Crown Jewels: Roster Battles After a Week, Strikeouts and Walks and More on Bally

We're less than four weeks to Opening Day. They grow up so fast.

When we last met for Crown Jewels, the Royals hadn’t yet played a spring training game. Now they’ve played seven and won five/six of them. Wins and losses are so unimportant in spring training because of the way that games can be won (like Wednesday’s in the ninth with all minor leaguers), but winning is more fun than losing. And while the team will lose a few players to the World Baseball Classic for a couple of weeks or so, we’re about to start seeing more innings thrown, more at bats taken and less time for players we won’t hear about in reference to the big league team. That’s a good thing. It seems like we’re about ready to also enter the “ugh another spring training game” portion of the spring in a few days, so be ready for that!

I wrote about the newest voice of the Royals, Jake Eisenberg, when the announcement was made that Steve Physioc was retiring, but I want to make a special note before I get into the notes that man is he good. He and Ryan Lefebvre on play-by-play for a radio broadcast is just so clean to listen to. I sometimes get frustrated with Lefebvre because it feels like he’s not using all the tools at his disposal when seemingly refusing to even check the exit velocity or when talking about general advanced stats, but in purely calling a game, I think he’s great. I think Eisenberg is great. My wife and I were driving last weekend and I turned the game on and she was just in awe of how pleasant it was to listen to the broadcast with two guys who actually let you know what’s happening in the game, so I’m thankful for that and looking forward to many years of Jake calling games.

But new yesterday, the Royals are also going to have Mike Sweeney and Jeremy Guthrie in the booth. I was pleasantly surprised with Sweeney last year in a quick listen when he was filling in and Guthrie has been pretty good when I’ve heard him on the Amazon broadcasts, I think. It’s nice to get some fresh voices in a broadcast booth that needs them badly. And that’s not even a knock on the current group because it’s just been a long time without a refresh.

Updating the Roster Battles

I’ll have a new roster projection up probably next week, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t take a look at what a few of the guys who are in roster battles have been up to in the first week of spring. A good chunk of players are set in their spots. I think we know that Hunter Dozier, Kyle Isbel, Nicky Lopez, MJ Melendez, Edward Olivares, Vinnie Pasquantino, Salvador Perez and Bobby Witt Jr. are locks on the position player side (assuming health, of course). But that leaves five spots to fill out the 13 position players. Drew Waters will be part of this group too, but he isn’t expected back until late April at the earliest.

Here are the top candidates with their way too small sample spring stats:

• Matt Beaty - 9 PA, .333/.333/.333, 0 BB, 1 K

• Johan Camargo - 10 PA, .100/.100/.200, 0 BB, 3 K

• Matt Duffy - 9 PA, .444/.444/.556, 0 BB, 1 K

• Nate Eaton - 9 PA, .333/.333/.333, 0 BB, 2 K

• Freddy Fermin - 5 PA, .333/.600/1.333, 2 BB, 0 K

• Maikel Garcia - 8 PA, .750/.750/1.250, 0 BB, 0 K

• Michael Massey - 9 PA, .222/.222/.222, 0 BB, 3 K

• Franmil Reyes - 8 PA, .333/.500/.833, 2 BB, 3 K

You can’t learn anything from that other than that Garcia appears to be starting the Olivares spring from last year, which is fun. I’ll be interested to see how he looks in the outfield. Knowing he’s being given a real shot to make this roster is interesting and hopefully he keeps taking full advantage of that chance. I’m still sticking with Reyes, Massey, Eaton and Duffy for sure, but I’m less confident on that final spot and thinking maybe Fermin? All you can ask is that the Royals are forced into making a decision and some guys are doing just that.

A little wrinkle was introduced on Wednesday evening when the Royals announced they’d signed Jackie Bradley Jr. to a minor league deal with an invite to spring training. That’s not too surprising after Waters and Diego Hernandez were both injured. It leaves the team with one true center fielder who is on the 40-man roster and healthy. I’ll be curious to see if he has enough time to get ready to go, now being a full two weeks behind everyone else and if he’s able to beat out the rest for a roster spot. I would hope he’d be used sparingly if he does make the team and I don’t quite see the rationale with Eaton available as a defensive replacement and JBJ being a lefty who can’t even really platoon with Isbel, but I get it from a defensive depth standpoint.

For pitchers, there are fewer open spots, but also more competition for the spots that are open. We know that Scott Barlow, Aroldis Chapman, Dylan Coleman, Amir Garrett, Zack Greinke, Brad Keller, Jordan Lyles, Brady Singer and Ryan Yarbrough are on the team and I think we know that Daniel Lynch is basically there. So that leaves three spots and likely none in the rotation with one of Keller or Yarbrough taking up one of the two “open” spots and Lynch with the other.

The real candidates to fill the other spots are Max Castillo, Taylor Clarke, Jose Cuas, Jonathan Heasley, Carlos Hernandez, Richard Lovelady, Collin Snider, Josh Taylor, Ryan Weiss and Nick Wittgren. If I had to guess, I’d say the final three will be filled by Clarke, Hernandez and Taylor, but some of that is just by process of elimination. Kris Bubic hasn’t pitched yet and isn’t scheduled for today, which seems odd to me. I’d have Clarke as a lock if he had been out there yet, but he had a small injury.

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So far from what I’ve heard, Hernandez has looked great and even though he’s likely to be given another option, he might be on track for the bullpen. I have also heard nothing but rave reviews about Weiss, who I kind of thought of as an afterthought when he was removed from the 40-man, but he apparently looks like a potential weapon, so that’s interesting. I think guys like Lovelady and Snider and Cuas have a bit of an uphill battle for this roster just because of the veterans, but if any veteran is vulnerable, it’s Taylor, just because of the fact that he hasn’t pitched since 2021. He’s only thrown two innings, so far, but I think he would be the easiest to supplant by someone.

Strikeouts, Walks and Improvement

We all know that spring stats can be fool’s gold, but two of the stats that do tend to stabilize quicker than other are strikeouts and walks. And, especially on the pitching side, that happens to be the biggest focus for the team this spring. And where spring is difficult is when you look at total team stats because some guys, unfortunately, just don’t matter much. So it’s important to take some things with a grain of salt. I looked at pitchers who I think have a shot to have an impact with this team in 2023 and counted 18 of them who have pitched this spring.

Combined, those 18 have walked 12 batters and struck out 40 for a walk rate of 8 percent and a strikeout rate of 26 percent. Look, it’s spring and this isn’t taking into account who these pitchers actually faced, so there are obviously huge caveats, but those numbers were 9.4 percent and 19.1 percent in 2022. That’s exactly what you want to see. Spring stats aren’t regular season stats, but they’re also the only stats we have, so if we’re going to look at them, better that they’re good than bad.

I always think hitting and pitching are a little different, and maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like the offense is more of an overarching philosophy with individual tweaks while pitching is very individualized. Still, I picked out 19 individual bats who I think are likely to help the 2023 squad and I count 20 walks and 31 strikeouts for a 12 percent walk rate and an 18.7 percent strikeout rate. They were at 7.7 percent and 21.4 percent last season. If what we’ve seen from guys like Witt, Isbel and some others are for real, this could quickly become a very frustrating lineup to face.

The individual numbers are a crazy small sample, but guys like Isbel with three walks in 12 plate appearances (and four strikeouts) are encouraging. Witt with just one strikeout in 11 plate appearances is encouraging. Tyler Gentry with three walks and no strikeouts in nine plate appearances is very encouraging for someone who I think could be a big part of the roster soon. It’s just nice to see the offense do what we see other offenses do, even if it is just Cactus League. They’re currently at or very close to the top in all the offensive slash stats, which is not something we’re accustomed to when watching the Royals.

And if you’re wondering about some way too early team stats, the Royals lead all teams in spring with a .934 OPS (Boston is second at .899). Their .325 average is first by 11 points over the Rangers. Their .400 OBP is second, just .002 behind Oakland. And their .534 SLG is 14 points ahead of Boston. They’re also 10 for 11 in steals. It’s just spring, but again, good is still better than bad.

Watching the Royals

I get a decent number of questions in my life about the Royals and baseball in general, but over the last month to month and a half, I think the one thing I’ve been asked the most is how to watch the Royals in 2023. The easy answer is you get a service that offers Bally Sports or you pay their ridiculous $20 monthly fee to stream it. But that answer has become a lot more difficult with the likely bankruptcy filing. I am not even going to remotely pretend to know enough about this to tell you the business ramifications. But there are some new developments that I find interesting.

I believe teams have until March 31 to back out of their agreements with Bally, which is kind of interesting because it’s the day after Opening Day. The league has said they have a plan in the likely event that games won’t be broadcast by the current partner, but we haven’t heard what that plan is yet. It sounds like everyone is pretty confident there won’t be any issues, and in the last couple of days, it seems like the league has taken some steps to make sure there are no broadcast interruptions.

MLB has added three executives to its local media department this week. Doug Johnson was part of AT&T SportsNet in Pittsburgh. Greg Pennell was in operational and finance roles for Fox Sports Networks and Bally. And Kendall Burges was VP of Technical Operations for Bally. This is after Billy Chambers came on board at the start of February in a newly created position after spending more than 20 years with Sinclair Broadcasting (they own Bally) and Fox Sports Media Group. Why do we care about these people? I think it’s because they know what they’re doing and can make it possible for us to watch our favorite teams without any more interruption than figuring out what channel.

So for all those asking how we can watch the Royals in 2023, my answer is that I don’t know, but from talking with people and reading the articles, I’m very confident we can watch them. And maybe more of us. As I wrote a few weeks ago, I think this will be a long-term great development for the game and for fans. It might cause some headaches for the teams in the short-term, but for once, I feel like I weirdly have faith in MLB to figure this out and get it right. I hope that faith is rewarded.