The Heart of the Issue

The Royals offense is bad because it doesn't hit what it should and the Royals is pitching is bad because teams take advantage of them, though there might be hope there.

I wasn’t going to write today. Last night’s game had nothing interesting to discuss. Brad Keller had a rare (for this season) bad outing while the Royals offense was mostly quiet once again. Outside of Keller struggling, nothing was especially new for them. I thought that maybe there was a glimmer of hope when the Rangers opened a door for the Royals with a couple errors and the Royals actually walked through that door, but the offense went back to silent for the last couple of innings and it was yet another loss.

But I woke up this morning thinking that, anecdotally, it sure feels like the Royals don’t do damage on the pitches they’re supposed to and their opponents take more advantage of the pitches they’re supposed to, so I wanted to dig in. I feel like I should put an explicit content warning up because this is kind of jarring stuff.

First, here’s a quick reminder of what I mean when I’m about to talk about pitches over the heart of the plate.

It’s those fat pitches that are not only strikes but hittable strikes you see right there in the middle.

Offense

The Royals, as a team, have hit .233 with a .348 slugging percentage on pitches in the heart of the plate. Both those numbers rank 30th. If you’ve forgotten, there are 30 teams total. You might think, ‘well maybe they’ve underperformed.’ And if you’ve watched any games all season, you’d have heard the announcers discuss how often they just hit into buzzard’s luck. And they have underperformed, so that’s perfectly fair. Their xBA on pitches over the heart of the plate is .274 and their xSLG is .480. Great! Wait, nope. Those still rank 30th.

Not to rub salt in the wound, but they rank 30th in homers on pitches over the heart of the plate. They also rank 30th in doubles, but this one is even more disturbing. They have 11 doubles on pitches over the heart of the plate. They hit in a park that is designed for a hitter to sneeze and get a double and they have 11 on pitches they’re supposed to crush. Those 11 doubles are nine fewer than the second-lowest total. They do have three triples which is tied for fifth, so I guess that’s something, huh?

By Pitch Type

Fastballs: .228 average (29th, ahead of the Dodgers of all teams), .276 xBA (30th), .333 SLG (30th by a lot), .488 xSLG (30th)

Offspeed: .140 average (30th), .228 xBA (30th), .256 SLG (30th), .383 xSLG (29th)

Breaking: .279 average (12th, okay, I see you breaking balls), .286 xBA (20th), .414 SLG (26th), .499 xSLG (25th)

On the bright side, it’s every pitch. I know that number 12 ranking in breaking ball batting average might feel shiny by comparison, but that’s also just 7.9 percent of the pitches they’re seeing.

Getting to Average

Let me break it down to you everything they’re leaving on the table as an offense. The league average for pitches over the heart of the plate is a .291 average and .499 SLG. If the Royals could creep to just league average, they’d have 22 more hits in these situations and roughly 58 more total bases. Let’s say that comes in the form of four singles, 10 doubles and eight home runs. I know that’s not quite the right math with hits and total bases, but it’s fine. With 10 more doubles, they’d still rank tied for 26th. With eight more home runs, they’d still rank tied for 22nd.

That doesn’t make them a good offense, but it pulls them out of the bottom of the league in just about every area. I wonder how many runs that would add for them. Conservatively, I’d say 15, but maybe more like 20. Let’s call it 15. Instead of having 83 runs in 27 games, they’d have 98, which is still not good but at least closer to league average.

The good news is that it’s not every single player causing this mess.

The Players

A few guys are doing quite well in this category.

Salvador Perez is hitting .286 with a .714 SLG on pitches over the heart of the plate with five home runs. I don’t know why, but he sees pitches that fat 22 percent of the time. Why ever throw him a strike at all? I don’t know, but they do.

Hunter Dozier is hitting .324 with a .649 SLG. He has two doubles, two triples and two home runs. That will work. He sees pitches in the heart of the plate 28.3 percent of the time.

Edward Olivares in limited at bats has hit .357 with a .500 SLG and two doubles. He’s seeing those pitches 28.9 percent of the time, but I’d wager that number goes down when he gets back after opponents see that he can actually hit.

Andrew Benintendi with a .326 average and MJ Melendez with a .333 average have hit for average on those pitches without much power. It’s obviously early for Melendez, but Benintendi is showing that he might be more of a singles hitter than anything. Maybe he should hit leadoff like I suggested before the season.

Oh and Kyle Isbel, who doesn’t play because of Ryan O’Hearn partially, has hit .385 with a double in his limited time against pitches over the heart of the plate.

But unfortunately, the struggles are real.

Whit Merrifield has seen pitches in the heart of the plate 26.6 percent of the time. He’s hitting a gentleman’s .083 without an extra base hit. He is 4 for 48. I’ll let that settle for a second.

Carlos Santana is just 3 for 33 with a home run. Before he was hurt, he saw pitches in the heart of the plate 28.7 percent of the time.

The aforementioned Ryan O’Hearn has seen pitches in the heart 31 percent of the time, second most on the team. He’s hit .154 with no extra base hits.

Bobby Witt Jr. has hit .175, going 7 for 40 on pitches in the heart of the plate. He does have two doubles and a triple at least, but that’s just brutal for the youngster.

Michael A. Taylor has done a much better job with the zone this year, but he’s hitting just .219 on pitches over the heart with one home run.

And not surprisingly, Adalberto Mondesi struggled over the heart of the plate, going 3 for 17 before his season ended with the ACL injury.

A couple of others like Emmanuel Rivera and Cam Gallagher have also struggled, but they have very few plate appearances.

The point here is that you can talk all you want about hitting this pitch or that pitch or whatever, but if you can’t hit the pitch that the pitcher regrets throwing immediately after he lets go of the ball, none of it matters. My bold prediction is this will turn around. I don’t think they’ll be a top offense or anything, but at some point, they’re going to regress to the mean and get some big hits on mistakes. The longer this goes, the less confident I’ll feel on that, but I still think they’ve got some good hitters who are hitting poorly. They have plenty of bad hitters too, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not all just a bad offense. I still think they need new instruction but that wouldn’t change much in the short term anyway.

Pitching

Now let’s turn to the pitching side because the offense isn’t hitting these pitches, but the pitchers are giving up tons of hits on them. They’ve allowed a .329 average on pitches over the heart of the plate with a .332 xBA. Those rank 27th and 23rd respectively. They’ve done a better job of not allowing slug with a .525 SLG ranking 22nd and an xSLG of .619 ranking 19th. I think Statcast may need to recalibrate some of their expected stats for the gooshy ball. Yes, gooshy.

The slugging part is where Royals pitchers have fared well. They’ve only allowed 15 homers over the heart of the plate, which is tied for fifth-fewest. They’ve allowed 23 doubles, tied for sixth-fewest, but they have allowed the most triples with five, tied with a few other teams. So they’re getting hurt by singles mostly, which is maybe more annoying because of the whole death by a thousand paper cuts idea. They’ve actually allowed the ninth-lowest average exit velocity on pitches over the heart of the plate too.

By Pitch Type

Fastballs: .402 average (30th, oof), .378 xBA (29th), .660 SLG (30th), .745 xSLG (28th)

Offspeed: .320 average (23rd), .248 xBA (25th), .560 SLG (22nd), .753 xSLG (29th)

Breaking: .251 average (7th), .279 xBA (6th), .374 SLG (4th), .463 xSLG (2nd)

Now we’re getting somewhere. Fastballs and offspeed pitches that miss in the zone have been tattooed. But look at those breaking balls. And guess who throws the highest percentage of breaking balls in the heart of the plate. It’s the Royals. This might be the first encouraging thing I’ve seen of how they call pitches. I know that nobody is calling for them to throw something down the middle outside of a 3-0 count where they assume the hitter is taking, but utilizing a pitch that’s working is actually smart and something I wouldn’t have anticipated. Good for them.

Getting to Average

This one is less of a kick to the head since they’re not head and shoulders worse than the rest of the league like the offense is. We know the league is hitting .291 and slugging .491 on pitches over the heart of the plate. To get there, Royals pitchers would have had to allow 15 fewer hits and 11 fewer total bases. So they’re actually not that far away. Obviously it’s impossible to allowed 11 fewer total bases with 15 fewer hits, but the key here to me is stop throwing the fastball down the middle!

I know, I know, easier said than done, but that’s the biggest problem with this pitching staff. This is a much deeper dive than even this one is, but I wonder how many of these fastballs down the middle came after a bunch of foul balls with two strikes where the pitcher just wanted to end that plate appearance.

Anyway, let’s head to the culprits and the heroes.

The Players

Boy Brad Keller has been good. He had a bad outing last night, but he’s allowed just a .180 average on pitches in the no-no zone. He has allowed three of his four home runs, so that’s obviously a problem, but that average with a .361 SLG will work.

It’s a small sample, but Amir Garrett hasn’t allowed a hit on a pitch down the middle yet this year in seven at bats that ended on them.

Dylan Coleman has been good too, allowing a .200 average and .400 SLG with a home run allowed in 20 at bats.

Gabe Speier has allowed just one single in 10 at bats on these pitches.

Taylor Clarke has allowed three singles and a double in 19 at bats on pitches over the heart. He’s been really good for this team.

Daniel Lynch sort of sits in the middle with a .279 average allowed and a .512 SLG. That’s roughly league average or within a standard deviation, so I’ll give him some credit there.

I’ll include a couple more in the success stories. Brady Singer with the .308 average and .385 SLG looks pretty solid. We know he can miss in the middle at times. And Zack Greinke has given up a lot of hits in the middle with a .345 average, but a .436 SLG is pretty solid too.

I’m a lot happier with the pitching staff here than I expected to be. Of course, as Merrifield would say, it’s not all peaches and roses.

Collin Snider has been very good for the Royals, but he has to live on the edges because when he doesn’t, he’s allowed a .583 average and .750 SLG.

This will surprise nobody, but Kris Bubic has been abused in the heart of the plate with a .533 average allowed and 1.000 SLG. He’s allowed five of the 23 doubles and three of the 15 home runs. Removing Bubic alone gets the Royals to roughly average.

Jake Brentz was hit hard before his injury and Joel Payamps has been hit hard too.

But the biggest surprise for me is Scott Barlow, who has gotten crushed in the middle of the zone, allowing a .389 average and .722 SLG. He was able to get away with these pitches last year, allowing a .274 average and .462 SLG in the heart of the zone. His expected numbers this year are closer to his expected numbers from last year, so maybe that changes soon, but that was a surprise to me.

Ultimately, as I said, I think the pitching is actually better off than I expected in this realm. Yes they’ve been hit hard, but they’re tied for the ninth-lowest percentage of their pitches going over the heart of the plate. So sure they struggle with the fastball there but they aren’t throwing it that often. And truly, remove Bubic from the equation and the pitching staff isn’t getting that hurt by the pitches down the middle. Still, a staff sitting around average might have allowed maybe 10-15 runs fewer. If you couple with that with the offense giving away 15-20 runs, you’re looking at anywhere from two to four more wins for this team. Wouldn’t 13-14 feel a lot better?

I’m not saying that’s their talent level, but these are the wins they’re giving away by doing a poor job on pitches over the heart of the plate on both sides. I hope the hitting gets better in this regard. Last year they ranked 10th in average, 26th in SLG and 13th in average exit velocity. We know they don’t have much power, but this isn’t that different of an offense. You’d think they could rebound a little bit. But until they do, they’re likely to face more lean nights hitting.