Supporting Michael A. Taylor's Bat

The Royals center fielder plays the elite defense you want every day, but only if the supporting cast is good enough to let his bat not be a problem.

When the Royals signed Michael A. Taylor to a one-year deal for less than $2 million at the end of November in 2020, my thought was that maybe he’d be a fourth outfielder. For that money, it’s not bad to get a defensive wizard signed as insurance while you search for a better starting option. I knew that was wishful thinking, but it’s something I held onto for a long time throughout the offseason. It wasn’t until mid-February that I decided that my optimism was not rooted in reality and Taylor would be the guy in center just about every day in 2021.

And of course, from there, the stories about his re-worked swing and better approach started. I guess this is your early reminder that spring stories put out by the team are almost always out there to promote optimism. Keep that in mind when you hear about how good Ryan O’Hearn looks in batting practice (Q: Why do I keep picking on him? A: Because why not?). But it gets a little tougher to work through what’s real and what isn’t in spring when guys do as well as Taylor did. He hit .333/.438/.615 with eight walks, which was more walks than he drew in 2019 or 2020.

That led to some legitimate optimism that was carried over into the regular season when Taylor homered in the first two games of the year and had hits in each of the first seven. Unfortunately, a career .237/.291/.395 hitter coming into his age-30 season wasn’t likely to actually improve as much as the spring stats and the rhetoric would indicate. Taylor ended up with a year right in line with his past three. His wRC+ of 77 was the second-highest of his career, but pretty much where he had been every year but his surprisingly good 2017.

His ISO, though, was just .112, which was the worst of his career (though his ISO in 2019 was .114, so that’s basically the same). Among qualified hitters, his wRC+ was fifth-worst. The .112 ISO was 12th-worst. His wOBA was fourth-worst. By some more traditional stats, his OBP was ninth-worst, his SLG sixth-worst and his total offensive value (according to Fangraphs) was sixth-worst (by the way, Carlos Santana was fifth-worst. Woof.).

And yet, here I am to make the case for Taylor. And you know why. He was one of the best defenders in all of baseball, patrolling center field in the park with the most square footage in the outfield in the American League. With young pitching that really benefits from having an elite defender in center field. Don’t get me wrong, I’d much prefer the Royals have an elite defender who can also hit, but the reality is that the problem in the Royals lineup in 2021 wasn’t Taylor but rather the fact that there were too many hitters who were on par with him for too much of the season.

Teams can win with an offensive hole in their lineup. The Astros gave Martin Maldonado 426 plate appearances and he hit .172/.272/.300. They had the best offense in baseball. Randal Grichuk had 545 plate appearances for the Blue Jays and had a wRC+ of 85. They had the second-best offense in baseball. The Twins gave Andrelton Simmons 451 plate appearances that were worse than Taylor’s and they had a 101 wRC+ as a team. So the point is that you can score runs and hit with a guy like Taylor in your lineup.

The problem is that Taylor was surrounded by two other players with 400 or more plate appearances who ranked in the bottom 30 in wRC+ in baseball and another at 91. That’s four players with 400+ plate appearances who were below average offensively. Put it another way and only 30.9 percent of the plate appearances taken by Royals hitters were from players with an average or better wRC+. That’s a problem, but it’s not Taylor’s problem.

He should be hitting eighth or ninth in a lineup. In 2021, he started and hit ninth just three times. He started and hit eighth 61 times. If you want to argue that maybe seventh isn’t that bad (it probably is), he started and hit there 48 times. Then there were 20 times hitting sixth and four times hitting fifth, which is just…wow.

The average American League team scored 4.6 runs per game. How good does the rest of the Royals lineup have to be for Taylor to legitimately be the worst hitter in the lineup and still get to within shouting distance of 4.6 runs per game? Actually, let’s forget runs and go with average slash stats. The Royals, as a team, hit .249 last year. The league average was .245. That’s the end of the good news. The Royals OBP was 10 points below league average. And their SLG was 19 points below. They scored 4.23 runs per game.

Let’s see where they struggled the most.

If you’re unfamiliar with a chart like this, sOPS+ is what I’m looking at as that’s the number relative to the league average for that position. Just a quick glance and you can see why the conversation is about improving areas around Taylor in the hopes that you can keep his bat in the lineup for his defense. In spite of Royals’ center fielders showing an OPS of just 11 points higher than first base, the sOPS+ is 17 points higher. It just shows how much harder it is to find offense in center, mostly because teams are concerned with defense there and rightfully so.

First Base

Royals first basemen were led largely by Carlos Santana and hit .222/.317/.347 as a group. That OPS+ relative to the league for first basemen was 70. Guys, that’s bad. Aside from Santana, the other culprits there were Hunter Dozier and Ryan O’Hearn. Emmanuel Rivera and Kelvin Gutierrez did each get a game there, but it was just those three outside of those two games.

Where does the improvement come?

This is hope-based, but also rooted in some reality. Santana’s hip injury is what everyone is claiming destroyed his season and there is some statistical backup for it, I suppose. He was hitting .250/.382/.443 at the end of May and even .246/.368/.421 at the break. Given how hard the Royals seem to be pushing to move him, I think there’s a good chance he’s not on the team. So that leaves Dozier probably to start the year at first, and I sound like a broken record, but he hit .261/.339/.449 after the break and .272/.346/.576 in September/October.

The truth, though, is that the big hope is Nick Pratto. If he comes up and does what he did in Northwest Arkansas and Omaha in 2021, this position becomes a big plus. Pratto offers the potential power of Dozier’s September with the potential OBP of Santana’s first few months. How likely this is remains to be seen, but there is some fact-based optimism for first base to improve to at least league average.

Third Base

This was very much a group effort. Dozier, Hanser Alberto, Kelvin Gutierrez, Emmanuel Rivera and Adalberto Mondesi all had at least 20 games there. Dozier actually had his second best batting line of any position he played in 2021, but even that was just .226/.294/.446. He excelled at DH but basically nowhere else. Alberto had his moments, but didn’t hit well playing third and now he’s off the team. Gutierrez just can’t hit, which stinks because I thought he had a chance to be solid if he could learn to lift the ball.

And Mondesi had a brutal September, hitting .184/.215/.290 playing third. Maybe playing a new position hurt him. Or maybe he just struggles for months at a time because of his approach. Either way, it was bad. And Rivera just struggled as a rookie, though debuting and hurting your wrist in your second game and then coming back with an injury that saps power is tough.

Where does the improvement come?

This is a lot like first base. I wrote about the infield alignment on Tuesday this week and it wouldn’t be surprising at all if Bobby Witt Jr. is playing third. It’s relying on a rookie, but a rookie who is a consensus top-three prospect in all of baseball. I’m not going to rehash the whole Tuesday newsletter here, but where each plays can very much impact this whole exercise today. If Witt plays short and Mondesi plays third, does that remove Lopez from the lineup or does it move him to second with Whit Merrifield in right field? I’ll get to right in a bit, but I would say third base production should improve pretty significantly given how bad it was and how much talent should be playing there in 2022.

Right Field

Right, like third, was manned by a lot of different players, including a couple we’ve already seen on this list. Dozier and O’Hearn started 50 and 22 games respectively out there. That’s about half the games. Jorge Soler started another 46 and then it was a combination of Kyle Isbel, Merrifield, Edward Olivares and Jarrod Dyson. While Dyson struggled to hit, he only started seven games there. The main culprits were the first three listed.

There was a beacon of light in September with Isbel’s strong finish, but it was a very small sample. I'm an Olivares fan, but the organization doesn’t like his defense, which I totally get. And Dozier, well, the guy isn’t an outfielder. Sorry.

Where does the improvement come?

This is the one that isn’t quite as clear-cut as the infield spots. Isbel was very good in September, but in fewer than 50 plate appearances. Merrifield could end up there, but that’s a bat on the decline. I still think they should be searching for a free agent and if they gave Michael Conforto a big deal, I’d be elated. But while I think this spot will improve, it’s hard to say so with much certainty. I imagine we’ll see some combination of Isbel, Merrifield and Dozier out there. I have some optimism for the former and the latter, but Merrifield concerns me a bit with the decline we’ve seen from his bat the last couple years.

So if they can find a way to improve those three spots enough, that probably does support Taylor’s bat. The reality is that the three spots above both have internal improvement opportunities and are easier to find than a center fielder who can patrol it the way Taylor does. My concern outside of these three positions is that I think you’re going to see less production from Salvador Perez. It’s not that I don’t think he can’t continue to mash the ball, but 48 home runs seems unlikely for him. He’s the guy who carried the DH spot to be almost league average and I anticipate with the emergence of MJ Melendez that he will find himself in that spot quite a bit with Melendez as well, so maybe there’s a bit of a boost from the DH while the catcher spot drops some. The hope is that the other spots balance it all out.

The Royals offense, as a whole, is kind of a crapshoot. They’re relying on bounce-back seasons and young players, which absolutely can work out, but is no guarantee at all. Of all the positions where they were too far below league average, I think first is the one that I’m most confident they can get back to that level. Some combination of Santana, Dozier and adding Pratto is bound to be better and with so many options, they don’t have to stick with a struggling bat for too long.

But in order to support Taylor’s bat, they’ll need guys like Salvador Perez to continue to be above average and find someone to step up elsewhere. Maybe that’s Andrew Benintendi continuing what he did late in the season. Maybe it’s one of the young guys coming up and being a star right away. If they can improve by even 15 percent (which is a huge jump but still keeps them all below average) at each of the above three positions, I think this offense can work. Whatever it is, they can’t be running an sOPS+ of 70 at multiple positions again. They can play a guy for defense only, but they need better around him to make it work.