Failure May End Up a Positive For the Royals

A terrible 2023 has led to changes for the Royals at both macro and micro levels, particularly for one pitcher, and that's a good thing.

Dale Carnegie knew what was up when it came to failure. “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success,” he said. In a perfect world, failures wouldn’t be required for success, but sometimes the most positive things come out of the most negative. The 2024 Royals and members of the 2023 Royals are hoping that’s the case. They won 56 games at the big league level. The farm system doesn’t have an apparent impact talent (though that could change quickly, as I’ve discussed). And they weren’t even winning in the minors as they have in the past when the big league club was struggling.

It was simply bad from the bottom up. But that’s where utilizing failure as that stepping stone to success could come into play for the Royals, and that’s true at all levels. I’m going to miss some people here probably, but the Royals have made key infrastructure hires. They hired Brian Bridges to take over as their scouting director. They haven’t gotten enough out of the draft in recent years and Bridges was considered a home run hire by most. They also hired two new faces on the international side in Johnny DiPuglia and Fred Guerrero. We’ve seen them overturn their development system, often with hires who fly under the radar but become hugely beneficial.

On the field, they spent very real money to improve a club that was terrible in 2023. I hate to keep bringing it up, but someone will if I don’t (and probably still will). While many believe the free agent frenzy was more about getting a “yes” vote on a new stadium, I don’t think that’s the case even if it was part of the motivation. Signing the guys the Royals signed doesn’t excite the casual fan who may be swayed by them throwing money around. Signing Bobby Witt Jr. does though, so I’d argue that was the big play for the stadium and the team.

The pitching staff couldn’t throw strikes. Who did they bring in? They brought in six pitchers, so roughly half of their big league staff, who throw strikes. Other than John Schreiber who had a 12.3 percent walk rate, Michael Wacha’s 7.8 percent walk rate was the highest of the bunch. While it seems weird to exclude Schreiber, it’s probably worth an asterisk at the very least on his 2023 because in 2022, he himself had a 7.4 percent walk rate and his highest mark before last season that was marred by injuries was 7.7 percent. They brought in strike throwers, plain and simple.

The offense was plagued by a serious lack of lineup depth and bench depth. Hunter Renfroe is expected to be a veteran bat in the middle of the lineup, but Adam Frazier and Garrett Hampson were brought in as depth pieces. I don’t love any of the signings on the position player side, but they were all within eight percent of league average in terms of wRC+ with Hampson the only one actually slightly above average. While I’m not a big fan, they should all help to make the bottom of the position player roster better. That’s not nothing.

And on an individual level, the big story in camp so far is that Brady Singer is finally prepared to add to his repertoire.

Singer was sold on the idea because of the evidence and, well, another blunt reason.

“Probably sucking,” Singer said. “Probably that, yeah.”

There it is. I’ll get to the evidence in a minute. Singer almost assuredly wasn’t thinking of Carnegie when he made that comment, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t echoing the self-improvement writer’s quote. It was a fear in the back of my mind after he was so good in 2022. While he did succeed with mostly just two pitches in 2022 to look like a big-time extension candidate, I wondered what would happen if either of his pitches backed off in the future without anything else to lean on.

Then 2023 happened. The biggest red flag, to me, was that the velocity on his sinker dipped from 93.8 MPH to 92.1 MPH. That’s a massive drop. Was it mechanical? The gap wasn’t quite as wide in perceived velocity (94.6 MPH to 93.6 MPH) because his extension point was a fair amount closer to the plate in 2022. I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but I’d wager it wasn’t. This is about the only place that I buy the WBC causing him problems all year. He didn’t have a full spring to get his mechanics in order and I think he was struggling with them all year. He has a very compact windup and delivery, but we know that pitchers can be impacted by the smallest of changes.

In addition to altered mechanics potentially causing a velocity decrease and maybe even playing a part in his back issues at the end of the year, Singer gets the job done with movement on his pitches. Think of Singer’s highlights. He isn’t blowing guys away. He’s getting guys to give up on his sinker coming back over the plate or getting them to flail at a slider diving out of the zone. Without the same movement, the results just aren’t going to be there. And sure enough, the sinker moved 14.9 inches arm side on average in 2023 and just 12.9 inches in 2022. The slider movement wasn’t all that different, but he also had similar numbers on the slider in 2023 to 2022. The difference was that hitters could lay off it because they didn’t have to think as much about the sinker.

So sure, maybe getting his mechanics back in line would do the trick and could get him back to the guy he was in 2022 even with two pitches. But with how easy it is for a pitcher to get out of his mechanics, and if the margin for error is so slim, why not figure out a new way to get hitters out even if those mechanics aren’t there? Singer has started so many different times to work in a changeup, and the reality is that it just hasn’t worked. We’ve heard some of the why that doesn’t make you angry at the player. The way his arm rotates doesn’t fit with a typical changeup. Okay, makes sense. He’s just not comfortable. Okay, I get that for a bit.

Brian Sweeney and the Royals approached adding a four-seamer and a sweeper last year. According to Baseball Savant, Singer didn’t throw a single four-seamer, though there were claims that some of his changeups actually were the fastball. He threw 14 sweepers, got swings on six, whiffs on three and ended four at bats with it without a hit. But that’s all he threw. In the article from Rogers, she mentions the conversation a bit at the time.

The topic was Singer’s repertoire, and the slides focused on how he could improve it with two additions: a four-seam fastball and a sweeper. Singer had been hard-headed on additions before for a variety of reasons, like the comfort with the grip or lack of success.

The term “hard-headed” is one that I think many Royals fans would use when it comes to Singer adding more. And whether that was true without the Royals beat writer mentioning it, it sure felt like it was true. I wrote back in 2021 after a rough start that Singer just didn’t get it because he continued to insist on doing it his way even when his way was giving up way too many hits and runs.

But now, failure has led him here. He had a 5.52 ERA and while his 4.29 FIP may have indicated he didn’t earn that, his 4.96 xERA was a lot closer and not nearly good enough. So with a four-seam fastball, he theoretically should have a pitch that he can use at the top of the zone. He can use the sinker at the bottom of the zone. He can use the changeup to tail from lefties and into righties. He can use the sweeper to be a little bit more of a breaker than his slider. That’s five pitches that should all work together.

I’ll admit to being skeptical that it happens, but hopeful because that’s what spring is about. We’ve heard a lot of this before from Singer, though never with the explanation of failure the previous season spurring it along. Singer goes tonight against the Cubs in Surprise. I believe you’ll be able to watch the game on MLB.tv if you have it because it’s being broadcast by the Cubs. I’ll be very curious to see if he continues to use his failure from last season to spur change. It does appear that’s what the organization has done as a whole over the last six months or so. If Singer actually follows through with what he’s saying and showing in spring, he’ll win friends and influence people quite well and maybe even earn himself a long-term contract.