Crown Jewels: Starting Depth, Projected Standings and the Bottom of the Roster

We've made it to less than a week before pitchers and catchers report, so Royals baseball will be happening soon. It's up to you if that's a good thing or not.

I wrote many times throughout the 2023 season that the offseason to follow was the most important in the history of the franchise. I’m still not entirely sure if that was hyperbolic or not, but I think this offseason was massive regardless of how it ranked with others. They were in a hole that they had dug themselves and needed a relatively quick way out for a few reasons. First, apathy was setting in with the fanbase, which is never a good thing. Apathetic fans can be awakened quickly, as we saw a decade ago, but it doesn’t mean you’re okay with it. Second, they want a new stadium. I can promise you that this vote that will be coming up in April would have been a slam dunk “no” if their most recent signing, Adam Frazier, was their biggest signing.

While things were slow to start, the Royals have added eight big league contracts to their 40-man roster, which has done what I think is the first step in building a stronger team. They’ve bolstered the bottom of the roster by pushing guys into spots on the roster hierarchy that more fit with their production. Are they winners yet? I don’t know. I’ve given my thought on that a few times that they’re probably still only a below average team, but in a bad division, they’re now at least in the conversation. But now the offseason is close to coming to a close. There are still a lot of quality free agents out there, so much more can still happen, but if I had to give a letter grade to the Royals this winter on bringing outside talent in, it would be a B or B+. Adding in the Bobby Witt Jr. extension turns the offseason to an A, though.

Why a B/B+ (sans Bobby)? They needed rotation depth and signed two legitimate big league starters. Their bullpen was a disaster, so they acquired three quality relievers to add to the group. They haven’t yet made any head-scratcher trades that mortgaged what could be a much brighter future for an extra win in a mediocre 2024. It would be an A if I liked the offensive moves more, but I don’t love Renfroe and I really don’t like Frazier. I get what they were trying to do and I appreciate the positions they targeted, but I wish they’d have targeted different people for those spots. Still, both are not far removed from the types of seasons that the Royals would love to rub in my face if they happened again in 2024, so even those have a little upside.

Rotation Depth

I want to get into this just a little bit more because I’m sort of fascinated how the Royals will handle their starting pitching this year. Other than Jordan Lyles, they don’t have a pitcher who has thrown more than 160 innings since 2017 when Michael Wacha threw 165.2. Seth Lugo hit a career-high last year with 146.1. Brady Singer got to his career-high of 159.2 last season. Cole Ragans has never surpassed 100 in the big leagues. Those are the starting five out of the gates as of right now. I think it’s safe to say that even if we didn’t know teams need more than five starters, we know the Royals would need more than five starters.

They can absolutely hope that these five combine for 162 starts and put up 950 innings or whatever magical number they’d like to chase, but I’m going to burst your bubble on February 9 and tell you it’s not happening. So who else is there? I think the number six starter, as of right now, is Daniel Lynch IV. I know I’m repeating myself, but Lynch was probably the number four starter heading into spring training last year. Now he’s the number six. They also have Alec Marsh. They also have Angel Zerpa. They also have Anthony Veneziano. They also have Jonathan Bowlan.

Look at some of those names. Lynch, after one out short of 200 career innings with a 5.32, would have likely been on the bubble of a competent team’s rotation last year. He obviously got hurt and wasn’t there to start the season, but he’s the emergency starter now. Marsh was relied on for 74.1 innings after not exactly earning a callup with his minor league performance. Heading into the winter, he was probably the 5. Now he’s probably in Omaha. Zerpa has had so many ups and downs that I don’t even know where he stands, but he posted a 2.29 ERA in September with a 19 to 2 strikeout to walk ratio. In past years, that would have earned him a spot in the rotation without question. Now he’s also probably in Omaha or the bullpen.

Others like Veneziano and Bowlan are depth for the depth, whereas they’d have been the first men up in the past. You can add in Matt Sauer, the Rule 5 pick from the Yankees, who never would have been a rotation candidate, but he’s so far down the list that unless he absolutely forces his way, he’ll be in the bullpen all year if he sticks with the club. They’ve got prospects on the rise too. Mason Barnett and Chandler Champlain made it to AA last year. David Sandlin probably would have if he didn’t get hurt. It’s really amazing how different the 2024 rotation looks now that you can add in Ragans, Michael Wacha and Seth Lugo.

I haven’t even mentioned Kris Bubic, who should be throwing pretty early into spring training. He’s still not expected back until midseason, but with the way he pitched before having surgery last year, you have some hope for him to slide into either that depth or to replace any starter who could be struggling, hurt or traded. I’m not saying this is a championship caliber rotation. I don’t think they are, but I do think the difference from 2023 to 2024 will be so stark that it feels like it at times.

Projection SZN

This might give you horrid flashbacks if you remember the discourse around projections and the 2014/2015 Royals, but both PECOTA and Fangraphs came out with their 2024 standings projections. They don’t paint the Royals favorably, but they do project a huge improvement over the abysmal 2023 season. We’ll start with PECOTA where the Royals are projected to finish 70-92 (okay, 69.8-92.2 but who’s counting?). That’s a 14-win improvement, which is actually tied with the A’s for the biggest jump in baseball.

Of course, when you’re that bad, the odds are that you won’t be the next season and projection systems certainly won’t paint teams that bad. 100-loss seasons and 100-win seasons are generally outliers. They happen, but they aren’t projected. These are 50th percentile percentages and only represent the middle ground. Teams fall short of and exceed these every single year just like players do as well.

There are season simulations within PECOTA where the Royals win 90+ games just like there are season simulations where they win fewer than 50. Those are the outliers that sometimes occur. But it’s boring to say that the Royals could win anywhere between 45 and 95 wins based on this projection, so they come out with the middle percentile, which is the likeliest to happen. This is where lessons in probability come into play. If something is 99 percent likely to happen and it doesn’t happen, the probability wasn’t wrong; the one percent came through. If there’s a 70 percent chance of rain, there’s a 30 percent chance of no rain. Math isn’t as scary as it might seem sometimes.

Anyway, Fangraphs has the Royals finishing a bit better at 76-86, which is right around where I think they’ll land. So naturally, that’s a great projection because it fits with mine. That 20-win improvement would really be something, and only exceeded by a 22-win jump by the A’s. Again, this is because of the low outlier starting point from last year leading into a 50th percentile projection. Oh yeah, and ZiPS, which is part of the Fangraphs projections but not the whole thing has the Royals at 74-88, 11 games behind the Guardians and Twins. The algorithms are sort of seeing what many have been saying. The Royals are not yet good, but they aren’t world-class bad either. Baby steps, I guess.

The Bottom of the Roster

I apologize if I’ve given this stat before, but the Royals gave 1,602 plate appearances to players with a negative fWAR. That’s 26.8 percent of the plate appearances all year given to negative fWAR players. That’s very, very bad. On the pitching side, 339 innings were given to negative fWAR players, which was 24.1 percent of all non-position player innings thrown. That’s also very, very bad.

Of those 1,602 plate appearances, 677 are no longer on the 40-man roster. And of the 339 innings, 264.2 are no longer on the 40-man with most out of the organization entirely. There are still a lot of plate appearances left, but they’re mostly from Salvador Perez and Nick Pratto. Perez is what he is and hopefully he can bounce back some and be more of an offensive force as he has been in the past. Pratto is not likely to be counted on nearly as much as he was in 2023, especially if the results continue to be subpar. So either way, cutting the fat was accomplished.

Projections are, again, a 50th percentile endeavor, but the Royals projected by ZiPS to be below 0.0 WAR doesn’t include a single player who I’d anticipate playing a role on the big league club. In fact, the lowest WAR total projected by an important player on the current club is MJ Melendez at 0.2, which is fully driven by his defense as he’s projected to be above average offensively. After him, Garrett Hampson and Hunter Renfroe at 0.5 and 0.6 respectively, which if you’re getting that from a utility guy and a rotational outfielder, you’re probably fine.

On the pitching side, it’s more of the same in the projections. Dan Altavilla, Jake Brentz and Steven Cruz are the only pitchers with any big league experience projected to be below 0.0 WAR. John McMillon is right at 0.0, but he’s also the guy most expect to be lights out if he’s healthy, so that’s interesting. Otherwise, you’re looking at a bunch of guys who are throwing any real innings in 2024 who are projected at least to be above replacement level.

It’s a low bar, yes, but it’s a bar the Royals clearly had trouble crossing in 2023. There is nothing hard and fast about this, but I think a good team will generally have a player or two at 4.5+ WAR. Then they’ll have a few guys sitting at 2-4.5 and then a handful more at 1-2. Every team has players with sub-0 WAR, but obviously the good teams limit that.

I think the Royals have that 4.5+ WAR player, but maybe not enough in the 2-4.5 range yet. But I do think they’ve done a nice job of limiting the sub-0 players. Time will tell, but I think you can make a pretty decent argument that fixing spots 21-26 on the roster can help them add five to eight wins alone. No, that doesn’t turn them into a contender, but it’s a huge boost and should make for some much more watchable baseball in 2024.