Roster Projection 1: The Pitchers

Yesterday I was way too early to start this. Today it's still way too early but on day less too early.

Jan 11, 2023

Projecting the position players for the 2023 Opening Day roster was kind of fun. The Royals have a lot of young talent at all levels of the field and I think that even if (when?) the season goes sideways, getting to see how Bobby Witt Jr., Vinnie Pasquantino, MJ Melendez and others progress will at least be an interesting storyline. The pitching, though, is a bit of a different story. I hold out some hope for this group. If you’re done scoffing and laughing, I’ll explain why, but it probably won’t come as any surprise to you unless this is literally your first time reading anything I’ve ever written. They rid themselves of arguably the worst pitching coach in baseball and replaced him with someone from one of the best organizations in baseball to develop pitching.

It’s really that simple for me. I’m willing to wait and see on any and all of these guys and hope that the damage that was done is reversible. And maybe it’s not, which would stink out loud, but I think it’s fair to think about what scouts say about this group of young pitchers and realize that it’s certainly possible better instruction makes them anywhere from usable to good. All that said, though, it may not. Sometimes guys are who they are. Fastballs are sometimes just straight and they can’t figure out how to spin them better. Sometimes a breaking ball just can’t be taught. So we’ll see, I guess, but I at least feel like you can understand why there’s reason for the most cautious of optimism.

Anyway, let’s get to that staff today to look at where they are RIGHT NOW. As with yesterday, I’ll talk about what the team could do and what I think they should do and I’ll include 2022 stats for all these guys with WAR coming from Fangraphs.

Starting Rotation

Brady Singer - 10-5, 153.1 IP, 3.23 ERA, 3.58 FIP, 24.2% K, 5.6% BB 2.9 WAR

Jordan Lyles - 12-11, 179.0 IP, 4.42 ERA, 4.40 FIP, 18.6% K, 6.7% BB, 1.4 WAR

Daniel Lynch - 4-13, 131.2 IP, 5.13 ERA, 4.63 FIP, 20.3% K, 8.7% BB, 0.7 WAR

Kris Bubic - 3-13, 129.0 IP, 5.58 ERA, 4.78 FIP, 18.7% K, 10.7% BB, 0.5 WAR

Ryan Yarbrough - 3-8, 80.0 IP, 4.50 ERA, 4.77 FIP, 17.2% K, 6.2% BB, 0.0 WAR

This is uninspiring, and even if Brian Sweeney is able to get more out of Lynch and Bubic, it’s uninspiring, but that’s sort of what you get with a couple of veteran retreads. This is also a group that I feel very uneasy projecting anyone but Singer and Lyles to be a part of moving forward. I think Lynch will be a starter for this club in 2023, but Bubic and Yarbrough are both guys who are probably not even quite 50/50, but I put their chances higher than some of the other guys.

Those other candidates include Max Castillo, Jonathan Heasley, Brad Keller, Jackson Kowar and Angel Zerpa. I guess Carlos Hernandez too, but I think the team really liked what they saw from Hernandez out of the bullpen and believe he’s a tweak or two away from being dominant. Of course, it was a different coaching staff, so maybe Matt Quatraro, Sweeney and Zach Bove see it differently. I could see a world where Heasley clicks with a new pitching coach and uses his fastball up in the zone and his breaking stuff works and he’s exciting as a starter. And I can see a world where a new staff gets the results out of Kowar that it seems like he should be getting already. So maybe they slide in for two of Bubic, Lynch and Yarbrough if things work out, but I’ll stick with this for now.

What They Could Do: The front office hasn’t shied away from saying they want to add another starter. Zack Greinke is the obvious choice, and if the price makes sense, I think they’ll sign him. Michael Wacha is still out there, but I get the sense he’s wanting to be paid for his very good 2022 and, of course, wants some of the iffy peripherals to be ignored in that contract. Other than them, the choices aren’t great. Dylan Bundy feels like another Lyles, but maybe less durable, though he did pitch very well as recently as 2020 with the Angels. They could reunite with Danny Duffy, but I think it’s fair to question the health there given that he hasn’t pitched in a big league game since July 16, 2021. He did throw 6.2 rehab innings late in 2022, I guess. Otherwise, you’re looking at guys like Michael Pineda and Anibal Sanchez. Meh.

There is the trade market, and the Royals do have some pieces they could move to loosen up some of their roster logjam issues. The Marlins just signed Johnny Cueto and apparently have made four of their starters available. Pablo Lopez is the best of the bunch, but they’re all intriguing in their own way. For example, do the Royals think they can get Trevor Rogers back to his 2.64 ERA/2.55 FIP of 2021 or is the 5.47/4.36 of 2022 the reality? Edward Cabrera pitched well in 14 starts in 2022, but also had some trouble with control and may have been fairly lucky on batted balls. And while Jesus Luzardo rebounded nicely, do the Marlins want more than the Royals should trade for him? I still think they should be pushing hard for Eric Lauer from Milwaukee, but I wonder if the Brewers would rather trade Adrian Houser, which I’m out on.

Some other names who have at least been out there either publicly or in some conversations I’ve had: Yusei Kikuchi, Yonny Chirinos, Jeffrey Springs, Jose Urquidy, Jake Odorizzi, Chris Flexen, Carlos Carrasco, Tylor Megill, Dakota Hudson and Anthony DeSclafani.

Bullpen

Scott Barlow - 74.1 IP, 2.18 ERA, 3.62 FIP, 26.6% K, 7.6% BB, 0.9 WAR

Dylan Coleman - 68.0 IP, 2.78 ERA, 3.88 FIP, 24.6% K, 12.8% BB, 0.4 WAR

Taylor Clarke - 49.0 IP, 4.04 ERA, 3.30 FIP, 23.6% K, 3.9% BB, 0.7 WAR

Josh Staumont - 37.2 IP, 6.45 ERA, 4.25 FIP, 24.4% K, 16.5% BB, 0.1 WAR

Amir Garrett - 45.1 IP, 4.96 ERA, 3.40 FIP, 25.0% K, 16.3% BB, 0.5 WAR

Richard Lovelady (2021) - 20.2 IP, 3.48 ERA, 3.85 FIP, 27.4% K, 7.1% BB, 0.2 WAR

Anthony Misiewicz - 29.0 IP, 4.34 ERA, 4.08 FIP, 22.3% K, 8.3% BB, 0.0 WAR

Brad Keller - 139.2 IP, 5.09 ERA, 4.50 FIP, 16.5% K, 9.2% BB, 0.7 WAR

Oh hey there, zero confidence in these names. It’s not that I don’t have confidence in them as a bullpen because I actually think they could be pretty good as a unit in 2023 with this group. It’s just that I don’t have any confidence it’ll be these eight. A lot can go sideways here with this group and it doesn’t even account for one of the starters ending up in the bullpen. I think Heasley may be a very good reliever, for example.

But I do think this group has some upside. We know Barlow can pitch. Coleman had a 2.35 ERA/2.66 FIP with a 7.4 percent walk rate after the break and a 27 percent strikeout rate. Clarke was solid, Staumont has been good in the past, but he’s a question mark and Garrett is…well he gets lefties out. I thought Misiewicz looked like he could be a part of a solid middle relief group and Lovelady looked like he had finally figured it out before his surgery in 2021. I question Keller quite a bit, but he’s here for now, so I have to find a spot. Long relief makes sense, I guess.

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But there is some huge competition that should take place during the spring. At this moment, I’d say Barlow and Coleman are locked in, but nobody else is guaranteed anything. As I said, many of the starting candidates could end up here. They’ve also signed Nick Wittgren and Mike Mayers to minor league deals. Wittgren was with Sweeney in Cleveland, so maybe there’s something there and I should assume he gets a spot. If he can recapture his 2018-2020 form, he could be the part of the late-inning crew. Of course, he’s been pretty bad the last two years. And I’m sure there’ll be other minor league deals inked as well even if they don’t sign anyone else.

What They Could Do: Oh, there’s about a million different things they could do here. They could clear out veterans like Clarke, Staumont, Garrett and Misiewicz and put in young starters to get them big league time pitching in relief. They could go out and sign any number of relievers still out there. The names include Archie Bradley, Andrew Chafin, Tyler Duffey, Michael Fulmer, Brad Hand, Ian Kennedy, Garrett Richards, Will Smith, Justin Wilson and Matt Wisler. There are probably more and maybe some of these have signed minor league deals that I missed, but there’s no shortage of pitchers out there who I don’t think would surprise anyone if they were part of a good big league bullpen in 2023. Relievers are volatile by nature, so you just never know.

They could swing a trade for any number of relievers you’ve probably never heard of and hope that Sweeney has the magic touch that other teams seem to have with castoff arms. Or they could kind of blow this up and go young and, I guess still hope that Sweeney has that magic touch. They could move Barlow and a bunch of veterans and let Coleman take over the ninth inning and sign some guys or give the spots to young pitchers or whatever they want to do. The bullpen is a spot where you can get pretty creative and still be successful. What’s tough is we don’t know what the aptitude of this coaching staff is for something like that. I think we felt pretty good that Dave Eiland could help guys succeed in the bullpen. And we felt pretty confident that Cal Eldred couldn’t. Where do Sweeney and Bove fall? I don’t know. Nobody does for sure.

What They Should Do: Of the eight pitchers listed above, five have options. The problem is that they’re not going to send Barlow or Coleman down and probably wouldn’t send Clarke down after the season he had last year. I mention the options because building depth is important. Matt Quatraro has reiterated that all offseason. I would advocate for signing any of the above free agents (other than maybe Kennedy, if we’re being honest) in order to create additional depth. I’m good with that.

I also think they should explore trading young players who project as role players (guys like Nate Eaton, even though I’m sure there’ll be some pushback on that) for young pitchers with big-time stuff. I’ve said this before, even up above in some way, but I believe we are conditioned to believe that the Royals staff can’t take on a pitcher with good stuff and turn them into something useful or even good if another team couldn’t do it. I don’t think that’s fair to assume anymore because of who is now on the big league staff. I’ll continue to use Eaton. He isn’t a star. If you project him as a super utility player and you can get a big arm with control, you trade him. These are the deals the Royals need to be looking toward in order to ease some position player logjams and add power to their bullpen.

But, more importantly than any of that, I think they need to be shopping Barlow pretty hard. Over the last two seasons, Barlow is 11th among all relievers in WAR, 12th in ERA, 32nd in FIP and 41st in strikeout percentage. He’s legitimately very good and would help literally every team in baseball. But there are signs of issues with his velocity decreasing and his strikeout rate following suit. Every team sees that too, but I think there are warning signs enough that they should be looking to move him sooner than later.

If he continues to perform or his velocity returns to start 2023, I don’t think his value is terribly different between now and July, but I think he can bring back a nice return from any number of teams. But given that he is only under team control through 2024 and is a reliever entering his age-30 season, holding on to him is another mistake with a reliever.

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There is certainly plenty of work to be done with this team. I don’t think we have any idea how much upside is on this pitching staff until we see what the new instruction can do for them, but there’s a non-zero chance we see big gains just from the changes in leadership. So that’s nice, but also, this staff needs to see some serious improvement and fast because the names and numbers aren’t what you’d call encouraging.