Fine, Maybe Jurickson Profar is a Good Fit for the Royals

I've fought it all winter, but I might have been wrong about Jurickson Profar and maybe the Royals should sign him.

“I want nothing to do with Jurickson Profar.”

I don’t know if I’m misquoting this, but it’s okay because if I am, I’m misquoting myself. It’s me, the Jurickson Profar doubter. I have said throughout the offseason that I have a really difficult time thinking it’s a good idea to offer three years at eight figures to a player coming off a career year. I especially think that’s true given that he’ll be 32 in a month or so and doesn’t provide much in the way of defensive value. But, more than anything, I doubted the bat and chalked it up to it being a career year.

I can admit when I’m wrong, and I might be wrong here. People had mentioned to me that I should dig in more, and, quite frankly, I just didn’t. And I’m sorry. Mike Petriello wrote about Profar last week, and it made me realize that I may or may not be wrong, but if I’m right, it’s for the wrong reasons. If you’re not familiar with the percentiles on Baseball Savant, you should know that there’s a chart that accompanies every player. More red is good, more blue is bad. This is Profar’s batting chart for 2024.

That’s a lot of red. He hit the ball hard and he did that a lot. He didn’t chase, didn’t swing and miss, didn’t strike out and walked. He also had good expected stats based a lot on the quality of contact. The only things he didn’t do especially well were swing hard, barrel the ball or get it in the launch angle sweet spot. All in all, his .280/.380/.459 line was pretty well corroborated by the batted ball statistics.

My skepticism, though, I believe, is fair. Here is his chart from 2023.