24 Comments

This was highly informative, David. Thanks for doing all the work and the deep dive research! As usual I find myself thinking, "Man, I hope that David turns out to be right about this!"

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I'm honestly not even sure if you want me to be right. I didn't get into Massey or Isbel or Pratto, but I'm not real sure they'll figure it out. I will say that I have more confidence in Melendez and Pratto just because they know a ball from a strike and then Witt is an athletic freak who might be able to fake it long enough. But I don't know how many I think will actually figure things out. I think we know Vinnie is legit, which is at least something.

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I think what I was trying to get at is that I hope it's a sophomore slump and nothing more than that. The term "slump" implies a temporary drop in performance from which a player will presumably recover. That's what I was hoping you were right about!

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Oh sure. And I think at least a couple will just be a slump. I think a couple probably won't be, but that's why you throw numbers at it.

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Very informative indeed. Surprisingly, it doesn’t make me feel any better. Mainly because I’m looking at OBP with Witt more than anything. Vinny, I feel even better about. Even if his numbers are down his walk rate is up. Very, very confident he’s going to be good. It’s still a small sample size with Witt…but I am pretty confident in saying his plate discipline has still not improved. I am however, very much a believer in sophomore slumps ever since my fav Beltran had his. Probably should have given it more consideration but oh well. Maybe they just need 1500 at bats.

If I hear they need 1500 AB’s from the front office.…fire JJ now.

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Witt absolutely needs to be better at identifying the pitch to hit. On the plus side, his chase rate is down almost a full percentage point (still not enough but going the right way). But the issue he's having is that he's making more contact when he chases. Generally that's a bad thing, unless there are two strikes, of course. His batted ball profile doesn't allow for as high of a BABIP as you'd expect from someone with his speed, but .250 is also flukey low. And I also go back to what I wrote. Five days ago, it looked like he had unlocked something. Four bad games later, everyone is worried. I just think we need to figure out what's noise and what's not.

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You are right. It’s still early..but not as early as it used to be. I think the problem is this team is such a dumpster fire right now that we are all in the anything that can go wrong will go wrong. What is truly amazing here is that and while this team wasn’t going to contend, somehow I feel like I got sold a bill of goods. How is that possible? Lol. They said it wasn’t the year…but I always felt like they were implying next year would be. Maybe I read too much into it….maybe it was just blind hope. I just don’t see a way they don’t have to tear this thing to the studs and start again. Keep Witt, Melendez, and Vinny for all care at this point. But there just isn’t enough surrounding them for next year to be the year either. They need about 3 other (MLB average to above average) hitters…probably 4 with injuries and depth. They need about 3 other (MLB average to above average starting pitchers). Reality is starting to set it David….its starting to set in. These guys are all on the service time clock. I just don’t know what they can do. Please Singer and Barlow (starting to) regain some trade value!!!!

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I don't think they'll have to tear it down, but I think the window with *these* players is going to be shorter than it should have been. I also think it's important to know that all the young hitters other than Witt aren't even eligible for free agency until after 2028. As always, the development pipeline has to produce beyond just one core. If it doesn't, it won't matter much.

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Yeah for whatever reason, the sophomore slump is a thing....

On a separate note. Lots of people were calling for and or expecting some roster changes. Nothing yet

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The Royals, for whatever reason, don't tend to make changes on off days. At least not publicly. I'm not guaranteeing anything today, but I think they could very easily be coming soon.

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I suspect, or at least hope, that those changes will involve Dozier and/or Reyes and/or JBJ. (I'm not including the usual Omaha shuffle among the pitchers here. I hope that I-29 has been repaved recently.) But my guess is that JBJ will be sticking around until Drew Waters is able to return. (Dammit!)

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I think part of the panic around our young hitters is from the hype everyone was putting on our young pitchers we drafted and who were coming up, "just wait for Kowar, Lacy, Singer and Lynch" and so far not too much has developed. Then it was well just wait for Witt, Pratto, and MJ, What was supposed to be a 3-4 year rebuild is quickly turning into a decade irrelevance since 2015.

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It's amazing what having incompetent leadership at the top can do to torpedo things. I have heard some very damning things about the previous regime and the impact it had on development that I feel comfortable saying are no longer in place, but just like I didn't think about the sophomore slump nearly enough, I don't think I let myself realize just how bad it was on that front too.

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some day, maybe under a pen name, you'll write all the sordid details for us, David. I hope the powers that be spend enough or more than enough on the people who can develop these young players. Maybe in the last couple of years it was like a sinking ship -- every one who should have made an impact on the players, just giving up, holding their noses and going down... (okay, I've got "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" in my head. R.I.P. Gordon Lightfoot)

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Now I just need a great nom de plume!

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Hear me out..."Lavid Desky".

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BTW : you can pull my name out of the drawing for the Cain Day tickets. We'll be at the Brookside Art Fair Saturday, so I wouldn't be able to go anyway.

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Skyler or Schuyler Kingsley. Top of my head.

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Agree, on every podcast or Royal blog I hear how bad the last regime was and how they ruined so many players. But no one ever gives any specifics, other than Eldrige was terrible and we didnt use analytics.

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Very interesting comparisons. Thanks, David.

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Thanks for reading, Mark!

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Any idea how many strikeouts Royals' batters are averaging per game? It seems every game it's at least between 8 and 12. Yikes!

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They’ve struck out 267 times in 29 games heading into tonight.

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WOWSERS! Tank you, Sir.

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