The Weakest Link

The Royals won 65 games last year, so strengths are harder to find than weaknesses, but their biggest weakness is easy to identify.

Teams don’t lose 97 games because they have one thing wrong with them. Generally, it’s because things go poorly in all facets of the game. And when you think about the 2022 Royals, it’s almost a miracle they weren’t actually worse than their recorded ended up being. By wRC+, they had the eighth-worst offense. By ERA, they had the fourth-worst overall pitching staff. By DRS, they had the third-worst defense. They ran the bases well enough, but that was about it. Of course, this is rehashing things you already know. Both their starters and relievers finished with the fourth-worst ERAs in baseball, but they worked hard on the bullpen this winter, which I think will be the strength of this team.

So that leaves the rotation. I think it’s fair to have some optimism regarding the offense, especially if Franmi Reyes is back to what he was before 2022. You can reasonably feel pretty darn good about most of the lineup and also know there’s upside that we may not have seen yet. And, again, the bullpen was addressed in quite a few ways, including the hiring of a staff that should theoretically be better at handling them. But in the rotation, the Royals gave Jordan Lyles two years and then basically have decided to run it back.

I’ve written this before, so my apologies for being repetitive, but I’m actually generally okay with it. You all know what the organization believes was the issue and I’m fine with determining what the young starters can do under a new regime. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be pretty at all times. I’ve written quite a bit about some scouts and their thoughts on some of the guys vying for the rotation.

And, not to spoil my final roster projection that I’ll get out there this week, but I believe the rotation is going to be what I projected back before spring training - Zack Greinke, Brady Singer, Jordan Lyles, Daniel Lynch and Brad Keller. It was a bad week for almost all of them, which in some ways underscores why I still don’t think the Royals will compete even though they’ve looked so good at times this spring.

I’m not going to go in depth on their struggles this week, but I do want to touch on Singer specifically. The rough week for Royals starters all began last Sunday actually when he got roughed up in the World Baseball Classic, going two innings and giving up four runs on four hits with one walk and two strikeouts. It wasn't pleasant. He looked rattled. It felt like 2021 Singer.

To his credit, he did come back after a terrible inning and got Mexico in the fifth, but it wasn’t a great follow-up to his great last spring start he made before leaving for Team USA. And now, beyond the bad results, Singer has thrown 53 competitive pitches since March 6. I don’t think the Royals would ever say this publicly, but I can’t imagine they’re very happy with his usage.

Singer did warm up last night in the semi-final against Cuba and maybe he’ll be used in the finals tomorrow evening, but he’s thrown 53 total pitches in two weeks and needs to prepare for the season that starts in 10 days. If he doesn’t pitch tomorrow, I would hope they’ll get him into a game as soon as he gets back, maybe Thursday?

Theoretically, he could throw 65 pitches on Thursday and then come back on the final day of spring and try to get to 80-85 to be able to maybe get to 100 in his first start, but I have to think that whatever chance he had of being the Opening Day guy is gone with the lack of work at the WBC. It’s a great opportunity for him to be there and maybe he’s learned quite a bit from some of the Team USA pitchers, but he’s missed out on at least one important spring start and maybe two for this.

In addition to Singer struggling in the WBC, Brad Keller has struggled twice now. Once was against Seattle in Peoria and the second time was yesterday against the Rockies in Las Vegas. The beauty of Vegas (and Salt River Fields) is there’s actually Statcast data to view. Now, I’m not sure if Statcast knows how to classify Keller’s curve yet because he did talk about it feeling very good and he didn’t throw a single one according to the Statcast numbers. But let’s look at that new slider he’s worked on. It got hit hard, but he also had nine whiffs on it on 21 swings. I think it’s safe to assume some of those were curves, but let’s just go with it.

What got me excited about it is that he got swings on 56 percent of them that were outside the zone and not a single one of those swings resulted in contact. The horizontal break on it was two inches above what he did last year and the same was true for his vertical break. Even though the spin rate was down on it, it’s clearly a pitch that can result in some swings and misses. I think he filled the zone a little too much with it…

…but even though he had bad results yesterday, I found myself strangely encouraged in how he got there. I know the numbers are iffy now for Keller, but I remain intrigued that he can regain some of his solid numbers from pre-2021.

Daniel Lynch, on the other hand, I’m less enthused by. He started on Saturday against the Rockies back in Surprise. The line was ugly. He went 3.1 innings with five hits allowed and gave up four runs (three earned) with just one strikeout. He did only walk one and I couldn’t hear any of this game, but I did get a chance to catch up with a scout who’s seen a lot of Lynch.

“It looks the same, but just with more strikes,” he said. “I see the stuff, I see how he can get there, but I don’t see it happening and I can’t figure out why. I’m sure the staff is just as confused.”

Woof. That’s not what you want to hear, especially when things seemed to be going pretty well for Lynch. For whatever it’s worth, and I think I may have said this before, I think there’s a chance Lynch is taking baby steps here, though the Royals need him to take leaps. It’s also true that long-levered lefties can sometimes take a little extra time to figure things out, but, again, the Royals need to see something sooner than later with Lynch and I am officially concerned. I know that’s a strong turn from just a week ago, but I’m going to be paying quite a bit of attention to his next spring start.

The only pitcher who didn’t soil the bed was Kris Bubic, but he’s behind because of an injury to start camp, though he is worth paying attention to as an early replacement if needed. The rest of the young rotation competition isn’t even worth mentioning. Jonathan Heasley had his worst start of the spring, allowing nine runs on nine hits in 2.1 innings. There isn’t anything more to say about him. Angel Zerpa went on the 60-day IL, so he won’t be a factor for awhile.

The two veterans, Lyles and Greinke, struggled too. I’m a lot less worried about them for two reasons. One, Lyles was uncharacteristic with his control the other day. He walked five in 3.2 innings. How rare is that? He’s pitched in 321 career games and walked five or more eight times. It’s also only happened twice since April of 2016. Outliers are just that. I’m not worried there. Lyles was brought in to pitch a bunch of innings and not be terrible. I think he’ll likely hold up the former part of that bargain and has a pretty good chance to hold up the latter.

And Greinke, well, Greinke is another story. He went 2.1 innings, gave up nine runs on eight hits with two walks and no strikeouts against the Diamondbacks yesterday. Anne Rogers (still the only beat writer with 10 days to go!) wrote about both Keller and Greinke’s days yesterday, but Greinke’s part was the most interesting. Loyal reader and commenter Kevin Agee pointed this line out:

Kevin @Kevin_Agee

Zack Greinke implies that he intentionally got lit up today so he could try as many pickoffs as possible. #Royals

I’m not sure if he did intentionally get hit a bit or not, but I also wouldn’t put it past him. In the story, Rogers notes that Greinke intentionally “balked” by disengaging a third time without getting the runner on base out twice. The first time was to work on a third pickoff attempt. The second time was because, well, Greinke said it best.

“I wanted to pitch from the windup now,” Greinke said. “So I’ll just do another pickoff and let him take third and pitch from the windup. … So mainly, I was thinking about way too many things instead of getting guys out.”

And here is exhibit W of why spring training stats can be very misleading. I thought Greinke did have a smart comment after the game that wasn’t in the story, but was on video on the team site.

“If I was going to pitch bad, it’s better to give up runs and realize it was really bad, then not pitch that good and get some line drives at people and think positively about it. So now I know a couple things to get better at.”

That’s the spirit, Zack! Don’t do it again.

There was a real positive on the pitching-side from the weekend and it was shockingly Jackson Kowar. He was sent to AAA on Wednesday, but was sent with a plan to work on his slider and ultimately impact the big club as a reliever at some point this summer. I’ve been told unequivocally that the door isn’t shut on him as a starter, but this group of coaches believes that the way to start is for him to be a multi-inning reliever. That could change with need or if he pitches as well as he did on Saturday afternoon. But he needs that slider.

I knew he was going to throw it a lot on Saturday. The Rockies likely did too. He threw 50 pitches and 21 were sliders. And they were good! He got five whiffs on 13 swings, mostly because he was getting swings out of the zone and either whiffs or weak contact. I also thought for the second straight time that I’ve seen him that his fastball had a little more of a wrinkle than I’ve ever ever seen before. Only one of them got hit and it was hit softly, but he got seven called strikes and two whiffs on it out of 17 fastballs thrown. The eye test and the results say it was better, so I’ll believe that. And his changeup was its usual excellent pitch.

I asked that same scout who talked about Lynch about Kowar. He was, not surprisingly, hesitant, but did say that he’d heard from others that the fastball was actually moving a little bit. That’s always been the knock on him. He can throw it 97, but who cares? If it moves and he has a slider to go with that changeup, the story changes. Maybe that story is changing for him. And maybe he can be a part of either the strength of the bullpen or help to provide quality depth to a rotation in need.

I know I’ve spent far too many words telling you about the perils of this rotation. I do think there’s some upside. Singer, Keller and Lynch are all 27 or younger. Two of the three have multiple seasons with an ERA+ of 114 or higher. Lynch should have as much upside as anyone. This could click. But until we see it, I think it’s safe to say the rotation is the weak point of this club, which puts the onus on Matt Quatraro, Brian Sweeney, Mitch Stetter, Paul Hoover and Zach Bove to run this staff as well as possible to minimize that weakness. It’s easier said than done, but I have a lot more faith in them to do it than I do the previous regime. We’ll see how weak this weakness really is soon.

As a side note, wow am I humbled by the response to opening up paid subscriptions on Friday. I’m not joking when I say that I teared up telling my wife how supportive everyone has been. If you missed it on Friday, here’s the deal. Subscriptions are going to be $5/month or $36/year regularly, but I’m taking 25% off that through April 2.

Every article will remain free, so if you want to keep your free subscription, you won’t miss anything I write! Paid subscribers, though, will be able to comment on all articles and will be entered into the prize pool for giveaways I’ll have throughout the season. There’ll be glassware, t-shirts, other designs I haven’t even though to ask my wife to make for you all and, yes, tickets with parking passes. And that starts Opening Day! I’ve got two tickets with parking for all paid subscribers, so get in there!