled a lot of digital ink here, so I’ll give you the rest of my ballot quickly. I’m a yes on Andruw Jones because he’s one of the best defensive center fielders ever and hit 434 home runs. I’m a yes on Gary Sheffield because his PED connections are a lot looser than I realized and he has the numbers that he should be in if there aren’t PED issues related. And I’m a yes on Billy Wagner because that guy was as dominant as they came for a long time. I’m a no right now on Chase Utley, but I could easily come around on him.

What’s interesting is that I was looking ahead to future ballots and next year adds CC Sabathia and Ichiro and then I didn’t see a slam dunk candidate for a couple of years after that. Cole Hamels is in there one year and then Buster Posey another. While I think Posey is in without a lot of question, there’ll be debate because of how brief his career ended up being. Still, there’s plenty of time to debate guys like Utley and David Wright when the ballot doesn’t have as many big-time names on it coming on.