What Can Go Right, and Wrong, For a Fun 2023 or a Long One

It feels like this is a year of possibilities, but that goes both ways.

The beauty of this time of year is that anything can happen. The 1991 World Series is proof of that. In 1990, the Minnesota Twins finished in last place in the American League West, 29 games behind the division-winning Oakland A’s. The Atlanta Braves were 26 games behind the NL West-winning Cincinnati Reds and finished in last place. Then in 1991, the two cellar-dwellers met in the World Series. Since the 2012 season, 29 teams have made the playoffs the year following a losing season. The 2020 and 2021 seasons may not be exactly instructive for a few reasons, even if you remove them, you get 20 teams doing it in nine years. That’s essentially two a year.

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So it’s understandable to be a fan of a losing team and think, “why not us?” For some teams, there are pretty good reasons. They just can’t pitch enough or they know they can’t hit enough or the leadership on the bench is just not good enough. But enough about the Royals of the last few seasons. The gap between the good and the bad feels like it’s never been larger. I would be surprised if there weren’t multiple statistics proving that. But even with that gap existing, teams make leaps you don’t expect every year. Today, I want to start this with a realistic look what can go right for the Royals to, gasp, make the playoffs.

It’s simple math really. The Royals won 65 games last year with a run differential that said they should have won 64. So we can safely say that they were about what they should have been. They scored 640 runs and allowed 810. That 1,450 total runs. The average team roughly saw about 1,400 runs throughout the 2022 season. Let’s use that number. For the Royals to be a .500 team, they need to score 700 and allow 700. For them to be a 93-win team, they need to score 750 and allow 650. To get to 86 wins, which was good enough for the playoffs, they need to score 722 and give up 678.

Of course, this isn’t a hard and fast rule. Teams outperform projections all the time, but we’re looking at the math today. So how can they score 82 more runs and allow 132 fewer than they did last season? Let’s start with the pitching. Brady Singer had an excellent 2022 season, but he only threw 153.1 innings. Give the man, say, 27 more at his run prevention numbers and replace four of Jonathan Heasley’s starts and you’ve gained seven runs. Brad Keller went 139.2 innings, but what if you replace all of those with 2019 Keller in terms of run prevention? There’s another 20. But maybe give him 25 more innings of that, replacing four more of Heasley’s starts. That’s four more runs. Two pitchers have already found us 31 of the 132 we need. I’m not going to go through each member of the staff individually, but you get the idea.

Turning over a bullpen that allowed 333 runs and replacing it with, let’s say, the production of the Cardinals bullpen, which featured the 11th-best ERA in baseball in a similar number of innings would shave off another 89. Well that was fast. We’ve now found 120 of the 132 runs we need. The rest is rounding and slight improvements from any of the young starters. It doesn’t take a lot to be better than last season. Of course, there will be some regression as well. Not everyone is going to get better, so even with all these quick gains, that doesn’t actually put them that close to the 132.

So they’ll need a couple more starters to step up. But the gap was closed enough that I think we can reasonably see them as close. Another way they can get there is through defensive improvements. They were -40 in defensive runs saved last year. Can they make up the difference there? The eighth-worst defense was the Red Sox at -4. And suddenly, here are 36 more runs, which gives them 24 to play with regarding regression from other pitchers.

On the offensive side, the 82 runs may be a little easier to reasonably find. A full season of Vinnie Pasquantino compared with the half-season of whatever they were running at first and DH before he got there should help to account for 20-25 of those runs. Think I’m exaggerating? Pasquantino had 298 plate appearances and was at 47 wRC. Carlos Santana had 25 in 212. Let’s call it 20. Bobby Witt Jr. led the team with at 73 wRC. I’ve heard from a lot of people who think he takes a big step this year. He doesn’t even need to take a massive step, but what if he replicated Dansby Swanson’s 2022 and hit .277/.329/.447 with 95 wRC? That’s 22 more.

Add in some improvements from MJ Melendez, Kyle Isbel and Michael Massey for a full season and it’s pretty easy to see how the offense can make up 82 runs. The beauty of a young lineup is that while you can’t count on everyone to improve, it’s very easy to see a realistic path for any one of these young hitters to get better. Add in hopefully a full year of Salvador Perez because what 33-year old catcher doesn’t find more health and a resurgent Franmil Reyes to provide some power and this lineup could be good. And just like that, without anything that feels too terribly crazy, the Royals get themselves to +44 in run differential and they’re in the postseason conversation.

*Record scratch*

That seemed way too easy, right? That’s because it was. I mentioned the regression on the pitching staff and I wrote it yesterday. Can we expect another sub-4.00 ERA from Zack Greinke in 137 innings with the lowest strikeout rate in baseball? The Royals have Jordan Lyles under contract for two years. What if he reverts to the 2020 version? He’s not going to stop making starts and even if he does, it’ll be too late to stop that damage from having torpedoed the start of the year. What happens if Singer misses any time or Keller really hasn’t found something? At that point, they’re relying on Daniel Lynch, who is already hurt and Kris Bubic, who has actually quietly been better than anyone not named Singer, but that’s not exactly a world of praise.

The easy answer of what can go wrong is the starting rotation. Greinke is 39 and gave up 157 hits in 137 innings last year with just 73 strikeouts. That’s tough to sustain. Keller was very good for three years and then was a non-tender candidate just a few months ago. A year ago at this time, Singer was potentially a reliever. Lyles has a career ERA of 5.10 in 1326.1 innings. That’s not an accident. And that hasn’t even gotten into the fifth starter spots. The Royals boasted the fourth-worst ERA in baseball among starters last season and if Greinke and Singer regress, they could easily give up 30 more runs than last season.

Add in that the defense was bad last year and three of the veterans they traded away during the season - Carlos Santana, Andrew Benintendi and Whit Merrifield - were actually pretty solid defenders. And then they traded their best defender - Michael A. Taylor - in the offseason. They were all the right moves, but they didn’t help the defense. Running out Hunter Dozier at third, Melendez in right and Edward Olivares in left could get ugly fast. That’s not even mentioning Witt at shortstop, who was atrocious last year. If we’re talking worst-case scenario, the defense helps contribute to that.

And while we do have high hopes for this offense because of the youth in the lineup, there are no guarantees. Witt’s 4.7 percent walk rate was seventh-worst among 130 qualified hitters. Melendez balanced a low average well enough because of a 12.4 percent walk rate, but his .217 average ranked as eighth-worst while not balancing it with enough slugging percentage to be in the category with Kyle Schwarber or even a guy like Rowdy Tellez. Perez isn’t getting any younger. Reyes is coming off a bad year. Massey isn’t proven. If we’re looking at where things could go terribly wrong, I think the offense is an underappreciated area that could feature some disappointment. If they just have a disaster season, would a 59-103 season be out of line? I don’t think so.

But the beauty of all of this is that not everything ever goes wrong. And not everything ever goes perfectly right. There’s a path I laid out above that I think is realistic enough for this team to reach 86 wins. There’s another path that I think is realistic enough for this team to fall to 59 wins. Neither is especially likely. And that’s sort of how I got to my win prediction I shared yesterday of 73 wins. It’s right smack dab in the middle.

I do believe that this team is more likely to surprise in a good way than a bad way. Young talent has a way of making you believe that. I think Witt has a big year. I think Melendez takes a step forward. I think Pasquantino continues to be what he was in 2022. I obviously think the bullpen is much better. I’m definitely concerned about the rotation and the defense and that’s what tempers my expectations, but I think we’re going to have a lot more fun watching this team even if they only get to 73 wins than we had watching last year’s team. I think it’ll be a fun year that will lead to legitimate expectations in 2024. And the joy of a long season is that we have a little while longer to dream on the first scenario.

As both George Knox and JP said, it could happen.