Crown Jewels: A Small Signing, A New Hitting Coach and the Winter Meetings

The Winter Meetings are almost here. The Royals are making small moves. When are the big ones coming?

I know this is a super cliche thing to say, but can anyone believe it’s actually December? Similar to life, the days in the baseball offseason feel slow but time moves super fast, I guess. Part of it is being a fan of a team whose season ended in mid-April, but part of it is just that without any action, it feels like it’s forever. Would you believe that free agents have only been able to sign for four weeks? And that one of those weeks was Thanksgiving, which, unless you’re Jerry Dipoto, generally means things will be pretty quiet? Well that’ll all change here next week with the Winter Meetings getting underway. I’ll get to that in a bit here.

The biggest thing that I keep hearing when I talk to people around the game is the word “uncertainty.” It feels like there’s something new every year. Obviously 2020 led to 2021 uncertainty. The labor deal lead to 2022 uncertainty. Last year was pretty normal actually. But this year, the uncertainty stems from the deal with Diamond Sports Group, the company that runs Bally Sports Networks, may be gone by the end of 2024. There’s a financial impact for every team involved no matter how big the contract.

That impacts the Royals too. The reported value of their deal is around $50 million for six to eight years (I’m not sure if there’s a more defined number out there that I’ve missed). When the Diamondbacks and Padres had to reconfigure their television rights during the 2023 season, they were promised by MLB that they’d work to get as close to their revenue number as possible, but I’m not sure if that happened. It’s impactful if that deal goes away even if there are ways to mitigate some of the loss, so that’s probably played a pretty big role in the slow start to the winter.

A Utility Infielder/Outfielder? Really?

I’ve written a lot of question marks this week, I’m realizing. You don’t have to answer any of the questions; I suppose they’re rhetorical. The Royals reached their first free agent deal of the winter on Wednesday for $2 million with Garrett Hampson, a utility player who spent 2023 with the Marlins, but had been with Colorado prior to joining Miami. Hampson was a third round pick in the 2016 draft and was a top-100 prospect ahead of the 2019 season. He was ranked 87th on the Baseball America list and 98th on Baseball Prospectus. I’ve written how I feel about top-100 lists and how the back half is pretty interchangeable among about 100-125 players, but still, nice that he had that pedigree.

Unfortunately, he just didn’t hit at the big league level. He actually had his best season last year for the Marlins, hitting .276/.349/.380 with a 9.1 percent walk rate and 26.6 percent strikeout rate. If he can repeat that, he’s a bargain. I don’t know that I’d anticipate he can given that the batted ball data doesn’t support that kind of output and he strikes out too much to overcome that batted ball data often. So what exactly do the Royals see in him and how does he fit within the structure of the 2024 roster?

At this moment, I know what they see in him, but I don’t know how he fits. He can really run. He ranked in the 98th percentile for sprint speed last year and has been elite every year of his career. I’m a little bit confused why it hasn’t translated to more stolen bases for him, but speed is a good attribute to have on the bench as one of the last guys. He can also play second, third, shortstop and outfield. That’s valuable. And not only can he play those positions, he’s actually rated well at shortstop and center field both (though he was below average in CF by DRS and only slightly above average by OAA). So there is absolutely value in this sort of player, especially for $2 million.

Past trauma of guys like Chris Owings can make you skeptical that he actually will be a player on the bench who doesn’t take playing time away from guys who deserve it, but if he gets 209 plate appearances like Matt Duffy did, that’s a perfectly adequate use of his roster spot. And he’s also been useful against lefties. In his career, he’s hit .261/.330/.416 with a 22.3 percent strikeout rate against left-handed pitching. That’s noteworthy because the current second baseman, Michael Massey, and the current center fielder, Kyle Isbel, both hit left-handed. Isbel hasn’t been horrible against lefties, but Massey has struggled and it’s nice to have someone to help out there.

But the fit still doesn’t quite make sense. They already have Nick Loftin as a right-handed counterpart. He’s played second and center, though I think Hampson is more of a center fielder than Loftin. They also already have Drew Waters, who is a switch hitter, but he’s struggled against lefties. My friend Alec Duvall, who used to run Royals Farm Report, posited on Twitter that there must be a trade close. I’ve heard there’s interest in both Loftin and Garcia from at least 10 teams. A deal for Garcia would be much bigger than a deal for Loftin, but if either can bring in a spot more in need, I’m fine with bringing in a new utility player on a cheap deal to help round out the roster.

What this move does do is fill up the 40-man roster, which is something I’ll be at least mildly annoyed by if they don’t have a space for the Rule 5 draft next week because of signing Hampson. There is still more than enough time to make a move to create a space, but I’d hate for signing a non-tendered utility player who has multiple clones around the league to be the reason they lose out on that opportunity.

The other thing that pops into my head from this signing is that it makes me want to encourage people to break out of their Royals funk. I get it. They’ve earned all the criticisms they get, so I don’t really know if there’s a true point to this, but I also think it’s reasonable to give them a chance to work. Is this the first in a domino of deals? Maybe! If it’s not, we can reevaluate. But I look at a deal like the Mets signing Joey Wendle, Hampson’s teammate last year, and I saw people praising the deal as smart.

Wendle will be 34 and hit .212/.248/.306 last year and has hit .238/.275/.335. Wendle is a better defender, but I do wonder a bit if a team like the Rays or Dodgers or whoever signed Hampson if people wouldn’t be a lot more intrigued by it. I know. There is context. But I think it would be funny to see someone like Jeff Passan tweet that the Rays signed a guy the Royals actually did and then correct himself a few minutes later and just see how different the reactions are.

New Hitting Voice

I hinted at this a few weeks ago that there would be a new hitting coach would be joining the team and the team announced yesterday that they’d hired Joe Dillon. His path is pretty common. He was a seventh-round pick of the Royals back in 1997. He was okay with the Royals before spending time in the Twins organization and then debuted at 29 with the Marlins in 2005. He spent parts of four years in the big leagues with the Marlins and Rays and hit .263/.344/.378 in 246 plate appearances.

He went into coaching ahead of the 2014 season when he was hired by the Nationals to be their AAA hitting coach. He then was the minor league hitting coordinator for the Marlins in 2016 and 2017 and was the assistant hitting coach for the Nationals in 2018 and 2019, winning a World Series with them in the second year. He was the Phillies big league hitting coach in 2020 and 2021 and returned to the Nationals organization the last two seasons. Coaches aren’t always represented by results, but I’d say his big league experience has been positive in terms of those results.

As the lead hitting coach with the Phillies, they scored runs, worked walks and they were solid up and down the lineup in 2020 and took a bit of a step back in 2021, but still were in the top half of the league in most categories. As the assistant hitting coach in Washington, it was much of the same. Personnel tells more of a story than the coach most of the time, but people always ask how their teams performed in these situations.

I had heard Dillon’s name along with another name as possibilities for this role with the Royals, so I’d already reached out to a few people about him to get some insight. Reviews have generally been mixed, which isn’t necessarily a bad sign, but I think I’d prefer better reports. One thing that all five people I spoke with said was that Dillon is exceptionally prepared. I’ve heard some rumblings (and I’ve even made note of this) that hitters struggled late in games as different pitchers paraded in. The Royals numbers show it to be true. They had a .708 OPS in the first three innings, .733 in the fourth through the sixth and then a .655 OPS in the late innings.

The league’s numbers show a similar enough trend, but the drop from the fourth through the sixth league-wide is .748 to .710, which is a much smaller drop than we see from Royals hitters. Is that a matter of an inexperienced offense simply being overmatched by all the elite relievers out there? Maybe. But does that have something to do with not being ready to go when a new pitcher enters a game? Also maybe!

One person who I speak with pretty regularly about baseball had an interesting thought about Dillon. He believed Dillon should not be running a show, but does a really nice job with mechanics and pitch recognition, so working as a number two or three in a hierarchy fits him well. That’s good news for the Royals since he’ll be one of the assistants to Alec Zumwalt. Hopefully he’s right because as positive as things felt offensively for much of the second half, they still need help to take another step.

Winter Meetings Coming

My favorite time of the offseason starts on Monday when the winter meetings get underway in Nashville. I’ve told this story before, but I remember watching MLB Network in the 2011 meetings and seeing a lot of anticipation and weird movement behind the set. About 10 minutes later, it was reported that Albert Pujols was leaving the Cardinals to sign with the Angels. You’ll never convince me the commotion wasn’t a bunch of reporters getting word about that deal. I really love it because a lot happens.

While the GM meetings often set the stage for what’s to come, deals get done at the winter meetings. From what I’ve heard, the Royals have been active in conversations, but just nothing has come from it. That’s not a Royals issue, for what it’s worth. Free agents have started signing in the last few days, but as of midday yesterday, just seven of the 50 listed on the MLB Trade Rumors free agent list have signed.

It’s just been slow. I mentioned at the top about the television deals maybe complicating some things, but free agency is often a game of chicken. Aaron Nola signed, but he stayed with his team, which is always a little different. Sonny Gray did sign a hefty three-year pact with the Cardinals and Kenta Maeda signed a short deal with the Tigers, so maybe the market is about to start to roll.

I would anticipate the Royals will continue to be active in trade talks as I’ve heard they have been as long as there have been trade talks going. If they leave the meetings without getting a bullpen arm or two, I think I’ll be disappointed and a little surprised. Emilio Pagan signing with the Reds for two years and $16 million should probably get that market moving a little bit. We’ll see. But I also do think they’re going to be in the picture for just about every arm that isn’t going to cost nine figures to sign. Which is something they need to be. I anticipate life won’t be as crazy for me next week as it was this week, so I’ll be here with any updates if and when they do make some moves.