Roster Projection 2: Position Players

Spring training is here and so is my second roster projection. Today, we start with the position players.

A little more than a month ago, I put out my first roster projection, which was way earlier than normal but I thought it would actually be more fun to see how things progressed if I started before the offseason ended. Since then, the Royals traded two of the 13 position players I had on the roster, which brought a lot more clarity to where some guys will be playing. Ultimately, it looks like there aren’t at on of position battles, but there are some intriguing roster decisions to be made. Are certain players ticketed for a backup role or will they be optioned to have a chance to get regular work in AAA?

Where there’s something of a difficulty for people like me doing this is that we don’t really know what kind of a manager Matt Quatraro is going to be. We know where he’s worked and who he’s learned from, but he hasn’t done it yet. And that leaves us guessing a little bit. We do know that he’s talked about using his bench more than Mike Matheny (and Ned Yost) did. I think he’ll want to rotate the designated hitter role some, which also opens up some playing time. I always think about it this way. If there are, say, six players for five spots, all six can play in 80 percent of the games. That’s a 130-game season. Is that “regular” playing time? I don’t know, but there are ways to work the roster to get guys playing a lot even if they aren’t out there every single day.

So it’s a challenge. For this week’s projection I’m going to use the ZiPS projections from Dan Szymborski on Fangraphs as the stats I show.

Catchers

Salvador Perez - .267/.310/.499, 124 wRC+, 3.1 zWAR

The Royals starting catching job is one of the easiest in the world to predict. How they handle their catchers this year is going to be very interesting though. Assuming full health, Perez will catch at least 100 games. He’ll probably want to catch 165 out of a possible 162, but he’ll get plenty of time at designated hitter as he has the last two seasons. So the question then becomes who catches when he doesn’t? The Royals have two other players listed at catcher on the 40-man roster, but one of them is likely the starter in left field, so do they dare play each day with both of their catchers on the field? It’s a risk for sure.

I just needed to make a decision, so I decided that the Royals will not start the year with Freddy Fermin on the active roster. It’s a risk for any individual game if something happens, but they’ll just need to cover a few innings before they can call Fermin up. I think the plan is going to be for Salvy to play basically two-thirds of the game behind the plate and DH the rest and with MJ Melendez capable of coming in from the outfield and the likely “regular” DH being an outfielder, I think this will work out pretty well in terms of playing time. Where things will get iffy is if certain prospects start knocking on the door, but that’s a good problem to have.

Infield

Vinnie Pasquantino - .275/.352/.474, 132 wRC+, 2.7 zWAR

Michael Massey - .253/.304/.400, 96 wRC+, 1.5 zWAR

Hunter Dozier - .240/.305/.416, 102 wRC+, 0.9 zWAR

Bobby Witt Jr. - .265/.313/.462, 114 wRC+, 3.5 zWAR

Nicky Lopez - .263/.323/.337, 88 wRC+, 1.6 zWAR

Matt Duffy - .266/.331/.340, 93 wRC+, 0.6 zWAR

As it stands right now, Pasquantino is the first baseman and Witt is the shortstop. The rest, to me, is up for grabs. I know that they spoke at Royals Rally last week and said that Dozier is the third baseman and I believe them. I also think that he has a tenuous hold on that spot at best. My guess is the plan with him is similar to the plan they had with Carlos Santana in 2022. Play him, hope he gets hot and hope you can move him for something. I’ve said in comments here that I don’t think Dozier is on this team on August 1, one way or another. We’ll see if that’s true. What we know is he’s been a butcher at third base his whole career and especially bad by the metrics the last two seasons. We’ll see how it goes, but I think that’s why they brought in Duffy, who isn’t special defensively, but he at least has been good there at times.

If you’re asking me for my August 1 roster projection today, I’ll say it includes Witt at third base and Maikel Garcia at shortstop, but I don’t believe that’s how they’ll line up to start. The Royals brought in Jose Alguacil to shape up the infield, but whether anyone will say it or not, I think Witt is his most important student. Witt, at times, looked like he could play shortstop forever in the big leagues. More often, though, he struggled. The eye test showed it and the metrics showed it. But this is an evaluation season and if Witt wants to play shortstop, I am more than fine with them giving him a chance to play his preferred position and either make him prove he can stay there or prove to him that he shouldn’t. The best alignment has him at third and Garcia at short and I think they’ll get there, but it’ll be a bit.

So the third base situation is, to me, why you see what looks like a redundancy with Duffy and Lopez on the same roster. They’re not the same player but they both are light hitters. We’ve seen both post solid OBPs in 2021 and Duffy actually had a 103 wRC+ from 2015 through 2021, so maybe it’s not fair to lump them together. Still, it feels like they’re going a little heavy-handed there, but they love Lopez on the field and in the clubhouse and I think the organization has some reservations about Massey defensively even though he does have a very good reputation.

My thought is Massey’s biggest issue is his arm and him not even being allowed to play in short right will help that some. But second base is going to be a competition between him and Lopez (and maybe Duffy I guess). If Massey loses that competition, I’d guess he goes to AAA rather than to the bench. I just don’t think he’ll lose the competition. I feel the least confident about this group of any, including relievers who I’ll get to tomorrow with the pitchers.

Outfield

MJ Melendez - .243/.319/.461, 117 wRC+, 1.5 zWAR

Kyle Isbel - .238/.299/.380, 90 wRC+, 1.6 zWAR

Drew Waters - .246/.310/.397, 99 wRC+, 1.8 zWAR

Edward Olivares - .263/.320/.404, 104 wRC+, 1.2 zWAR

Nate Eaton - .243/.308/.365, 90 wRC+, 0.9 zWAR

Matt Beaty - .262/.336/.369, 102 wRC+, 0.0 zWAR

This is the most interesting group of the bunch to me. The first four on here are locks, assuming health, and I think their versatility is really interesting for this team. Melendez is a corner outfielder and catcher and we’ll find out just how good he is at both spots this year. He’s also going to factor in at DH some, maybe at home a lot as the Royals try to maximize their defense playing in their big outfield. But I do expect to see big improvement there from what he was in 2022 when he was learning the outfield as he was learning the big leagues. That was an…interesting choice they made.

Center field is going to be a battle between Isbel and Waters, but I’m not entirely sure Isbel is a starter if he isn’t the center fielder. I may be wrong there, but I believe the Royals are concerned his bat doesn’t play well enough in right field while Drew Waters might be able to hit enough for a corner outfield spot. Maybe they’ll just go defense-heavy anyway and, as I said with Melendez, they might do that a fair amount anyway, but I think it ends up with Isbel in center and Waters in right because of that.

And defensively, Isbel showed a lot in 2022. He only had 60 attempts in center field, but he was three outs above average (along with six OAA in right and three in left). By the metrics, Isbel gets the best jumps in baseball. His speed is above average but not quite enough for center, but the jumps negate that and make him excellent. I think Isbel will be an interesting litmus test for a lot of the fans who were up in arms about Brett Phillips getting traded because Isbel was every bit the defender Phillips was in 2022. The power potential isn’t as prevalent for Isbel, but he did hit .276/.337/.434 in 83 plate appearances in the big leagues in 2021 and .275/.366/.482 in AAA in 2021 in his last 80ish games after making some adjustments. I don’t know what happened in 2022 (I’m thinking I might dig into that soon), but it’s not like there’s no offensive potential with him.

Waters had a strong big league showing with a .240/.324/.479 line but he did strike out a lot. He also walked a lot, so that’s something. He didn’t look great defensively but he’s a good defender, so I’m not too worried about that. If the Royals hitting team can help him slash even five percent of his strikeouts, I’d feel pretty good about him starting for this team. If not, there are a couple of interesting options in Olivares and Eaton. My guess is Olivares is the “regular” designated hitter even though he’ll play the field quite a bit.

He was the darling of spring training, finally got some playing time and was hitting well and then missed a bunch of time with a quad injury. He came back, hit two homers in his first game and then hurt his other quad. In the end, he hit .286/.333/.410 in 174 plate appearances but was just at .258/.292/.371. If he’s healthy, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see him at the top of the lineup against lefties who he hit .283/.340/.565 against. Maybe there’s a platoon situation with Beaty who has a career .252/.324/.412 line against righties. That’s part of why I have him on the roster even in a lineup full of lefties. Beaty is a nice complement to Olivares and Dozier to some extent as well. I can see scenarios where Beaty pinch hits for Dozier and Duffy enters the game defensively quite a bit, at least early in the year.

And I went out of order, but they also have Eaton who was a wizard defensively in the outfield (not so much at third) and did post a .264/.331/.387 line with a bunch of steals in 122 plate appearances. He can play the outfield when the Royals decide they want to have the all-defense look out there, but he can also come in as a late-inning replacement or as a pinch runner for some guys. The only question is if they want him playing every day, but I think the beauty of someone like Eaton is I don’t think he’s someone the Royals are counting on to be a key cog but rather a role player, so maybe they’re comfortable with him getting used to that.

Lineup

I think we’ll see a bit more movement with platoons, so I’ll give you two lineups here:

vs. RHP

Melendez
Witt
Pasquantino
Perez
Olivares/Beaty
Waters
Massey
Dozier
Isbel

vs. LHP

Olivares
Witt
Pasquantino
Perez
Melendez (whoops, had Oli here originally, thanks Alex Duvall!)
Dozier
Waters
Massey
Isbel

It’s all kind of a shot in the dark right now, but that lineup has a chance to produce pretty well. I’m at least intrigued by it, which is more than we’ve been able to say at this point in the offseason a lot. Tomorrow I’ll attack the pitching staff!