Crown Jewels: Shifting on Salvy, Innings Update and 2023 Debuts

We're only 14 massive temperature swings in Kansas City away from pitchers and catchers reporting.

Happy new year, Crown Jewelers! Sometimes I bum myself out. Last week I wrote about Ryan O’Hearn and how I really believed some team would take a chance on him. I listed a few and originally had the Orioles on there, but then took them out because I figured they were happy with Ryan Mountcastle at first base. In hindsight, I realize their bench is righty heavy and they have a couple of right-handed bats who could use a platoon, so I should have gone with my gut. Of course, they did just DFA him too, so… Anyway, there’s your first lesson of 2023, I guess. But either way, O’Hearn is not only off the roster, but assuming the Royals didn’t include the difference between his salary and the minimum ($680k), they’re off the hook for that deal. They did receive Cash Considerations back in a deal, which might work out.

I think what the O’Hearn deal does, at least in my mind, is show that there are moves to be made. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about trading Adalberto Mondesi. Given that the shortstop carousel has mostly stopped with just a few of the mid-tier or lower guys left, maybe something comes of that. As of right now, I guess I’d bet on him as the starting third baseman? But I just don’t know. I still think a Michael A. Taylor deal is at least 50/50 to happen before the start of the season and that’ll help to make the roster work a little better. It just feels more possible now. Getting rid of the guy who seemed to have a lifetime contract changes the mindset some, for me at least.

Salvy and the Shift

We all know that the shift has been limited. I hesitate to say banned because there’s still movement allowed and teams will figure out how to get around it eventually, at least in some way. But there have to be two infielders on each side of second base and they all have to be on the dirt (or closer, they can charge on bunts). We all know that. And we all assume that a bunch of lefties are going to benefit. I’m excited to see what guys like Vinnie Pasquantino and MJ Melendez can do without the rover in short right field. But you typically don’t think much about righties and the shift and that’s on my for not getting there in my head. Thankfully, Mike Petriello from MLB.com wrote about a few hitters who will be helped by the new rules.

Salvador Perez (Royals C)
+9 potential hits gained / 76% shift rate

You’re surprised by this one, and so are we, somewhat. But Perez faced a shift on three-quarters of his plate appearances in 2022, triple what it had been in '18, so teams clearly felt it was worth doing more and more -- i.e., taking hits away from him. His BABIP this past year was 74 points higher against a standard defense than it was against the shift.

Oh. Should I have expected this? Yeah, maybe. Did I? Absolutely not. Just to echo a little what Petriello wrote and add to it, Perez was shifted in 75.6 percent of his plate appearances and had a .375 wOBA without the shift compared to .308 with it. This was the typical positioning against him when he batted and was shifted.

And it clearly worked. He handles some of it by hitting the ball in the air a lot, but he still hits the ball on the ground 36 percent of the time. And let’s take a look at where he hit line drives and ground balls last season.

Huh. This isn’t going to turn him into a .330 hitter or anything, of course. The darkest red is generally where the third baseman is standing anyway. So we won’t see 35 extra hits, but the nine potential hits gained is a lot. Let’s add those in, all as singles. His .254/.292/.465 line suddenly jumps to .274/.311/.485. I know I’d certainly take that, considering how much time he probably spent playing hurt when he shouldn’t have been on the field in 2022. And if you’re looking for more righties who might surprise you, you can stop. The next-highest shifted right-handed bat on the team was Hunter Dozier at 14.8 percent.

Wherefore Art Though, Innings?

I wrote a bit ago about the number of innings the Royals still needed to cover. I came to the conclusion that among Brady Singer, Daniel Lynch, Kris Bubic, Jonathan Heasley, Scott Barlow, Dylan Coleman, Taylor Clarke, Amir Garrett and Richard Lovelady, you could find about 925 innings. A team needs 1,450ish throughout a big league season. With the signings of Ryan Yarbrough and Jordan Lyles, they added about 260 innings from last year, but some of those will take away from some of the young pitchers.

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I think Singer and Lynch are in the rotation pretty much regardless, but right now, Bubic and Heasley will be competing with Brad Keller, Carlos Hernandez, Angel Zerpa and maybe even Jackson Kowar for what could either be the final spot in the rotation or the final two spots if the Royals want to put Yarbrough in the bullpen. So it’s not so easy to add 260 to the 925. That said, with Lyles throwing 180 innings in 2021 and 179.2 in 2022, I think you can reasonably count on another 175 or so, or at least as reasonably as you can count on any pitcher, which does bump the total a little bit.

They still need more and they need more depth to be able to get there. In the days of a 13-man pitching staff, it’s great to hope that you can get 30 starts each from five pitchers and supplement the other 12 while you run out 10-12 total relievers, but that’s not reality anymore. The Royals had 10 pitchers start games that were not “openers.” I’d say that’s probably the minimum number of starters they need to get through a season. The Royals actually were the only team in baseball with six pitchers to start 20 or more games, so they have the arms. How much you want some of those pitchers starting games is a fair question, but they do have a fair amount of pitchers who I think it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect they could throw 150 innings if needed:

Singer
Lynch
Lyles
Bubic
Heasley
Yarbrough
Keller
Kowar

I don’t know what you can expect from guys like Alec Marsh, Jonathan Bowlan, Angel Zerpa or Max Castillo, but I think you can reasonably expect they could make some starts too. So the depth in numbers is there, but I really think they could build depth with another move. I keep coming back to Eric Lauer from Milwaukee, especially after they signed Wade Miley (who would have been a nice fit in KC). I’d love to see them push another of the young and struggling starters into a competition to help build that depth. I think the last month is going to be very busy with a bunch of moves that don’t register much on the radar, but sometimes those are the moves a team can look back on and realize how vital they were to the season.

The 2023 Debuts

No matter the end result, the 2022 season is one that I think we’ll remember for a long time. We saw 13 players make their big league debuts and, of them, I think all but maybe Dairon Blanco has a chance to contribute to the 2023 team. I’m not exactly high on Collin Snider, but given the innings I wrote about right above this, I’d be surprised if he’s not pitching in the majors at some point unless he’s a DFA casualty before the season. So the Royals had a highly ranked farm system coming into the season, they graduated a good chunk of the prospects who got them that ranking and now are left with a system that isn’t exactly loved by prospect writers.

My opinion is that the system is in better shape than it seems from the outside, but there is certainly a whole lot less upside than we saw at this time last year. As I wrote during the season, that’s okay. They have a ton of young talent under team control through at least 2027, so if the system needs a year to catch up, it isn’t the end of the world even though you’d like to see it not take that big of a hit. Still, there are a few guys who I think we’ll see in the big leagues at some point during 2023 to make their debuts who didn’t get up in 2022.

Jonathan Bowlan - He wasn’t as good coming off Tommy John as I had hoped, but he got back out there. I’m expecting him to get back to what he was before the surgery in 2023. And if he does that, he might be starting games by mid-May or a really nasty weapon out of the bullpen. It’s a shame he went down in 2021 because he’d have gotten some big league innings for sure that year.

Tyler Gentry - He’s one of my favorite bats in the system and he hit .326/.422/.542 between High-A and AA. I’d guess he starts the year back at AA, though maybe he gets the AAA assignment. I think he’ll hit and he can play a solid right field, but I wonder if there’ll be enough power there. I say that, but even if he’s Mark Canha, that plays well enough to be a contributor. The question is if he can hit second or third or if he’ll need to hit in the sixth or seventh spot to provide value. Either way, I think he’s a big leaguer and probably by mid-season.

Nick Loftin - The 32nd overall pick in 2020 could have found his way to the big leagues last season but just didn’t. He didn’t have nearly the season he did in 2021 as he was tried in center field for awhile before spending the bulk of his time on the infield as the season wore down. I’m not sure what the upside in his bat is, but I think he’s good enough at a few positions to hold down a utility role for awhile and I think this is the year we see him.

Alec Marsh - At some point, the numbers have to match the stuff, but it’s hard to argue with his ability to get strikeouts. Health is a question as well, so this isn’t a slam dunk, but I’d bet on Marsh getting some big league innings in 2023. He finished the season in 2022 in AAA, so he’s already only a step away. Of course, he also went 1-15 with a 7.32 ERA in AA, so maybe he’s more than a step away.

Drew Parrish - While he did struggle at Omaha in his first taste of the level, I think things will be different for him the second time around. He walked 44 in 73.2 innings, which is just so uncharacteristic of him after he walked 14 in 55 innings in AA. What happened? I couldn’t tell you, but I’d bet on it being better and the Royals needing a start or five and turning to Parrish at some point.

TJ Sikkema - The Royals left him exposed in the Rule 5 draft, but nobody took him, so he gets another chance. He struggled at AA after coming over to the Royals, but given the need for innings, he’ll get a shot if he’s decent and I think he will be at least that.

Okay, all the above are in alphabetical order, but I actually also think Gavin Cross has a very good shot to make it to the big leagues next season. Some of it depends on his assignment to start the season, but if they jump him over High-A and start him at AA, he has a real shot to be in the big leagues after the trade deadline. The guy put up a .437 OBP and .321 ISO in his professional debut. He can play the outfield well. There just isn’t much he doesn’t do on the field and if he shines the way he did after he was drafted, it’ll be tough to keep him off the big league team.

And there are always surprises, so if Noah Cameron or Tucker Bradley or any number of a handful of others get some real big league playing time, don’t say I didn’t warn you.