Crown Jewels: It's Getting Worse, Anti-Clutch and the Weekend Ahead

There's rock bottom, there's 50 feet of garbage, then the Royals.

Sometimes a team just leaves you speechless. Sometimes it’s in a good way. Sometimes it’s in a very bad way. This team is leaving me speechless in an awful way, and part of it is that it just doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand why they are this bad. From a baseball level, I get it. They’re this bad because they don’t pitch well, they don’t hit well and they don’t catch the ball well. That part is super easy. But it just feels like they shouldn’t be bad. Something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is the discussion around bad luck from earlier in the year, and I want to frame that discussion just a little differently.

I’ve used the phrase. You’ve probably used the phrase. Your best friend has probably used the phrase. And I think we’ve had it wrong. The Royals don’t have bad luck. They just don’t seem to have any good luck. So it’s not bad luck as much as it’s the absence of good luck. The Royals are unendingly punished for mistakes. Walks score. An error with two outs turns into a four-run inning. We see it all the time. And they come by that honestly. You might recall that they’re not really good at anything.

But it sure feels like when the opponents make a mistake, the Royals don’t punish it. Some of that is absolutely poor quality of play but just look at the Reds series. In the bottom of the fourth inning on Monday, Michael Massey doubled and then with one out, Maikel Garcia walked. Drew Waters stepped to the plate and didn’t hit the ball hard, but hit it down the first base line.

Spencer Steer, a righty throwing first baseman, made a nice play to go to his knees, field the ball and throw to the pitcher covering to get the out. That’s the absence of good luck. If Steer was a lefty thrower as many first basemen are, maybe he can’t get his glove turned and that ball goes down the line. Or if it doesn’t stick in the web, who knows? Steer isn’t a particularly good defender at first. He ranks in the first percentile in outs above average. He’s -2 OAA on balls hit toward the line and -4 OAA against lefty hitters. But he made that play. That’s totally anecdotal, but it feels like that happens a lot. So maybe that’s where I’m landing. They simply don’t get lucky.

I know that nobody will accept an apology because they’ll argue I don’t owe one, but I am sorry for the lack of newsletters the last couple of weeks. To be completely honest, the combination of a new job and the Royals playing their worst baseball in a long, long time (and that’s saying something) has made it tough. Timing, desire, all of that. I’m figuring things out and there might be a slight changeup in how I do things moving forward the rest of the year, but I will be back with more newsletters, I swear!

Insert Buddy Bell Quote Here

Don’t mind if I do.

“I never say it can’t get worse.”

-Buddy Bell

The Royals, sitting at 18-49 and with their best young hitter on the IL, saw it get worse on Wednesday afternoon. It was announced that Vinnie Pasquantino would be out for the rest of the year. He’d have surgery on his torn right shoulder labrum. It’s not all bad news. The recovery time is about six months, so having the surgery any time in the next few weeks will have him easily ready for spring training. And a recent example of the surgery was on Josh Jung of the Rangers who missed most of 2022 because of it and has come back this year as a leader in the Rookie of the Year race.

Then on Wednesday night in the third inning, Salvador Perez was hit with a pitch and came out of the game. The initial x-rays came back negative, so that’s good, but I’m skeptical on that until we see him back on the field. It’s not that I think they did it wrong, but sometimes swelling and all that good stuff can make it hard to see. So I’m cautiously optimistic that he’ll be back in a few days, but I’m also mentally prepared to hear he’s out for a few weeks.

Roster-wise, where do they go? They’d already sort of filled Pasquantino’s roster spot with Nate Eaton, but I think they might look to do something a little different now that it’s a four-month injury and not a four-week one like last year. They just signed Matt Beaty to a minor league deal, which maybe makes a little more sense now. But I also don’t think they necessarily have to do much of anything. They have Nick Pratto at first base and Kyle Isbel is on a rehab assignment, so he’ll be back within the next couple of weeks.

I think the plan should be that you roll with what you’ve got, get Isbel back and then figure out some sort of rotation. There will be days where the outfield defense is bonkers good with Dairon Blanco, Isbel and Drew Waters, probably from left to right. I don’t think you’ll necessarily see any more outfield with Edward Olivares and MJ Melendez. When you think about that outfield with the improved infield defense, at least there’s something that feels like something of a strength.

On the Perez front, the length of the injury makes a difference. I tweeted this, but they basically have two options. They can either move Melendez back behind the plate (which might make sense from a roster standpoint with Isbel’s imminent return) and, for now, bring up Samad Taylor or Tyler Gentry or they can bring up someone like Logan Porter to share catching duties with Freddy Fermin. I see both sides, but I don’t love the idea of committing to Melendez in right field six weeks ago and then reversing course, especially if Perez will be back in a short-ish amount of time.

So my gut there is to bring up Porter and see what he can do. Of course, it’s Perez, so any injury timeline needs to be reduced by like 80 percent because the guy is superhuman. But this is just if there is a longer-term absence. The good news, from a Buddy Bell perspective, is that while it can always get worse, they can never be worse than the worst team in baseball, so at least they’ve hit rock bottom there.

Anti-Clutch

You may have noticed that the Royals are decidedly not clutch. There are strong arguments indicating that clutch hitting isn’t predictive, but we can look at what has happened and conclude they’ve been bad at it to this point. Jesse Newell had a great thread on this ahead of Wednesday night’s game that saw the Royals collect 15 hits and score just four runs. Why? Because they went 2 for 15 with runners in scoring position and left 14 men on base. 14!

Heading into play yesterday, the Royals had the unfortunate pairing of having the second-fewest runners in baseball (but nearly 100 more than the Yankees of all teams) and scoring those runners the fourth-lowest percentage of the time. Woof. In high leverage situations (defined as leverage of 1.5 or higher) on Baseball Reference, the Royals are hitting .157/.250/.243 on the season. Heading into play yesterday, that’s the lowest average by 51 points, the lowest OBP by 37 points and the lowest SLG by 92 points. The gap between their .493 OPS and the Tigers second-worst high-leverage OPS of .629 is roughly the same as the gap between the Tigers at 29 and the Red Sox at 11.

It’s not just high leverage spots because those often come in later innings. It happens in all situations with runners in scoring position. It’s not quite the gap, but they’re hitting .221/.297/.330 with RISP, which leads to the worst OPS in baseball in these situations. They at least have some peers in these situations, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a rough situation.

Why though? I think you can look at it logically and think that lots of young hitters can maybe see a difference in approach in those situations. As I’ve written quite a bit, the Royals are running out the youngest offense in baseball. But other young offenses aren’t having the same issues. I do believe there is a weight on all players during a season like this one and young players maybe even more. That doesn’t give them a pass by any stretch, but I do think it should at least be noted.

Statistically, I was wondering a bit if the Royals struggles stem from a change in approach. Because with nobody on and then in medium and low leverage, Royals hitters are kind of middle of the pack. It’s just when the situation gets big that the hitters get small. Going into yesterday’s action, the Royals had the 14th-highest walk rate in baseball in high leverage situations (along with the fourth-highest strikeout rate). Overall, they’re 28th in walk rate and seventh-highest in strikeout rate. So there’s some surface-level improvement in approach actually.

It’s a little difficult to get super granular on a leverage level, but looking at Baseball Savant, I can segment by a few things. The first I wanted to look at was late innings (seventh or later) with the go-ahead run either at the plate or on base or the tying run on base, at the plate or on deck. So that seems pretty high leverage to me. Would you believe the Royals only chase pitches outside the zone 29.3 percent of the time, which is 16th-highest in baseball and below league average.

That’s…surprising.

Now looking at their chase rates with runners in scoring position, no matter the inning, they do chase a bit more. They’re at 32 percent, which is eighth-highest in baseball. So that does check out some. And, of course, there is so much more to it, but I would have expected their chase numbers to be through the roof. In these situations, though, they come by their numbers honestly. They simply don’t do damage to the baseball. Their average exit velocity is fourth-lowest. Their average is third-worst and in line with their xBA. Their SLG is worst and in line with their xSLG. Their wOBA is also worst and in line with their xwOBA.

This is something I’m now tracking and I don’t want to go on too long, but I do think it’s very interesting that the offense is generally fine until there are stakes involved. Some of that is the pitcher bearing down for sure, but some of it, I believe, is an inexperienced lineup that buckles with the pressure.

We all know that this roster needs to be reshuffled quite a bit and I think my theory adds to the idea that it wouldn’t be the worst idea to supplement a young lineup with a veteran or two. Use the young talent to trade for a need and backfill. The problem is the free agent market is pretty horrible next season, but there are other ways to pick up veteran talent. That’s something I’ll dig into down the road, but it makes me wonder if there isn’t a good argument to augment this club with some experience.

Hello Halos

The Royals aren’t giving many people a reason to come out to the ballpark, which is too bad, but if you need a reason to head out to The K, go to watch some greatness. With the Angels coming to town, that means we get to see two of the best who have ever played the game - Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. They have a pretty good team actually. I don’t know that they’ll be good enough to fight their way to a sixth playoff spot necessarily, but they hit and they hit with power.

Their rotation has been underwhelming, especially after what they did last season to take a step forward, but there is potential there. They need to be getting more from Tyler Anderson and Patrick Sandoval for sure and Reid Detmers and Griffin Canning have both been a lot more fine than good. The Royals will see Sandoval, Canning and Anderson in that order, so good that they miss Ohtani who went yesterday, but these are all talented pitchers who are just struggling this year. They did score six runs on seven hits in 5.1 innings against Anderson back in Anaheim but haven’t faced the other two this season.

I worry what the pitching is going to do against their offense, though they might be without three of their regulars. Zach Neto has already been placed on the IL while Anthony Rendon couldn’t swing in his last two at bats and Gio Urshela was on crutches after the game, so that’s something in the Royals favor. Brady Singer starts the opener tonight and we honestly have no clue what we’re going to see from him. If he can find that sinker and use his slider well, it doesn’t matter who he faces.

The upside for him is they don’t even have many good lefty options, but when he’s been bad this year, it hasn’t been just because he’s been beaten by lefties. After that, it’s likely an opener and Mike Mayers followed by Zack Greinke. We’ve seen all three of these spots have big success this year, but we’ve also seen big failure. If we get to the Weekend in Review on Monday and the losing streak is 12, I won’t be surprised.