Lessons the front office can learn from this year

The Royals improved this year - let’s do it again!

The Royals had one of the best off-seasons in baseball last year, improving a 106-loss team enough to make the playoffs and advance to the ALDS. By adding Seth Lugo and Michael Wacah, the Royals featured one of the best rotations in baseball, and although some other acquisitions - Hunter Renfroe, Adam Frazier, Garrett Hampson, Will Smith, Chris Stratton, and Nick Anderson - had mixed results, the result was a much improved ballclub.

Improving a team from being god awful to pretty good is one thing, but this off-season, the front office will have to take the team to the next level - serious contender. They do so with a solid base - an MVP candidate in Bobby Witt Jr., solid hitters like Salvador Perez and Vinnie Pasquantino, a solid rotation with Lugo, Cole Ragans, and Brady Singer, and a bullpen that showed improvement by the end of the year with some personnel changes. With the off-season around the corner, here are some of the lessons the front office can take away from the past season.

The lineup needs an on-base hitter

Already GM J.J. Picollo seems well aware that the lineup is need of a leadoff hitter. In his end-of-the-year press conference, he highlighted that as a top priority this winter.

“It starts with getting guys on base,” Picollo. “That’s going to be an area that we not only address in looking at players we acquire, but how can we be better offensively, how can we develop hitters better at the Major League level and get them to meet expectations.”

Royals leadoff hitters batted .228/.270/.334 this year, by far the worst in baseball. There were 155 hitters this year who batted at least 200 times with a runner on base. If you divide plate appearances per game, Bobby Witt Jr. ranked #111 in that group. It seems suboptimal to have one of the best hitters in baseball get so few opportunities to drive runners home - especially considering he hit .380/.446/.632 in those situations, the third-best OPS in baseball.

The free agent market for on-base hitters isn’t great, but perhaps a Jurickson Profar, Ha-Seong Kim, or Michael Conforto would make sense. The trade route may be a better fit if the Royals are willing to part with talent, but there could be other teams eager to get their hands on a hitter who can set the table.

Free agent relievers are a bad investment

The 2023 Royals had a miserable bullpen with a revolving door of relievers, so it was understandable that management sought to upgrade with veterans. The Royals spent around $16 million to acquire Will Smith, Chris Stratton, Nick Anderson, and John Schreiber, but that quartet combined to make 198 relief appearances with an ERA of 4.96 (the entire rest of the bullpen had a solid ERA of 3.65).

Reliever performance can be rather fickle, especially for those pitchers on the wrong side of 30. Last off-season 20 free agent relievers signed for at least $4 million. Of those, just seven were above replacement level and just six posted an ERA below 4. Three were released before the end of the season (not counting Smith and Stratton, who were effectively sidelined the last weeks of the season) and three did not even make a single pitch this year.

Of the top 30 MLB relievers this year by fWAR, only seven were acquired by their team as MLB free agents (and one of those - Jason Adam - was a very cheap contract barely over league minimum). Others were acquired off waivers (Declan Cronin, Robert Garcia, Jeremiah Estrada), minor trades (Calvin Faucher), or the Rule 5 draft (Justin Slaten).

The Royals were able to find their own solutions in the bullpen by using creative means such as Lucas Erceg (trade), Kris Bubic (former starter), and Sam Long (minor league free agent). Continuing to use that approach next year will give the Royals greater roster and payroll flexibility, while also making it less likely they stick with a struggling reliever too long.

The mid-tier starting pitching free agent market has great upside

If relievers are a poor free agent investment, mid-tier starting pitchers might be a better use of resources. The Royals struck gold last year handing out a three-year, $45 million deal to Seth Lugo and a flexible one-year, $16 million deal with a player option to Michael Wacha. Lugo was an All-Star and will be a Cy Young contender, while both were among the top 20 most valuable pitchers in baseball, according to Fangraphs.

It wasn’t just Lugo and Wacha that turned out to be free agent bargains. Sean Manaea (two years, $28 million, 2.8 fWAR), Erick Fedde (two years, $15 million, 3.4 fWAR), Jack Flaherty (one year, $14 million, 3.2 fWAR), Luis Severino (one year, $13 million, 2.1 fWAR), and Kyle Gibson (one year, $13 million, 1.5 fWAR) all turned out to be very solid rotation additions for their new teams. There were certainly some free agent starters that didn’t pan out - Kenta Maeda, Lucas Giolito, Lance Lynn - but the chance to seriously upgrade the rotation without breaking the bank can have a huge impact.

Minor league depth is important

The Royals had bullpen issues for much of the summer, but aside from a few innings, were unwilling to use relievers pitching well in the minors like Walter Pennington, Will Klein, or Evan Sisk. In September, with the offense running on fumes following the injury to Vinnie Pasquantino, the team sought to supplement the lineup by acquiring a trio of older vets - Yuli Gurriel, Robbie Grossman, and Tommy Pham, rather than call up bats like Tyler Gentry, Drew Waters, or Nick Pratto.

Many observers say the gap between Triple-A and MLB is greater than ever before, so perhaps the Royals were right not to trust untested minor leaguers in a pennant race. On the other hand, the division-winning Guardians relied on players up from the minors down the stretch like Cade Smith (ranked #26 in the organization by Baseball America before the year), Jhonkensy Noel (#29), and Daniel Schneemann (unranked).

Either the Royals need to build up minor league depth they can trust down the stretch, or build up depth to be used as trade assets. A small market organization needs a steady pipeline of talent, and while the Royals have made some strides, they need to be among the best in baseball at developing players.

Bobby Witt gives them a chance to compete every year, but he can’t do it himself

Bobby Witt Jr. committed to the Royals by signing a long-term deal that will keep him in town through at least 2030. That means that for every season this decade, the Royals will have a player that has the potential to win an MVP. So the Royals cannot waste any of his prime years with a rebuild season.

Great players are rare, so you need to maximize the window of opportunity they present. The Royals made the playoffs five times before George Brett turned 30 (and would have made it a few more times if baseball had the current playoff format), winning the 1980 pennant. Meanwhile, the Angels were only able to field a good team around future Hall of Famer Mike Trout just once, when the Royals swept them in 2014, squandering his best years.

That shows that having an MVP-type player won’t guarantee success. Witt was pretty great in 2023, and yet that team lost 106 games. But he can help you paper over a lot of holes. The 2024 Royals weren’t great, but they had some good complimentary players that when combined with Witt, gave the team a shot to win.