Crown Jewels: Veteran Help, The Trade Conundrum and the Weekend's Action

Today, I look at how the Royals didn't give their first year manager enough, how performance is making JJ's job harder and the weekend against the Twins.

The Royals didn’t lose yesterday. It marked the 46th day of the 2023 season that’s been true. Of course, 17 of those days have been off days or rainouts, so even that number is a little misleading. What a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad season this has been. I’ll get to why some of the performances will have longer consequences than just this year as well, but I just keep thinking about how it just doesn’t feel like it should be this bad. I know it’s a sentiment I’ve shared often during this season, but I keep coming back to it. Did the start of the season just knock them so far off-kilter that everything was toast that early?

I know I’ve written this before in this space and certainly in the other spaces I’ve written in the past, but this whole team reminds of me of 2012 Eric Hosmer. He had such a promising rookie year and then actually came out of the gates with two homers in his first three games. The race to superstardom was on. Even through nine games, he was hitting .216/.310/.432 but with five walks and just six strikeouts. He was hitting into some rotten luck. After 18 games, he was hitting .225/.321/.465 with five homers and 10 walks with 12 strikeouts. His BABIP was .204. Things started cratering from there.

I don’t know why I remember this, but he got the day off in the last game of a series in Boston and it was after a couple of days when he just stopped hitting the ball hard. We didn’t have exit velocity data back then, but it was pretty clear he was hitting ropes and was terribly unlucky. He had a .179 BABIP and a ground ball rate that wasn’t as bad as it would get. And he changed his approach. He never found the magic again that season and then, only sporadically throughout the rest of his career. That was a long way of saying what the 2023 Royals feel like, but I hope they find it where Hosmer couldn’t find it enough. I’m sure some would argue, but there is talent on this team. They have to figure out how to get more out of it, though.

Not that anyone is keeping track, or maybe they are, but I have something that I think is really interesting, but it just makes more sense to run next week after the deadline. That just threw me off all week, so it’s just a two newsletter week. I’m either sorry or you’re welcome for that.

Veteran Help

The evolution throughout the season of public opinion on Matt Quatraro has been very interesting to me. I’m not sure if I’ve made myself terribly clear about where I stand on him. I think he has some things to work on and learn, but I also think that a lot of the silly things people get upset with him about would be things they would greatly appreciate if the Royals were winning.

Tactically, he tinkers with the lineup too much, in my opinion. I think he needs to slow down with that, but I think he will if and when he has the players for it. I would like a little more consistency with his starting pitcher usage. I think that’s something that can be learned. I wondered earlier this year if the Royals were a little too lackadaisical, which is a direct result of his leadership being potentially too player-friendly. I feel like things have been cleaned up there, but it helps that they’ve cleaned up the defense in general, so maybe that was an incorrect feeling to start and they just were terrible defensively. Either way, I think there is a learning curve no matter who you’ve worked under and how well-regarded you were coming into the season.

But I also think that the Royals did him no favors. Some of it was his own doing with hires, but think about his staff. His bench coach is a first-time bench coach. His pitching coach is a first-time pitching coach. His hitting coach is in his first full season. He has experience with the base coaches, yes, but on his coaching staff, it’s just a bunch of guys who have very little experience doing the job they’re doing. The White Sox gave Pedro Grifol an experienced bench coach in Charlie Montoyo (it also hasn’t worked, for what it’s worth). The A’s gave Mark Kotsay a bench coach in Brad Ausmus (that also didn’t work, for what it’s worth). There are examples in all directions, but I think it’s worth noting that it’s not just the coaching staff.

The Royals team as a whole is lacking in veteran leadership. I think some might scoff at that. I probably would have a few years ago. What I’ve learned over the years is that what many teams believe is super essential probably isn’t that important, but it’s also more critical than many fans believe. Who are the veterans on this Royals team? There’s Salvador Perez and he obviously helps, but other than him, you’re looking at Matt Duffy and Dairon Blanco as the other two position players who are 30+ years old. They also have Nicky Lopez, but when Blanco is your third-oldest position player, you’re lacking in veterans.

There are some on the pitching staff, but I’ve always been of the belief that the pitching staff is almost a different organism. And even with guys like Zack Greinke and Jordan Lyles, this is not a veteran team at all. I just think Quatraro could have used a little help with the leadership on this team and hasn’t had nearly enough to help him navigate a new role. Some of it would help tactically while some would help in other areas. I’d anticipate the Royals look to add some veteran help in the offseason and maybe even revise the coaching staff some too, though they’ll all have some experience after this year.

Trade Troubles

The Royals traded Aroldis Chapman a month ago and haven’t made a move since. I anticipate that could change at any minute. Maybe it’s already changed depending on when you’re reading this. But I also think the play on the field has given JJ Picollo a tougher task than what he already had. From speaking with a few people around the organization, I get the sense that Picollo had hoped to be at least a little creative this deadline.

The problem is that the ability to get creative and trade players you wouldn’t expect a rebuilding team to trade is made tougher when they’re underperforming. We may look back in however many years and realize this isn’t underperformance and they just aren’t good, but I think it’s difficult to trade someone like Nick Pratto, for example, right now. After coming out of the gates strong (and with some batted ball luck), he’s hit .165/.244/.301 since June 19 with 51 strikeouts in 115 plate appearances and just eight extra base hits. Add in that he’s not playing an especially good first base and what do you have with this guy?

It’s fine to play him every day and see if he can’t work out of it at the big league level, but I can’t imagine there’s a ton of trade value. I had heard an interesting rumor early yesterday that the Brewers had asked about him. I don’t know what that ask entailed. Maybe they just wanted to see how he was doing. Or maybe Matt Arnold knows his parents. But I was a little bit surprised. When the Brewers traded for Carlos Santana, it dawned on me that Pratto really can’t be traded right now. Not in a seller to buyer move at least.

The Brewers need help at this moment and what Pratto is doing on the field doesn’t help them. Could he be someone they revisit in the offseason? Absolutely. But his poor play has made it so it would be very difficult to get the kind of value back for someone like him that the Royals would need. I suppose there’s an opportunity to include him in another deal to sweeten the pot, but it just makes the job so much more difficult when mostly everyone is playing poorly.

The one player who I’m intrigued by with the adjustments is MJ Melendez. I wrote about those to start the week and after two hits and a homer Wednesday, Melendez is hitting .289/.333/.511 with four doubles and two homers since the break. I’m a bit concerned about only two walks, but a 20.8 percent strikeout rate in 48 plate appearances is intriguing. I wonder a little if this is an opportunity to sell mini-high on him. They need that because there isn’t a sell-high option on hardly anyone else on this roster.

Three Against the Twins

The Twins came out of the break hot, winning nine of 11, but they did drop the final two games of their recent series against the Mariners. Still, they’ve started their second half the way they need to and I think they could stand to add a piece or four over the next few days. They recently swapped Jorge Lopez for Dylan Floro, but that’s a bit of a rearranging deck chair situation. If I’m the Twins, I feel pretty okay about the rotation, but it’s not an area I’d hesitate to try to upgrade either, if the situation presented itself.

Their bullpen being anchored by Jhoan Duran is solid, but I don’t see any of the other arms as one that I’d fully trust in a big situation in the postseason. Griffin Jax has been good, but the track record isn’t there. Emilio Pagan has actually bene good, but he’s not far removed from being bad. They’ve got interesting arms, yes, but they could use some certainty. David Bednar is a perfect fit here, in my opinion. They did go out and make the moves last year to shore up the bullpen, so they might do it again.

Offensively, the Twins theoretically have the pieces. Edouard Julien has taken over second base. The dude can hit. He wears a frying pan to play the infield, but he can hit. Alex Kirilloff has been really good. But Christian Vazquez has been bad (and Ryan Jeffers is getting more playing time because of it). Carlos Correa hasn’t been good. Byron Buxton hasn’t been good. Max Kepler hasn’t been good. They simply need more offense, and they are getting Jorge Polanco back, so as long as he can stay healthy that’ll help them, but they need more. I really think Cody Bellinger is a great fit here.

The pitching matchups this weekend are:

• Friday: Sonny Gray vs. Brady Singer

• Saturday: Bailey Ober vs. Jordan Lyles

• Sunday: Kenta Maeda vs. Ryan Yarbrough

Well, at least the Royals are legally allowed to win two of the three games. I’m guessing they’ll struggle with Gray as they have quite a bit and Maeda is a wild card. Ober has been really good this year and has actually gone six or more innings in eight of his last nine starts. These starters for the weekend combined with the Twins owning of the Royals and the Royals inability to win more than a game here and there makes this weekend promise to be a struggle from the start.