I've Got Nothing

If this is rock bottom, the only place to go is up, but Buddy Bell has taught me too well to assume that.

When I make my season prediction, I don’t just randomly come to a number. I do something very silly. I open up a spreadsheet, I put every series in and predict the number of wins for each one. Baseball is inherently unpredictable (though with legal sports betting in Kansas, you’ve probably won quite a bit betting against the Royals), so it’s an exercise in futility. But I feel like I need some sort of process when I come to an official prediction even though it ultimately means nothing. I’m telling you this because my prediction of 73-89 feels impossible right now. The team is 4-15, which means they’re on pace to go 34-128. I’m going to guess they exceed that, but it’s ugly.

Okay, but really, why am I telling you about something I did almost a month ago? It’s because I had this team at 6-13 heading into this road trip that starts on Friday. So, in a way, part of what’s kept me so at peace with what this team has done is that I figured it would be a bad start and it has been. That probably doesn’t make anyone feel any better because they haven’t even been able to live up to the monumentally low expectations, but I wanted to share that. The other thing I want to share is something I’ve heard about a million times from just about every baseball person who is much smarter than me.

When a team is going good, they are almost certainly not as good as they look. And when a team is going bad, they are almost certainly not as bad as they look. The difference between the good teams and the bad teams is that the good teams have their good stretches extend longer and the bad teams have their bad stretches extend longer. As I’ve said before, anyone who predicted the Royals 2023 season with their head and not their heart had them as a below-average team at best. I’ve seen a lot of people resigned to the Royals losing 100 games after starting the year thinking they would lose 92 (or whatever). To that I have a couple of thoughts.

The first is that I generally think a team’s record is only meaningful within eight to 10 wins. So much chance is involved in each game that there can easily be randomness leading to a win or a loss once or twice a month. Again, the good teams come out on top of those more and the bad teams come out on the bottom, but my point is that if you thought they’d lose 92, 100 isn’t that far off. The other thought is that it’s incredibly difficult to lose 100 games. Last year’s Royals were awful. They lost 97 games. The 2012 team started a similarly terrible 5-14. They lost 90 games. The 1992 team started a worse 3-16. They lost 90 games. The 2007 team was a slightly better than this version 6-13. They lost 93 games.

They’ve lost 100 games six times, so I’m not going to pretend it isn’t possible, but I think there’s a bit of an underestimation of just how long a season is. They still play 143 games. Last year’s team was on pace for 110 losses after 50 games. They went 17-18 in their next 35. Nobody would argue that’s a good stretch. And after that, they were no longer on pace for 100. Is it a great consolation if they lose 99 instead of 100? No, but I just waned to point out how difficult it is to sustain play this bad for a whole season. For what it’s worth, I have them going 13-16 over the next 29 games, if you want to follow at home on that front.

Okay, now I’ll reluctantly talk about yesterday’s game, which has me way more concerned about Brady Singer than his last outing when he gave up eight runs in five innings. I think Singer was punished in the zone, but I appreciated both that he settled down and that he seemed to understand what the issue was. I thought he’d come out yesterday and right the ship, but he just looked…bad.

I’m worried about his decreased velocity. I’m worried that the slider isn’t fooling anyone. And I’m generally just worried about his command. Singer has a biting two-seamer and a slider that can get swings and misses, but the stuff isn’t exactly elite. His stuff+ was 97 in 2022, which means it was a bit below average. His location+, though, was 102, so it was above average. Without the elite stuff that you see from some of the guys who dominate the leaderboards, he needs to be able to locate and he simply hasn’t been.

On Friday, he was missing in the middle of the plate. The Braves were unequivocally not missing. Yesterday, he was missing everywhere.

Look at all those sinkers that missed arm-side. I actually don’t hate the idea of that because of the movement he gets that carries it from glove-side to arm-side, but it just doesn’t work for him. He can’t be missing there as often as he did yesterday. His slider wasn’t getting out of the zone nearly enough either. You see a few that did what he wanted it to do, but the Rangers only swung at 25 percent of the sliders that were out of the zone. They only whiffed three times on that pitch. He came into the day with a 38.6 percent whiff rate on the slider.

I think, in some ways, you have to give the Rangers credit. They are one of those teams that has just stopped swinging. Coming into yesterday, the only team that swung at fewer pitches outside the zone was the Dodgers. Only four teams swung less at all than the Rangers. They showed a big adjustment against Brad Keller on Tuesday night, swinging at just 20 percent of his out-of-zone curves compared to 42 percent in Texas. That’s a recipe for success. I’m going to get into that with the Royals offense tomorrow, but the Rangers offense is disciplined and that makes life hell for opposing pitchers. Singer can overcome a disciplined offense when he has his command, but he really hasn’t had it all season.

I find myself worried a bit about injury with the velocity decrease. I also find myself worried a bit about injury with the weird ramp-up because of his lack of use in the WBC. I wrote on Monday morning in reviewing his Friday start that I wasn’t worried about him yet because he was so good last season, but every start like yesterday makes me a little more worried about him. And with Kris Bubic out (and we’ll find out just how long later today probably), the rotation’s future fate rests in the hands of him and probably Daniel Lynch. He is, by no means, cooked, but he needs to show something soon. His next start will come in Arizona against a Diamondbacks offense that both chases and swings in general a lot more. They can hit, but Singer can get back on track if he’s on.

I honestly don’t even know where to start with the rest of the team. I feel like it’s a big circle that just keeps going around. The offense is obviously struggling for a number of reasons, but I wonder if they’re not struggling, at least in some ways, because they’re demoralized that the pitching can’t keep them in a game and I wonder if the pitching is demoralized because the offense doesn’t score enough and…well you get the picture. We can talk about the concern over Scott Barlow or Taylor Clarke pitching like the non-tender he was a couple of years ago, but, to be honest, there isn’t analysis needed right now. It’s bad and that’s all that really matters at this moment.

I’ve been very encouraged by Bobby Witt Jr. and that really started during the series in Texas last week. Maybe it was the home cooking. Even with a couple of 0-for games, he’s hitting .368/.400/.605 in his last nine games. He’s hitting it hard the other way, he’s making a lot of contact and I think his defense has looked good. He made a couple excellent plays yesterday and, maybe more importantly, hasn’t had any issues on routine plays. He most certainly is not a finished product, which is a little disappointing in a way, but he is on pace for 26 home runs and 43 steals, which means he’s knocking on the door of being on pace for that 30/30 season I predicted.

The others, outside of Vinnie Pasquantino? Well, no, I’m less encouraged by them. There are signs for many. Not all of them are good signs, but there are signs. All I can tell you with certainty is that there are 143 games left on the schedule and as frustrating as this is, I’m not going anywhere and I hope you won’t either. But it does lead to one big question.

I don’t think so. I know it’s easy to be discouraged right now, but I don’t anticipate Michael Massey being a zero at the plate or MJ Melendez continuing to struggle like he is. This is a group of players who I think a lot of people believed could take a step. There are growing pains in the big leagues and I think they’re going through them, but it doesn’t mean they’ll continue to flail aimlessly as they have for so long this season. It was literally less than a month ago that there was legitimate excitement about this group. I have my worries that there’s a mental drain on the start, but maybe they can utilize the road again to get right and finally get things going.

Buddy Bell reminded us to never say it can’t get worse, and I would never go against his wishes. It’s hard to be a lot worse than 4-15, but you never know with this franchise. My guess, though, is that when we look back on the 2023 season, we’ll look at this stretch as the worst of the year and we’ll see enough from guys like Witt and Melendez and Pasquantino to believe there’s an offensive core in place. And hopefully, Singer and Lynch can figure some things out and we can see some positive movement in the minor leagues. Because, boy, right now, I really have just about nothing.

I’ll leave the comments to be yours (if you’re a paid subscriber, of course). If you want to vent, vent away. If you actually have a question that you want me to answer, let me know because I’m otherwise just going to leave them as a place to voice frustrations. The team is off today, so unless explicitly asked, I’m taking the rest of this one off from talking about this team, but I do want to provide the forum for you and I’m happy to jump in and respond with any questions. I will tell you that tomorrow’s Crown Jewels will feature some less-than-great things about the offense, some promising things about the farm system and a weekend series preview, so if you’re into that stuff, I’ll probably answer those questions tomorrow.

Thomas Fuller said in 1650 that it’s always darkest before the dawn. Let’s, for our sanity’s sake, hope he was right.