Crown Jewels: Pitching Development, Stock Falling and a Final Weekend

The Royals followed up a great run of baseball with another dud of a series. Such is life.

Success in baseball is about the streaks. Maybe this is just a variation on the idea that everyone (but the A’s) wins 54 and loses 54 and it’s what you do with the other 54 that matters, but every team has stretches of trading wins and losses. The good teams have more and longer good streaks and the bad teams have more and longer bad streaks. Look to the Braves. They haven’t had a single losing streak of more than four games. When you’re never even losing a fifth game in a row, you can find success. On the flip side, they’ve won five or more in a row six separate times.

Now look to the Royals. They’ve had two winning streaks of five games or more, a 10-game losing streak and six losing streaks of five games or more (including the 10-gamer). Let’s even do one more. The Rockies have had one winning streak of five games or more and seven losing streaks of that many games.

You’re probably reading this wondering if there’s a point to an obvious statement. And there is, but it’s an obvious point that I just feel like is made more interesting by the Royals in this moment. They came into Detroit having won six in a row and 10 of 11. That’s a great streak. They promptly lost three in a row to a team that hasn’t really sniffed .500 since 2016. I don’t say this as an excuse, but as a learning opportunity. They went from a crazy playoff environment to a pretty quiet one. They went from playing a team that had everything on the line to playing one that had nothing. It doesn’t mean that the sweep is okay or whatever, but for an inexperienced team, I get it.

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from three games in Detroit in September. Maybe it’s how to create your own emotion in a series mostly devoid of it. Another is why the Tigers seem to have the Royals number. I think a lot of it is that the Royals bullpen is straight garbage. But a lot of it is that Tigers pitching has been outstanding against the Royals this year. Why is that? I don’t have a full answer on that just yet, but they throw strikes. Their walk rate is among the best in baseball. The Royals were taking an awful lot of strikes and getting themselves in bad counts (umpires didn’t help this particular series). There’s more to it, but a bad matchup with bad timing and, let’s be honest, a bad team, will lead to a series like the one they just had.

But it’s the streaks. There isn’t really time to curb this one with just three games left, but a good team can get swept and move on. Because the truth is the Royals have still won 10 out of 14 games. Bad teams get swept and then let it snowball. Just like a team can raise their floor significantly by simply getting less bad players at the bottom of a roster, limiting those bad streaks is what turns bad teams into average teams and average teams into good teams. The Royals have, so far, had losing streaks of seven, 10, six, five, six and five. That’s 39 losses, 0-39. Find a way to go 2-5, 3-7, 2-4, 1-4, 2-4 and 2-3 in those streaks and they’ve added 12 wins and are sitting at 66-93. It’s still bad, but it’s not horrible. Then once they get to those, add another win to those stretches. And another. And another. It’s simple, but that’s a big way a team gets better.

Year One with Brian Sweeney and Getting Better

I’m not going to get into the successes and failures of the organizational pitching in the first year of Brian Sweeney leading the organization’s pitching efforts. Not in this space. I’ll get there. I think there have been a few things that have stood out in terms of tweaking and adding pitches that we didn’t see under the previous regime and that’s great. I thought Anne Rogers wrote a nice piece on MLB.com about how the Royals need to improve their pitching. A few things jumped out at me.

“Longer than I expected,” Sweeney said when asked how much time it would take. “Adversity causes some men to break, others to break records. We had a lot of it this year. Not just the players, but the staff, too. It’s been difficult. You want to win. But these guys are learning.”

It’s not what you want to hear, but at least it’s honest. This quote sort of lends itself to what I’d heard about the changes with the organization that will come this winter. Similar to the Brian Bridges hire without anyone leaving, I do think they’re going to bring in more on the pitching development side. You likely don’t know the names. Some that have been mentioned to me are names I’d literally never heard before, and that’s okay. Justin Friedman, a big part of the changes in the minors for the Royals this year, was someone I was not familiar with either. You don’t have to be a name to be good.

But I do think they’re going to be adding to this group and, it sort of sounds like this is a spot where there might be some subtraction from guys who just are struggling with the task. The pitching, particularly the bullpen, has been overwhelmingly a negative for the team this year. But there are positives that have come up. As Rogers notes in her article and I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the walk rate has come way down since the break. That’s big. But Rogers also notes that the strikeout rate isn’t where it needs to be either.

I’m not the only one to have said this, but it’s pretty clear the Royals feel comfortable with pitchers who they think a slider can complement their arsenal. Over the past few years, they’ve been an organization that likes sliders but only this year have they actually been able to help pitchers add that to their repertoire. We’ve seen it with the most success from Cole Ragans and James McArthur, but (and I know it’s weird to say his name with success), Jackson Kowar has worked a slider in that has actually gotten better. There are others. I think that’s an area of strength and can be educational in who to add moving into 2024.

But I also appreciate that it doesn’t appear the Royals will be content to look internally for additional pitching. There have been multiple comments over the last few weeks that lead me to believe that, both public and private. I’m going to have something after the season on the success of the free agent pitching market over the last few years, but I wonder a little if they’re looking for guys like Ragans for 2024. Is there a pitcher who can contribute right away who they think is just a tweak or two away? That’s also something I’ll dig into over the next few weeks, but I’m looking at the pitchers available on the free agent market and thinking there may be a different and better avenue.

Biggest Stock Drops

In a year of evaluation that is thankfully almost over, the evaluations you get are going to be both good and bad. And, as I’ve written countless times, that’s okay. That’s the point. If there were no bad, then you probably wouldn’t need this year. For the Royals, the good has been pretty obvious. Bobby Witt Jr. has emerged. Freddy Fermin became someone they can count on. Ragans and McArthur have been revelations on the pitching staff. I think Michael Massey as someone with some pop who can play a very good second base is something worthwhile even if you’re not totally sold on him. Maikel Garcia has had a nice year. MJ Melendez has sort of seen both sides.

But there are two players, to me, who have seen their stock drop to the point that I’m honestly not even sure if they belong on the 40-man roster. Okay, that’s not fair, the first will absolutely be there if he’s not traded and he’s Carlos Hernandez. He’s an interesting one because he would have been on the riser list if we had talked about this two months ago. But after letting three more inherited runners score (he’s now at a 52 percent rate, which is real bad) and then letting three of his own come in, he now has an 11.25 ERA with 13 strikeouts, 15 walks and six home runs allowed in 16 innings since the trade deadline.

The results make it clear not trading him was a mistake no matter what the return was. We judge the front office and the team on the results, but I do think it’s important to have some context here because he was turning into a stud at the deadline. He had a 1.31 ERA in his last 20.2 innings at that time with 21 strikeouts, six walks and one home run allowed. What happened? I still think the stuff looks fine to me. He can’t locate. I don’t know why. I don’t know how. I don’t know why Sweeney and Zach Bove and Mitch Stetter haven’t been able to get him back on track. But it’s been horrendous. And now we sit here with three games to go and you’ve got a guy who throws hard and has movement and all that who just can’t get outs. It’s not what you want. I’ll get back to his roster spot in a minute.

The other stock dropper is Nick Pratto. I don’t know how you can think he’s a big leaguer after 519 big league at bats. He’s a .213/.294/.364 hitter with a 38.5 percent strikeout rate and a .151 ISO. If you’re going to strike out nearly 40 percent of the time, you better be hitting tanks and he just isn’t. It’s really too bad because I think he does a great job of receiving throws at first, which I’ve said is very important. But he’s just way too passive up there.

The Royals talk about swing decisions all the time. His are horrible. He swings at just under 59 percent of pitches in the zone. League average is 67 percent. The strikeouts looking are obviously pretty telling. He has 44 of them, which rank tied for 15th in baseball. But he only has 337 plate appearances. But striking out looking doesn’t mean you’re a bad hitter necessarily. Juan Soto is ninth in baseball. Nobody would turn having him on their team down.

Garcia has 45 strikeouts looking. But I’m not as upset about that. Why? It’s where the pitches are. Of the 44 for Pratto, 18 of them are on pitches over the heart of the plate. That’s the spot right down the middle plus surrounding it. So basically the strike zone with the edges removed. Pratto has only been victimized by a bad call five times. It feels like he’s looking for one pitch in one spot and if he doesn’t get it, he’s just not going to swing the bat and the game just doesn’t work that way. His contact skills aren’t good enough to make up for taking that many pitches. His power isn’t good enough. Having a good eye and making good swing decisions are two very different things. Pratto has a good eye, but he doesn’t do enough to take advantage of it.

So now you look at the 40-man roster. The Royals have 48 on it right now. Eight are on the 60-day IL and will need to be activated. I think of those eight, Jake Brentz, Kris Bubic, Austin Cox, Freddy Fermin, Daniel Lynch IV and Vinnie Pasquantino will be retained. That’s six. Matt Duffy, Zack Greinke and Brad Keller are free agents. I think Tyler Cropley is a pretty easy drop given how he was even added in the first place. But even with those four gone, they’re still two over. Don’t get me wrong. They have plenty of non-tender candidates. Just going down the list, Max Castillo, Taylor Clarke, Tucker Davidson, Taylor Hearn, Jonathan Heasley, Kowar, Collin Snider and Nate Eaton are all on that list. So they won’t need to move on from a reliever who can throw 100+ and first base depth, but these two went from being part of the future six months ago to maybe being on the list to be next out. That’s not a good evaluation year for them.

One Last Weekend Series

The next time I write here, the season will be over. The Yankees come to town for three games in a battle of two teams going nowhere. What’s left to play for? Pride, I guess. The Yankees haven’t finished under .500 since 1992, but they notched their 81st win this week, so that’ll continue. I guess maybe they’ll want to say they’ve been over .500 every year for the last 31, so they could be hunting down one win. For the Royals, it’s about Witt getting that 30th home run. And maybe seeing if Nelson Velazquez can keep hitting bombs. They’ll be facing Carlos Rodon, Clarke Schmidt and Michael King for the Yankees.

Rodon has been a massive disappointment. He was hurt for the first three months of the year and has a 5.74 ERA in 64.1 innings after signing a six year, $162 million deal with the Yankees. On the home run front, he’s given them up and the weather seems like it’ll be summer-ish, so maybe that’ll help Witt get to 30 tonight. Schmidt has been…fine. He has a slightly below average ERA, strikes out a bit less than a batter per inning, doesn’t walk a ton, etc. He’s the epitome of an average-ish pitcher. If the Royals tried to get him in a deal, I wouldn’t be upset. And King spent the year in the bullpen before they’ve been stretching him out. In September, he has a 1.30 ERA in 27.2 innings with 39 strikeouts and seven walks. He gave up just one hit in his last start, but might be wearing down a bit with five walks and five strikeouts.

The Royals will counter with Jordan Lyles tonight (ugh, one last time), an opener and Alec Marsh tomorrow and Zack Greinke for what seems likely to be one final hurrah on Sunday. Greinke looked great against the Tigers and he asked for the ball as he left the field, which might be a signal that he’s hanging it up. I really wish that start had been at home so they could let it end on that note, but I get him pitching at home in front of Royals fans. So there’s not much at stake this weekend, but there’s no more Royals baseball after it, so I’m going to try to soak it in as best as I can and then turn my attention to playoff baseball, which is always crazy.