Who is Vinnie Pasquantino and What's He Worth?

The Royals best hitter in 2022 was in the minors to start the year and wasn't even the best prospect at his own position to start the season.

While you can find talent in the MLB draft at any level, the vast majority are going to come from the top. And that’s sort of become even more true as scouting and analysis has become so strong leading into the draft. So when someone like Mike Piazza hits it big as a 62nd round draft pick, it’s big news. These days, any player who was picked after the 20th round is a reminder of a lost time because the draft has gone from unlimited rounds to 50 to 40 to now just 20. All that said, the 319th pick in the draft has actually given some pretty darn good players.

The second-best starter on the Angels behind Shohei Ohtani, Patrick Sandoval, was picked 319th in 2015. Craig Counsell had a nice big league career. He was picked 319th in 1992. Former Royals shortstop Rey Sanchez was picked there in 1986. And Bob Welch was picked there in 1974. He didn’t sign, but he had a very good career. And then just three years ago, the Royals used the 319th pick to select Vincent Joseph Pasquantino out of Old Dominion University.

Paquantino looked like one of those organizational players. You figured he’d hit in the lower levels because he was a college bat with a good eye, but he’d start to falter as he rose through the system. Half of that was right. He did hit at the lower levels, putting up a .294/.371/.592 line in 2019 in rookie ball. But 2020 was wiped out and Pasquantino was sort of forgotten. Until he just kept hitting last year. He hit .291/.384/.565 in high-A with 33 walks and 38 strikeouts. Then he hit even better at AA - .310/.405/.560 with 31 walks and 26 strikeouts.

We know what came next. He had the shot to go to AAA and he didn’t disappoint. In 69 games, he hit .280/.372/.576 with 37 walks and 36 strikeouts. So the guy that I think most people thought would eventually hit a wall just kept on hitting at every level. He came to the big leagues and hit .295/.383/.450 with 35 walks and 34 strikeouts. We can go on about how amazing that is and how rare that is and all of that, but all that matters is that he is the best hitter on the Royals and someone I believe will be a top-30 hitter in all of baseball in 2023. If that seems like an outlandish claim, it’s not.

His wRC+ of 137 ranked 29th among all big leaguers with 250 or more plate appearances. His average was 23rd. His OBP was ninth. His walk rate was 32nd and his strikeout rate was the 10th-lowest. There’s an argument to be made that the only outlandish thing about my claim that he’ll be a top-30 hitter next season is that he already is one now. And I’d wager he’ll find more success next year with the shift limited. He was shifted most of the time, but his wOBA with no shift was .422 compared to .362 with the shift on. First, take a look at where he defenses played him last season.

Now, look at his spray chart heatmap on ground balls and line drives.

I don’t think the positioning of the shortstop will do much, but the second baseman being forced to the infield dirt will be a big help for him next season.

I think you’ll see a significantly higher number of batted balls get through for him that were turned into 4-3 groundouts, which, in my opinion, is the part of the rule that I really like with the shift limitations.

Of course, it’s not all perfect for Pasquantino. He isn’t a bad first baseman, but he’s also not nearly as good as Nick Pratto defensively. He rated fine by the metrics with -1 defensive run saved and +1 outs above average. I don’t think he’s someone who hurts you over there and he might even work himself to be a bit above average, but in the end, a slightly above average first baseman just doesn’t provide much defensive value. I always say that the real amount of importance on first base defense lies somewhere between what the Royals think and what the fans think. I do think a great defender has a bigger positive impact than a poor defender has a negative impact, but Pasquantino is neither of those.

So if the Royals believe Pratto can be a big league hitter, I assume they also believe he is their first baseman most of the time, which makes Pasquantino a designated hitter. As much as a first baseman doesn’t have much defensive value, a DH obviously has zero defensive value, so they better hit an awful lot to be worth giving any real money to in a long-term deal. But as I write that, we shouldn’t forget that Pasquantino is literally already one of the 30 best hitters in all of baseball and I believe there will be more power on the way for him.

His career minor league ISO of .277 would have been the fourth-highest ISO in baseball in 2022. Minor league numbers don’t always translate to the big leagues, but it’s pretty clear to see that he can do it. And exit velocity and barrel numbers do tend to translate to power. Pasquantino’s average exit velocity of 91.2 MPH ranked 35th in baseball among hitters with 200 or more batted ball events. That slotted him right behind Salvador Perez, Ryan Mountcastle, Freddie Freeman, Albert Pujols and Ronald Acuña Jr. on a list of 281 hitters. His barrel rate wasn’t quite as impressive at 83rd, but that’s still top-third in the league. His maximum exit velocity ranked 69th and his overall hard-hit rate ranked 39th.

These are all strong indicators that he can show more power than he did in his 298 plate appearance sample in 2022. His expected stats also indicate he could have been better already with an xSLG of .476 compared to the actual SLG of .450. This already started to normalize as he got big league time, but his groundball rate was an early issue for him. He ended the year with grounders on 40.9 percent of batted balls, but that took a bit to come down after he was hitting a lot on the ground early. This was never a problem for him in the minors, with groundball rates between 32.3 percent and 35.7 percent.

At this point, I’ve barely even touched on the outstanding plate appearances, but part of that is you know it. In the last three full seasons, there have only been nine qualifying seasons of a hitter walking at least as much as he struck out. The lowest wRC+ of those nine was this year at 124 and that was Stephen Kwan, a rookie who isn’t a power threat at all. The highest was Alex Bregman’s 167 in his outstanding 2019 season. I don’t know if Pasquantino can keep it up over the course of a full big league season, but I also wouldn’t put it past him. As a professional, he now has a 12.1 percent walk rate and a 12.9 percent walk rate. Take away his first year in rookie ball and those numbers jump and fall respectively to 12.4 percent and 12.2 percent. This is who he is. And it’s darn good.

But, again, it’s the position. What do you pay a first baseman/designated hitter who is already set to make the league minimum for the next three seasons, which happen to be his age 25, 26 and 27 seasons? I think it’s fair to assume that if he’s able to keep this up and even improve on those numbers that even with the defensive limitations, he’ll find himself getting a pretty penny in arbitration for those final three years. But the first question I’d ask is if the Royals should be locking in someone like Pasquantino when the first basemen/DH types tend to get discarded once they get too expensive. The answer is subjective. If you think he’s an elite hitter, you absolutely sign him up. If you think he’ll fade quickly, then yeah, go year-to-year.

If you do that, you’re looking at around $2.2 million for his pre-arbitration years and then probably something like $5 million, $8 million and $12 million. So that’s six years and $27 million or so. I just used Josh Bell as a guide for what he got through arbitration. But, again, you have to question if he’s Josh Bell or if he’s Freddie Freeman, who had a pretty similar season in 2014 at age 24 to what Pasquantino did in 2022 at age 24. Freeman hit .288/.386/.461 for a 140 wRC+. He struck out more and played a full season, but that’s pretty close. He also rated quite poorly defensively. That age-24 season was also his fourth big league season, so it’s not a perfect comparison, but I thought that was interesting.

So there’s a comp you don’t hear much for Pasquantino. Freeman went on to hit .276/.370/.471 in his age-25 season before he really broke out the next year, hitting .302/.400/.569. He’s been outstanding ever since and signed a massive contract with the Dodgers ahead of the 2022 season. There’s obviously no guarantee that Pasquantino progresses the same way that Freeman did to become one of the best players on the planet, but I don’t think the Royals would be too upset if he did. But even if Pasquantino simply remains the hitter he was in his half-season as a rookie, that’s a hitter you look to extend.

It’s hard to find a young first baseman who signed a contract this early in his career. It’s not really something that gets done terribly often, but I think there are a couple of very good reasons to get it done. The first is that the Royals, as a team, are very inexpensive right now. If they anticipate Pasquantino remaining a top hitter in the game for long enough to deserve a long-term contract, they can find a way to spread out the money a little bit so that when they do start to get a little more expensive, maybe Pasquantino can cost just a little bit less because they frontloaded it.

But the other reason might actually be a little more important for the entirety of the franchise. This is something I’ve mentioned on the radio before, but the Royals are in a place where they would have to pay the bad team tax even on their own players. I think they’d have a bit of a tough time getting a young player to sign on for the better part of a decade when they haven’t seen the steps taken for them to become a winner. Yes, making the moves they’ve made indicate they’re working toward taking those steps, but until they actually win something, there’s no guarantee they will. To get the guy who seems to be the heart of the team signed up long-term could be a great first step in order to get other pieces of their core on board.

Typically when I look at contract extensions, I try to find historical precedents. Freeman is one of the few to sign early. He went through his pre-arbitration years before signing an eight-year deal for $135 million. That carried him through his age-31 season before he hit free agency. I guess that’s something you can look at. He made about $25 million in his three arbitration years and then $106.5 million in the five subsequent years.

Anthony Rizzo did sign a deal that started before he hit a year of service time with the Cubs. He signed for $2 million in what would cover his two pre-arbitration years and then he would have a Super 2 player, so he’d have gone through arbitration for four years. He earned $24 million in those years and then $11 million in what would have been his first free agent year with two separate options for $14.5 million that both got exercised.

Paul Goldschmidt signed his deal with the Diamondbacks that bought out one pre-arbitration year, his arbitration years and one free agent year with an option for the second free agent year that was obviously picked up. That deal was for $17.5 million to cover the arbitration years, $11 million in the first free agent year with a $2 million buyout and $14.5 million for the second free agent year.

With a Pasquantino deal today, you’re starting with all three pre-arbitration years. If you want to sign him through his age-31 season, that’s a seven-year deal. If you figure the $2.2 million or so for the pre-arbitration years and then around $40 million to be close to the Freeman deal but not quite there, you end up around $42ish million for seven years. That kind of makes sense. Could they structure it where he makes $6 million in the pre-arbitration years and then something like $4 million, $6 million, $9 million and $14 million with a $3 million buyout on the option for the following year? You’re never going to get a player to fully front-load a deal, but that could make a lot of sense.

I probably wouldn’t go much longer than that, but if you’re looking at additional seasons, it would be tough to go higher than $21 or $22 million given that only four first basemen in all of baseball have an AAV of more than $20 million. I’d also likely put at least one additional $20 million option at the end of the last year of the deal with that buyout to help spread the money out even more.

It’s certainly early, and if the Royals don’t want to get this deal done right now, I wouldn’t blame them at all. But as much as I don’t think the Royals should succumb to fan pressure on basically any decision, I don’t think it hurts in the public relations game to get a popular player who is already very good signed for years to come. And if it maybe starts a movement that leads to others from their core to sign up long-term, then that’s all the better.

I’m not sure that any team is going to approach what the Braves have done to get their young talent signed long-term, but if the Royals are going to find success, it’s going to start with guys like Pasquantino along with Brady Singer, Bobby Witt Jr., MJ Melendez and others. Someone needs to get the ball rolling, so why not Vinnie?