Unpopular Opinions Royals Style

There are a few things I seem to disagree with a lot of Royals fans on. Here's where I'm keeping them all.

The way people think about a team or a player can sort of catch fire. One person makes a comment about something and then suddenly a second person sees it too and eventually the majority of a fanbase sees it as well. Maybe that’s just social media taking over or maybe it’s the whole fanbase. I honestly don’t know, but it’s interesting how ideas take shape. I find myself playing devil’s advocate quite a bit, at least in my head (and sometimes out loud), but generally I do have the same ideas that a lot of the fanbase does. Occasionally, though? I don’t. And so I wanted to put out some of my thoughts that maybe go against what a lot of people think. And maybe I’m way off and it’s just my internet silo disagrees with these rather than most people, but either way, these might be a bit controversial to some.

Hunter Dozier is Fine

To scroll Twitter or even read some comments on this very newsletter, you’d think that Dozier was a player who has never been good. I think Dozier suffered first from being a first round pick who took a long time to make it because of injuries and then from signing a long-term contract and immediately going into the tank. And I get it, I truly do. But circumstances don’t change the fact that Dozier is fine. Note that I didn’t say he’s great or good or anything, but he’s fine. Let’s follow the Dozier timeline.

He had a brief cup of coffee in 2016 that was too short to even matter. Then he made it up in 2018 after the team was in shambles and had a rough rookie season. That does happen. Then in 2019, he was hitting the snot out of the ball early but couldn’t buy a hit and things turned around. He hit .279/.348/.522 with 26 homers, 29 doubles and a ridiculous 10 triples. That was good for a 123 wRC+, which is very good. Then 2020 happened and Dozier dealt with Covid before the shortened season and there were some obvious issues stemming from that including simply not hitting the ball as far. But he still had a .228/.344/.392 line, which was good for an OBP-aided 104 wRC+. However he got there, it was above average.

After that, he got the contract, which isn’t that big if we’re being honest, and he looked fantastic in spring training. Sure, it’s spring and all that, but he looked really good. And then he hurt his thumb on Opening Day. He probably pushed the team, but the Royals did him wrong by not letting him heal up before getting him back out there. He struggled. It kept getting worse and worse and worse. And then he ran into Jose Abreu, had a concussion and got sent on a minor league rehab assignment. I was sure that was the time that he could get right because they had a chance to get his swing worked out. But they did him wrong again by bringing him back quickly. He just kept struggling.

Eventually, he started to figure things out. After the break, he hit .261/.331/.449 with eight home runs, 12 doubles and four triples in 266 plate appearances. No, it’s not the 2019 numbers, but it’s solid and good for a 109 wRC+. So I find myself wondering why there’s such a belief that the 277 plate appearances, where he was by all accounts working through a thumb issue that first was hurting him and then impacted his swing, hold more weight than the 1,038 plate appearances from the previous seasons and the second half.

Here’s the deal with Dozier. He’s not a good defender basically anywhere. He can probably handle first reasonably well if he had some time there, but that’ll belong to Nick Pratto sooner than later. And no, he’s not a great hitter by any stretch, but he’s solid. In a lineup where the Royals are running out a lot of subpar bats, Dozier is a bat who is actually generally not subpar.

I want to throw a quick player comparison out at you, removing the first week and a half of the season:

Player A: .273/.314/.380, 87 wRC+
Player B: .221/.290/.403, 86 wRC+

One has a higher average which leads to a better OBP, but way less SLG in a lineup that doesn’t have a lot of power. Ultimately, they’re pretty equal, as you can see by the wRC+.

Player A is Whit Merrifield and Player B is Hunter Dozier.

I’d probably take Merrifield over Dozier because of the defensive ability and the ability to steal a base, but I’m guessing it’s a lot closer than you realized. The fact is that Dozier swings and misses a bit too much to be truly consistent, but he’s generally been at least a net neutral for a lineup. And he provides the ability to get an extra base hit in any at bat and when he’s hot, has the kind of power to carry a team for a few days. I’m not saying you don’t strive for better as a team, but I will maintain until my dying days that Dozier is just fine.

MJ Melendez is Best Equipped to Start Fast

Gasp, part one!

I think I’ve alluded to this a bit before, but I think that Melendez will have a bit of an easier offensive transition to the big leagues than Bobby Witt Jr. After seeing him this spring, I feel a bit less confident about this because of how good Witt has been, but I tend to think that hitters who make more contact can make an impact with the bat a little quicker. That’s not hard and fast or anything, but Melendez had a swinging strike rate of 11.5 percent in AA and 11.6 percent in AAA. Witt did improve when he got to AAA, but he only dropped from 15.7 percent to 13 percent.

I just look at Melendez’s 14.1 percent walk rate and 21.7 percent strikeout rate and think that translates a bit better, at least to start, than Witt’s nine percent walk rate and 23.2 percent strikeout rate. I’d put good money on Witt figuring things out and figuring them out quickly, but if he puts up numbers that probably don’t match up to some of the expectations, I wouldn’t be too surprised. Melendez, with his ability to both make contact and drive the ball, seems like a good bet to hit the ground running even faster than Witt.

I think Witt is the better overall player right now and ultimately has the better career offensively, but if we’re looking at 2022 only, I’d say the offensive numbers will favor the catcher.

Brad Keller, Like Dozier is Fine

I can give you a pretty similar argument about Keller being just fine that I gave you for Dozier. I think a lot of people, myself included, have been waiting for Keller to regress to being a replacement-level type pitcher. It’s because the peripherals are ugly. For a guy who throws mid-90s and can touch upper-90s and with a slider like he has flashed, he strikes out remarkably few batters. Okay, let’s rephrase that. For a big leaguer, he strikes out remarkably few batters. Some guys can maintain that because of a low walk rate, but Keller also walks too many.

And yet, for the first three years of his career, Keller was legitimately good. Sure, the underlying numbers weren’t, but the results were and that’s ultimately what matters, right? He had a 3.08 ERA as a rookie with a 3.70 xERA, 3.55 FIP and 4.26 xFIP. Keep in mind on xFIP that it normalizes home run rates and Keller is a ground ball pitcher who will likely always have better than average home run rates. Well, we thought anyway. In his second year, the ERA was 4.19 with a 4.83 xERA, 4.35 FIP and 4.94 xFIP. So that’s some regression, but still a valuable member of a staff, especially while cheap.

Then in 2020, it all came together in an obviously small sample. He started the year on the Covid IL, but unlike Dozier, he came out strong. He gave up four extra base hits to 215 total batters he faced over nine starts. Two of them were home runs to Daniel Vogelbach, and quite frankly, who wouldn’t give up a home run or two to Vogelbach? He ended the year with a 2.47 ERA that the underlying stats were very unimpressed with. His xERA was 4.42, his FIP 3.43 (very good) and his xFIP was 4.33. In all, the first 360.1 innings of his career featured a 3.50 ERA, 3.90 FIP and 4.58 xFIP. For some reason, xERA isn’t calculated over multiple seasons, so we’ll leave that out.

But I mentioned the peripherals. He did it with a subpar 16.8 percent strikeout rate and 9.1 percent walk rate. It’s just not enough and too many, in that order. And the 2021 season started with disaster. He’d given up more doubles in the first inning of the first game than he did in all of 2020. He couldn’t find the zone. I thought he was hurt and I still sort of do. But he was terrible. His first 17 starts of the year were an absolute disaster. It culminated with a game in Boston where he didn’t strike out a single batter and walked five. He had a 6.67 ERA and looked lost.

I’m still perplexed by the fact that it took a camera angle that Fenway Park offers to figure some things out, but the Royals did with him and he made adjustments that took immediately. He struck out seven and walked two in his next start. And in that start plus his next eight, he had a 3.42 ERA, 4.01 FIP and 4.20 xFIP. He even started striking out some batters with a 23.8 percent rate, which allowed for a bit of a higher walk rate at 9.9 percent.

So I ask the same question with Keller that I asked with Dozier. Do we believe the 81 innings to start 2021 where he struggled so terribly? Or do we believe the 413 other innings in his career where he’s been anywhere from above average to good? I have my questions about Keller, without a doubt. He’s never pitched a full season as a starter. In both 2019 and 2021, he was shut down early with arm issues. In 2018, he started as a reliever and 2020 was short anyway. I also have my doubts about the strikeout rate from those last nine starts sticking, though his slider can be particularly nasty.

I don’t think he’s a player you pay big bucks to, but for a reasonable rate, the Royals should probably feel pretty confident they’re going to get 140-160 innings from him with solid results. I’d be against an extension, but I think Keller is absolutely fine.

And here’s the one that nobody saw coming.

Cal Eldred Isn’t Always the Problem

Gasp, part two!

Yes, that’s right. I’m the guy who was the first on the fire Cal Eldred bandwagon and I’m saying he’s not always the issue. Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s a bad pitching coach and the Royals would be better off with someone a lot more advanced. So I guess what I’m saying is that I still think they should move on from Eldred as fast as humanly possible. I love what they’ve done in the minors with Mitch Stetter as the director of pitching performance and while you haven’t heard as much as you have on the offensive side, I think that their performance in the minors will start to look great very soon as well.

But this isn’t about them or how they should figure out a way to get some of that advanced pitching instruction to the big leagues. This is about how while Eldred is not good at his job and about how they need someone better that he isn’t always the reason for struggles. At some point, it’s important to remember that Eldred isn’t throwing the pitches. The bit about him going to the mound and then the pitcher struggling is sort of funny, but also even I can’t assume he’s going out there and telling them to groove a fastball.

If I’m being completely honest, I don’t even hate the idea of having a guy like Eldred in the organization. I think he’s ill-equipped to hold the top spot, but I actually like having an old school advisor throughout the organization to challenge the analytically inclined ideas. I generally lean toward the analytics, but in pretty much all facets of life, it’s a good idea to have a differing voice. Too many people pulling the same direction can take things off course, so I wouldn’t even have an issue with Eldred being simply a tertiary voice throughout the organization to challenge some ideas.

So while I’m not over here glowing with praise, I do think that it’s important to remember that not everything that goes wrong is because of Eldred. Just like two-thirds.

Maybe I’m wrong and these aren’t that unpopular, but they seem to be from my online world! Give me your unpopular opinions in the comments.