Crown Jewels: Being Very Wrong So Far, The Second Base Situation and Tonight's Preview

Your weekly favorite is back on it's own after an off-day for the Royals yesterday.

The Royals are 4-9 and sitting in fourth place in the American League Central. Would you believe that 27 teams had a stretch of 4-9 baseball in 2022? Of those 27 teams, 13 finished .500 or better, nine of them made the playoffs and one even made it to the World Series. No, it doesn’t mean I think the Royals are a playoff team or even a .500 team, but the point here is that a stretch of 4-9 isn’t the season-killer a lot of people make it out to be. I said this in a radio spot in Wichita on Wednesday, but the season feels super young when you say they’ve played 13 games. It somehow feels even younger when you say that they have 149 games left to play.

They have to be better than they’ve been and they certainly can’t afford to be giving away games they have in hand. They’ve been up by one in the eighth inning or later twice now and lost that game. The 3-3 road trip they just finished could have been 5-1 without much wishcasting and then they’d be coming home at 6-7 with a likely very refreshed fanbase to watch a team right back in it. Where they do have some difficulty is that they don’t get a bad team on their schedule until they’ve played 32 games and the A’s come to town the first weekend in May. Can they find themselves not buried by then? If they’re 14-18, do you feel pretty good about that? That means they need to go 10-9 against the Braves, Rangers and Orioles at home and Angels, Diamondbacks and Twins on the road. It’s a tough ask but maybe they can carry some offensive momentum from the comeback on Tuesday night and the big win Wednesday and make some noise. I guess we’ll see.

This Has Not Gone As Expected

Before the season, I wrote a newsletter called The Weakest Link. In it, I wrote that I felt great about the bullpen, good enough about the offense and terrible about the starting rotation. Part of why I was so down on the rotation is that I was down on the defense. And through 13 games, I don’t know that I’ve ever been so wrong about something as I was that. The offense has been generally bad, though, again, pretty unlucky. The bullpen has been bad, though some of that truly is the small sample and, honestly, mostly the brutal start Dylan Coleman has had (he was sent down yesterday).

And then there’s the rotation. They are fifth in ERA, sixth in FIP, eighth in fWAR, second in innings per start, ninth in first-pitch strike percentage, 14th in CSW percentage and ninth in zone percentage. They’re doing it without being especially lucky. They’ve probably stranded a few more runners than you’d expect moving forward, so there could be some regression there, and they’re better than league average at giving up home runs per fly ball, but they also play their home games in a park that suppresses home runs, so you’d expect them to take advantage of that.

No, Kris Bubic isn’t going to maintain his 1.64 ERA with the peripherals to match it, but I don’t think Brady Singer is going to keep striking out as few batters as he has and maintain an ERA near 5.00, so that should even out. I think Brad Keller certainly regresses on the ERA front, especially with a very low BABIP and high strand rate. Zack Greinke probably doesn’t post a 3.31 either, but he won’t walk guys, which helps. The point is that while the rotation is probably a bit over their skis right now, they’ve been very good and we should absolutely credit the new coaching staff for a lot of it. But we also can credit the defense, which I thought would be the other weak link.

Now, there is a huge caveat. Defensive metrics don’t normalize quickly. I’ve seen some people say it takes up to three years for individuals. Of course, team stats should theoretically normalize a little quicker because you’re getting that much more data. Still, 13 games isn’t enough. But it’s also all we have. The Royals are the second-best team in baseball defensively by Fangraphs Def metric. They have seven DRS, which is fifth. By UZR/150, which may be a little more meaningful with shift restrictions, they are sixth. That means their range is good. By outs above average (OAA) on Baseball Savant, they are second in all of baseball.

How are they doing it? A lot of it is Kyle Isbel. He has four DRS on his own, though only one OAA for him. He’s been outstanding. But then there’s Salvador Perez with three DRS. And he rates positively in framing too. Was it really that simple for him to move closer to the plate? Maybe! Because MJ Melendez also rates positively in framing and Fangraphs has him as the seventh-best defender on this team, partially because his work in right field has been legitimately good early on. There are some disagreements in the numbers, which is to be expected this early. For example, Michael Massey has -1 DRS but Fangraphs rates him the team’s second-best defender behind Isbel and he’s at one OAA. Bobby Witt Jr. is at -1 DRS, but is the team’s third-best defender by Fangraphs’ metric.

So the point here is that we’ll see, but the early returns are that the defense is much better than we thought and the starting rotation is even more above our expectations than that. Things will change. The bullpen will get settled (and Coleman getting sent down helps a lot right now), the rotation will get hit, the defense will struggle and the offense will figure some things out. So they’ll meet more in the middle, but I have to say I’m very encouraged by the perceived weaknesses ahead of the season and wonder if the new coaching staff has made an even bigger difference than anyone anticipated.

Second Base Competition

I believe in Massey. He held his own in his debut in 2022 and had a very good spring. I mentioned his defense above and he did win a minor league gold glove a couple years ago. His range is a little limited and he doesn’t have a great arm, but the shift restrictions make the arm matter a lot less. He catches what he gets to, though. But even so, he couldn’t be off to much worse of a start. He’s hitting .139/.135/.167. You see that OBP that’s lower than his average? It’s because he hasn’t walked once. And while not walking, he’s struck out 14 times. That’s a 37.8 percent strikeout rate. His chase rate is way too high. This is who he is as a hitter and he’ll likely improve, but he swings, which leaves him a little prone to stretches like this.

I wouldn’t make a move just yet, but he certainly has some competition breathing down his neck. Some is already on the roster. Matt Duffy has hit well in limited work. Maybe he gets exposed if he plays every day, but he’s one of three Royals with a current wRC+ above 100. It’s hard to ignore that. Nicky Lopez is one of the other two at 103. Now, he’s hitting just .208, but he’s actually picked up some extra base hits, even if some are of the hustle variety. And we know he can play defense. If either would take over as the starter (or as a true platoon), Massey should absolutely be playing every day to get right.

But those two aren’t the only options. There is a second baseman playing in Omaha right now who is on the 40-man and who is playing extremely well. I wrote about this when the trade was made, but I really liked Samad Taylor when they acquired him. He hit .360/.414/.760 this spring and has picked up where he left off to start the season in AAA. Taylor isn’t likely to become a Gold Glover but he’s perfectly capable in the field and he’s very quick. I wonder if the Royals aren’t thinking about making a move if Massey doesn’t start to come out of this soon.

He had a big sacrifice fly on Tuesday night and then an RBI single on Wednesday but those were small blips between some additional strikeouts. Guys have rough stretches all the time and if his confidence is still there, I’d give him at least another 40ish plate appearances to get some things on the right track, but the Royals have options if he doesn’t turn it around and hopefully Taylor continues to make the Royals think about their decisions with more good play.

Tonight’s Game Preview

The Royals welcome in the 2021 World Champions and current first-place team in the NL East, the Atlanta Braves. They aren’t at full strength with Michael Harris II, Travis d’Arnaud and Max Fried all on the IL, but they’re still really good and the Royals will get a look at Charlie Morton, the ninth-oldest player in baseball this season. He’s a full three weeks younger than Greinke, so hopefully he’ll respect his elders. He continues to grow 94-95 on his four-seamer and similar with his sinker, but he uses that nasty curve he has more than anything. This year, opponents are 3 for 20 on it, but it’s not getting the whiffs it has in years past, which is interesting to watch at least.

The sample is way too small, but the Royals have a 28.2 percent whiff rate on curves from righties. Of course, they’ve only seen 87 total and do have five hits, so that’s probably meaningless, but as with everything, it’s all we have right now. Morton has gotten hit pretty hard by left-handed bats, allowing a .364/.462/.500 line to them compared to .292/.346/.333 to righties. It’s not a reason to go full platoon lineup, but I would anticipate we see at least Nicky Lopez over Hunter Dozier in this lineup. And it’s not a new thing for him to show those platoon splits, so given the Royals tendencies, I expect them to try to exploit that. I know that batter vs. pitcher stats are largely meaningless, but hopefully the fact that Jackie Bradley Jr. is 1 for 22 against him will keep him out of the lineup.

The Royals will counter with Singer, who has had one pretty good start and one rough one. I’m not sure if they’ve made some changes with him, but I think his mechanics are a little off. He’s releasing the ball about six full inches closer to the plate and while the pitch looks pretty similar, it’s impacting location a bit. At some point, you expect things to correct with him after the year he had, and this would be a good time. The Braves will chase a little bit, so Singer’s slider could be a key for him. He’ll likely face four lefties, so we might see his changeup again as we did in his last start. It could be the determining factor in if this is a good start or a bad start, but either way it’s a nice test for him.