28 Paragraphs about 28 Royals

I could have posted this earlier but it took awhile for the 25 man roster to become official. Why post a Michael Ynoa paragraph that wouldn't be put to use?

Before we get to the paragraphs for the 25 members of the Royals 25 man roster, there'll be three players that could very likely be on the Royals 25 man roster before the end of April. Let's call these three players, the 'coming attractions' on this roster.

Homer Bailey: Can Homer Bailey post his first good season since 2014? Are you ready to suffer through finding the answer to this question? Bailey's presence on the 25 man roster in a week or so will be talked up in the realm of "accumulating trade value". It's likely that Bailey is not going to accumulate much trade value, even if Bailey won't be paid much money this year by a team that isn't the Dodgers. Fun fact: Homer Bailey will be paid 21 million dollars by the Los Angeles Dodgers during the 2019 season. The Dodgers employed Bailey for under 24 hours in December 2018. If Michael Avenatti demanded the Dodgers pay him $20 million, there's a chance the Dodgers would agreed to give Avenatti the money. It wouldn't shock me if the whole Clay Buchholz experience from last year, where the Royals didn't bring up Buchholz, Buchholz opted out, and then Clay had a Buchholzian season (16 starts and 2 DL stints) makes some people in the organization reluctant to have that happen again because "ohmy what if Homer Bailey becomes good somewhere else". If there's anything this team should be doing in 2019, it's picking up a Craigslist post of a 33 year old pitcher, trying to fix him up, and seeing what they can get on resale. Or maybe I left a word out of that sentence. If Bailey's results are anything like his 2017-2018, we're about to find out how somebody could allow a BABIP of over .370 on fourseam fastballs without seeming unlikely whatsoever.

Heath Fillmyer: With Duffy likely not ready before the end of April, Heath Fillmyer will probably get to pitch in the majors this month. Fillmyer was sorta meh as an overall package. But also Fillmyer should be getting opportunities at this level on a team that likely isn't going anywhere anyways. Fillmyer probably should be getting shots over Homer Bailey, but reasons. Fillmyer is sort of the indy music version of Brad Keller. Pitches to contact. Has double plays turned behind him. Doesn't really strikeout many. Will depend not having things blow up while posting a 1.3 WHIP. It's good to get good results out of somebody who's gonna be in the 4th/5th spot in the rotation like Fillmyer likely will be in 2019. Considering the sheer number of "moving parts" in the Royals 2019 rotation, Fillmyer is pretty likely to be making starts at various times this year.

Danny Duffy: It may not feel like Duffy made 28 starts last year, but he did. It may not seem like Duffy was worse than Ian Kennedy in several ways last year, but he was. Duffy could pitch in April although it's possible Duffy's timetable isn't that optimistic. We've seen watching Duffy long enough to know the pluses and minuses here. We know the exact points that come up after good and bad starts. But I suspect that being paid $15M on a bad team will lead some fans to grumble because fans of bad teams usually go right for the highest paid players on the team. But there'll also be posts about putting Duffy in the bullpen despite the fact that he's being paid a lot and the rotation is shallow and they're already doing that with Ian Kennedy. Fair or unfair, Duffy will be judged by some people on what he wasn't instead of what he was.

Now, on to the relief pitchers. The group that will be blamed for a lot of the problems unless it's glaringly obvious that they're good.

Scott Barlow: Barlow was around last year for 6 appearances over two stints and it went smoothly enough. Then he got hurt in July and his injury caused him to miss out on being promoted by a Royals team that kicked the tires on Enny Romero that month. The Royals decided to not call him up last September probably more for load management than anything else. Considering the pitchers due to be promoted to the 25 man roster this month, it wouldn't be shocking if Barlow was likely to be optioned purely because he has options. Barlow has potential to take over the Kevin McCarthy role of perfectly generic acceptable relief pitcher who keeps getting demoted because nobody else can be demoted from the bullpen. Hopefully I-29 will be reopened to traffic north of St. Joseph before Barlow is sent down to Omaha for the first time this season.

Brad Boxberger: Could Brad Boxberger end up closing games for this team? Maybe. Boxberger has some experience at getting saves and Wily Peralta is sort of an improvised solution at closer. Boxberger actually remained in-tact enough times last year to get 32 saves despite allowing a lot of baserunners (WHIP of 1.425) and runs (4.39 ERA). He also had 41 saves in 2015 but he had more DL stints (3) than saves (0) in 2016/17. Velocity-wise, Peralta has an advantage over Boxberger (Peralta averaged 96-97 in 2018 and Boxberger averaged 91) and Peralta has more pitches than Boxberger's fastball/change duo. Boxberger's track record should probably hold up better than the pitchers that were brought aboard last off-season.

Jake Diekman: Probably the pride of Cloud County Community College. He was actually traded at the deadline last year. Then he posted an ERA of 7.53 and a WHIP of 1.81. But as a left-handed reliever on a team with Ned Yost managing, Diekman will be given chances to earn or destroy good will. Last year left-handed bats hit Diekman better than right-handed bats. But a look at the splits would suggest that it could have been a random blip where left-handed bats hit his slider for better results than they had in previous years. Diekman is either Sinker or Slider if you get bored enough during a game to start guessing which one of his 2 pitches he will throw next. You can also play that game with Greg Holland's fastball/slider.

Chris Ellis: This is not the pseudonym of a famous author/musician/etc. Ellis split time between Memphis and Springfield in the Cardinals system last year. Most of his time as a pitcher involved starting, so prepare for people asking about starting Ellis if he shows promise and there's glaring holes in the rotation. Ellis has been traded in deals involving Andrelton Simmons and Jaime Garcia. Hopefully Ellis' time in Memphis has helped him realize that St. Louis does not have good BBQ.

Tim Hill: Hill probably outranks Diekman for left-handed pitchers that Ned will habitually use. Especially since Brian Flynn is starting the year with his annual trip to the no-longer-DL Injured List. Hill pitched in 70 games last year. He had 4 months that could be considered pretty good. He also had a month where he gave up 11 runs. His platoon split became pretty apparent by the end of last year. His OPS was 203 points higher against right-handed batters than against left-handed batters. Ideally he shouldn't come into games to face right-handed hitting and perhaps he won't do that this year.

Ian Kennedy: This will put the "Ian Kennedy only struggles facing batters for a 2nd or 3rd time" narrative to the ultimate test. The best case scenario is that the Royals are able to find some way to dispatch a successful Ian Kennedy (while eating a good portion of salary probably) to a team that has more use for a 34 year old relief pitcher who was exiled to St. Helena because the concept of a 4th year of Ian Kennedy starts was too much to bear for a team that could have an opening day 25 man roster with 3 starting pitchers. Ian Kennedy will probably be on the Royals through at least July 2020 because he's being paid a lot of money and not a lot of teams are interested in paying pitchers with minimal value.

Kevin McCarthy: McCarthy got a brief look in 2016, was reasonably competent at least by a standard or two in 2017, and was one of the better relievers last year when most of the bullpen was a complete mess. McCarthy didn't actually start last year on the 25 man roster because he had options and Justin Grimm became available during Spring Training. He was called up quickly and stuck around all year. This year, I believe McCarthy doesn't have minor league options, meaning he's in a far more secure roster spot than he has been in previous years. There's a chance that competence will be enough to stand out in this years bullpen too.

Wily Peralta: He sorta fell into the closing job because he had the good timing of being around when Kelvin Herrera was traded and throwing heat without getting torched by opposing hitters. The quickest and laziest way to describe his saves is that he was sorta like Fernando Rodney, at least in his ability to elevate people's heart rates. It seemed like every Peralta appearance that actually turned bad was a non-save situation. It's possible that Peralta's biggest plus as the closer involves the hope of trading him for whatever you can get for a relief pitcher who throws 96 these days. If he's not the best reliever in this pen, it's probably not all that awful since there's high leverage spots outside of the 9th inning that will need good relief pitching.

Kyle Zimmer: There's top guys that organizations want to succeed but never actually put up the numbers to justify it and guys who never actually stay healthy for long enough to get up here. Kyle Zimmer from 2012 to 2017 was almost defined by feeling sore and missing months as a result of that soreness. Zimmer spent all of 2018 in a Tibetan Monestary finding the meaning of life, followed by going to DriveLine, Driveline is gonna get a lot of free advertising if Zimmer is successful at either pitching or successful at staying healthy. Zimmer has pitched 85 minor league games with 49 starts, so he's a lot more familiar with relieving than several Royals pitchers starting the year in this bullpen. Considering track record, if Zimmer is successful, he probably shouldn't be rushed into starting. If he's finally successful as a relief pitcher after 7 seasons of getting injured as a starting pitcher, why mess with things after everything is finally right? Kyle Zimmer was actually in 20 games for Omaha in 2017 which was the only time he pitched 20 games in a season for a team. Zimmer actually wasn't good in 2017 aside from at least having a good strikeout rate. Relief pitching is the ultimate in small sample size for this sport. So any argument about Zimmer's sample size (9 games/12 2/3 innings in the Spring) can be taken either way. It'll take time to see how things translate for him in 2019. It's a feel good story, but eventually the results will determine much we feel good about the story.

To the hitters that are likely to be on the bench more often than starting, at least to start the season.

Cam Gallagher: I suspect we'll see more Gallagher this year working behind Maldonado than we would have seen from Ned starting Salvy at catcher over and over. It's probably difficult to get a good gauge on a backup catcher. If things go 'right' for the purposes of rebuilding, Gallagher should be getting most of the starts in August with Viloria, or some other catcher handling the rest of things. He'll be better than Drew Butera. We hope.

Terrance Gore: The Royals had Terrance Gore on the 25 man roster before September 1st a few times. He spent two days on the roster in April 2015 without playing (coming up when Alex Rios got hurt and going down when the Royals realized that Reymond Fuentes was on their 40 man roster). Gore spent the first 27 games on the 25 man roster in 2016, appearing 4 times (He was demoted to bring up Brian Flynn). Gore spent the first 7 games of the 2017 season on the 25 man roster, appearing once (Gore was optioned on the same day as Matt Strahm in order to bring up Scott Alexander and Jakob Junis). Gore pinch-ran in a July 2017 game which ended with a walkoff groundout at Fenway (He was optioned for the return of Melky Cabrera that time). Gore was DFAed last March and spent most of 2018 in Omaha until being traded to the Cubs. So 2019 will be the 3rd time in 4 seasons that Terrance Gore started the season on the Royals 25 man roster and barring a move before Monday, the 4th time in 5 seasons that Terrance Gore was on the Royals 25 man roster at any time in the month of April. On previous more successful Royals teams, the Royals realized soon enough that carrying a full-time pinch-runner was not a good use of resources. Gore probably stays up this time as along as demoting him throws the team into a bind in regards to backup outfielders. A move to DFA Gore would have to involve bringing up Bonifacio or Phillips soon-ish. Or playing with an even more limited bench than usual (considering what the bench looks like, can it get weirder?). Having Terrance Gore on the 25 man roster fits the "speed" thing but not really much in regards to any other baseball skill. But they've done it before and they'll figure out that it's still impractial.

Chris Owings: Chris should buy his agent a steak for getting him a deal before the MLB Free Agency algorithm told teams to stop offering money to baseball players. If he had waited, he would not be making $3M to hover between the outfield and infield this year. Owings will likely be one of the most popular 75-80 OPS+ players in baseball this season if he can get a niche that makes you forget that his statline isn't great. Although to be fair to Owings, his 75 OPS+ comes in a career where he didn't have a single season with an OPS+ in the 60s or 70s. His numbers have been dragged down by posting OPS+ of 51 and 57 in 2018 and 2015. Owings had a 109 point OPS gap between home and road games as a Diamondback, hitting 237/276/339 outside of Chase Field these days. Owings' 2019 salary is the same total that Willie Bloomquist got from the Mariners at age 37. So maybe he could be getting paid even more if not for the non-collusion doing on these days. If Bloomquist was the spork, Owings is the plastic spork that KFC gives you to try and eat mashed potatoes.

Frank Schwindel: Usually the cause-celebre 1st Baseman/Designated Hitter makes his debut at some random time and not on opening day. But this opening day 25 man roster is sorta weird. Schwindel was picked in the 18th round of the 2013 draft. Jaycob Brugman and Dustin Fowler were the two major leaguers picked closest to Schwindel. Schwindel has 102 career minor league home runs and 110 career minor league walks. In 2014, 2016, and 2017, his home run total was higher than his walk total. That's different than a player like Kila Ka'aihue who had consecutive 100 walk seasons in the minor leagues in 2008 and 2009 or Clint Robinson who had a pretty respectable walk total in the minors. Last year in Omaha, Schwindel tormented left-handed pitching to the tune of hitting 353/402/630 in 132 plate appearances vs left-handed pitching. So considering Schwindel's success in the minors against lefties and Lucas Duda being really awful against left-handed pitching, Schwindel will get some starts mainly against lefties and he'll get to pinch hit for Duda if a team is gonna unleash their lefty reliever on Lucas Duda (also Schwindel could pinch hit for Gore if the Royals use Gore to run for Duda). I would expect that Frank Schwindel is demoted by the time the Royals summon a 5th starting pitcher, if not sooner (like when they summon Homer Bailey). The only scenarios where that doesn't happen involves either another player getting injured early or enough relief pitchers with option years being so bad that they demote two relief pitchers. It would be better for Schwindel to get everyday starts up here to at least settle the question about him being a major leaguer. If I had to guess knowing what he did in the minors, I would be skeptical of a low walkrate first baseman on this level. At the same time, this team isn't going to be kept out of playoffs by seeing what they have in their homegrown/young guys in 2019. The Royals have certainly seen guys that they declared "not good enough" go somewhere else and become good enough. So you can't lose too many of those guys from this team without . Schwindel probably returns sometime in the late summer depending on when the Royals send Lucas Duda to a nice house upstate. But that's a long way off and things can change before August.

And now the starting pitchers (to start off) and the usual starting position players.

Brad Keller: Pretty much the best part of the 2018 team if we're considering expectations for his 2018. Will be interesting to see how things hold up in a full year of starting and how much he can get from a fourseam/sinker and slider. Keller also throws a changeup, which is probably helpful for a starting pitcher. Keller was a little bit pitch-to-contact as a starter last year. If there's any year where the whole pitch to contact theory will be tested, it'll be this year where the defense is expected to be good. If pitching to contact with this defense doesn't work, i'm not sure how many places where it'd work. Keller is gonna be one of the guys whose results will probably tell us about the kind of results we'll see from this team in 2019.

Jakob Junis: Junis is probably going to be the best starter in the 2019 rotation even if he's not pitching opening day. So is the life of having really good control, not walking guys, striking out guys, but also occasionally hitting batters and giving up a bunch of home runs. It'll be interesting to see how much Junis starting will be used as an opening to give Cam Gallagher a start to catch Junis. Another thing that might be interesting is that Junis' ERA throwing to Butera/Gallagher/Viloria was 3.22 in 2017/2018 but his ERA throwing to Salvador Perez was 5.09. So either a slight correction will occur in regards to that gap or Jakob Junis will end up having a very good season.

Jorge Lopez: Don't drink every time they reference the near-perfect game against the Twins this season. At least it's better than references to Eric Skoglund's debut during every other Eric Skoglund start. Jorge Lopez will be the guy in the rotation who you'll hear a lot about potential and stuff, especially if he just gave up 6 runs in his last start. But as long as Brett Phillips is in Omaha and the 2019 Draft hasn't happened yet, Jorge Lopez will be carrying the torch of "guy we got last July who made the first 4 months of awful baseball worth it". We've certainly seen a lot of starting pitchers like Jorge Lopez who have been talked up and have had sporadic results as a starter. Like how Luke Hochevar was a pain to watch until he became a relief pitcher. There's a variety of ways Jorge Lopez's season could go and we didn't really see enough of him with the Royals last year to get a good grasp on things.

Martin Maldonado: The temporary starting catcher. Ideally he can be traded for somebody that you may or may not ever hear from again in July. His pluses include framing and throwing out basestealers. It'll be interesting to see he'll grade out on the metrics when you consider that he was signed in March. Also when you consider that it seems like the Royals have never had a starting catcher that has fared well in the framing formulae. Moving from Salvador Perez to Martin Maldonado will be more of a change offensively than defensively. Maldonado is not likely to amass 30 starts at DH like Salvy did last year. It'll be hard to get too attached to Maldonado because he really should end up in another organization by August 1st or September 1st.

Ryan O'Hearn: Should probably play as much first base as possible. Will end up at DH at times because various reasons. Last season, he started off a little bit slow and was also being sat for days at a time to avoid left-handed pitching. Once he actually got to play some consecutive games, he had a really good August and a better September. O'Hearn also homered 12 times in 170 PAs (compared to 13 HRs in 345 PA for Lucas Duda). Just imagine if he had a chance to play in the majors before last July. Hopefully this is the year we get to figure out if minor league platoon splits have predictive value. Last year, O'Hearn made 3 of his 42 starts against left-handed pitching. Alcides Escobar was getting starts against lefty starters in September while O'Hearn sat on the bench. This year he starts the season on the bench because he will melt into a puddle against left-handed pitching (please don't check 3 hitter Alex Gordon's hitting lines against lefties)

Lucas Duda: It's actually kind of impressive the variety of fan-types that are unhappy with the idea of rostering Lucas Duda in 2019. Self-proclaimed smart fans are mad because Lucas Duda really doesn't bring enough to the table to be worth it on a bad team. Along with the fact that Duda's 33 and has the trade value of an iPhone 5. Duda making it onto the roster at the expense of Brian Goodwin also goes over badly with Brian Goodwin fans, which probably tilt more towards stats-oriented guys than any other group of fans. Self-proclaimed stat-resistent types dislike Duda because they thought this team was gonna be about speed and defense. They also remember that Duda was one of the primary bats on a Royals team that started a season 38-90. It's not entirely Duda's fault that the Royals were 25-58 (.301) when Duda started and 17-33 (.340) when Duda didn't start pre-trade, or that the Royals were 16-13 after trading Duda for nothing. Duda being on the roster did prevent fans from seeing Ryan O'Hearn get serious playing time until August. Now, despite claims that Duda "won’t take ABs from others", he will take at-bats from others. So it's different this time. Lucas Duda was traded for Drew Smith in 2017. Drew Smith actually pitched in the majors in 2018 (Smith will miss 2019 with Tommy John Surgery because Mets pitchers inevitably break themselves). The Royals didn't even get a photo of Drew Smith for Duda from the Braves in August 2018. Duda started one game for the Braves and batted 25 times (regular season plus postseason) then he spent the spring in the Twins camp losing a positional battle to CJ Cron (who was available on waivers for a time last November). The delusional hope will be that Lucas Duda will get a human baseball player in a trade later this year. But let's be honest, getting international bonus cap and trade money for Duda would be an amazing haul. Lucas Duda is here because a team that is already pretty lefty-heavy (with switch hitters that are also worse as right-handed bats) thinks they need another left-handed bat. Or maybe Ned thinks that they need a bopper since they won the Cactus League and we need power to compete at Kauffman Stadium. Duda will almost certainly play a lot because there are more right-handed pitchers than left-handed pitchers. Also because playing Duda/Soler will produce better hitting results than playing Chris Owings in RF and Jorge Soler at DH. Unless the Royals are aiming to get the #1 pick in the 2020 draft, they really don't need to give Lucas Duda a bunch of starts. There is no such thing as a bad one year deal, but there is such a thing as a pointless one year deal. Such as employing Lucas Duda in 2019.

Whit Merrifield: With Salvador Perez out this year and Alex Gordon very likely gone after this season, Whit Merrifield may be the leader by-default in the "player that casual fans at the ballpark have heard of" category. Which considering this team's likely position for the next few years means that Whit Merrifield is probably the David DeJesus of this generation. Merrifield will hit somewhere in the top 3 of the order. He probably should play mostly 2nd base since various players are in the other positions where Merrifield played in the past. But they'll probably find ways to play Merrifield in various outfield positions depending on the urges to start Chris Owings on a particular day.

Adalberto Mondesi: Amazing what could happen if you play a guy in his best defensive position. Probably gonna hit leadoff or 2nd short. Which will be good if he's hitting around the same level as his second half output. But even if he takes a step or two back, then it's not like he would be the worst #2 hitter used recently by this team. Mondesi started 51 of 67 second half games last year (with 5 of the 16 games missed coming in July due to a bereavement leave). Mondesi started the Royals final 23 games in September (Mondesi hit 293/330/596 with 8 HRs and 14 SB over those 23 games, Alcides Escobar never hit more than 7 HRs in a season). As long as Mondesi is hitting, I suspect the number of days where he sits in favor of Chris Owings will remain reasonably low.

Hunter Dozier: Dozier's numbers before and after the Mike Moustakas trade are dramatically different. Dozier hit 204/264/323 through July 25th and 254/296/472 after the Royals traded Moustakas. Dozier was playing 1B/DH before the trade and was moved over to 3rd base after that. Despite being a year-plus older than Cheslor Cuthbert, Dozier has appeared to get the 3rd base spot in the post-Moustakas world. There's still a lot of uncertainty that wasn't exactly answered by Dozier's slightly unconventional stretch-run hitting line, but Kelvin Gutierrez is starting the year in Omaha just in case.

Alex Gordon: We might need to have a tough conversation in July about Gordon. Ideally, he really shouldn't play as much against left-handed pitching as he does (He had a gap of around 200 points in OPS between LHPs and RHP last year) and he shouldn't hit 3rd against lefties. But Alex Gordon has been the Gonzaga of winning gold gloves as a left fielder in the AL. And as you may have heard, he's from Lincoln. So, if he finally has that bounce-back year (that he didn't have in any of the first 3 years of his contract), the awkward conversation of "what's better: a 2 month long farewell residency for Gordon or trading him for some random dude" might come up. But considering the Royals brought back Lucas Duda, I suspect that no matter where Gordon plays in September 2019, if he wants to play baseball in 2020, he might end up back with the Royals because they've done worse. Gordon had a good Spring, but that's in Arizona. Gordon typically starts slow at a colder temperature in the majors and we'll see if that holds again.

Billy Hamilton: Ideally he can have enough value in July to get traded. Until then, get ready for the joy of stolen bases and the frustration of Hamilton flying out to medium-deep parts of the outfield. Hopefully he doesn't get too many (or any) starts at the top of the order. If things work out reasonably well, Hamilton should get somebody who'll get to experience Delaware while Brett Phillips plays centerfield for the Royals in August. Such a wish might be giving some people people too much credit since Brian Goodwin was getting starts in CF over Brett Phillips (Phillips injured himself in Cleveland playing RF and ended the year with a 3 for 23 post-injury). Sometimes it feels like Lorenzo Cain was the only Royals Centerfielder post-2006 to actually stick in that position (even if Cain had a Gold Glove denied from him partly due to playing 'too much' right field in 2014). I know that can't be exactly true, but it seems that way. Anyways, Billy Hamilton steals a lot of bases but also has obvious flaws as a batter.

Jorge Soler: Hopefully he won't get hurt in June this year. Even with a good partial 2018, the knock on Soler is gonna remain "health" until he holds up for a year or so. Considering the depth, or lack of it at times, Soler probably gets to play more right field than anywhere else, even if his defense will be very DH-esque at times. Whenever he heats up, he'll probably end up in the middle of the order on this team. He has had a good Spring in Arizona, but as you may have noticed from checking the weather section, Kansas City in April is gonna be a little colder than Arizona in March, and Soler has had some slow starts in previous years.

So the quickest answer on "how will this team do" involves "what's the pitching gonna be like". The Royals literally turned over the entire bullpen from last year's opening day to today, with only two relievers from last years opening day remaining on the roster and two regular relievers from last year remaining on the roster. The starting pitching includes several guys who are a bit pitch-to-contact heavy. Along with Homer Bailey who has been bad for awhile and Jorge Lopez who is sort of a question mark until proven otherwise. There's quite a few members of the roster who can be called promising young talent. The roster's average age on opening day is 28.04. If Duffy and Bailey replace Barlow and Schwindel, the average age will be 28.44. So the youngness of the team will be exaggerated as usual. 12 of the 25 players on the opening day roster are 26 or 27, which helps to counter the 7 players who are 30 or older. This is actually better than last year which had a bullpen mostly made up of relief pitchers born in 1990. There's a certain amount of room to move in the 2019 AL Central. Last year, The Royals went 36-40 in the Central last year and 22-64 against everybody else. It's very possible the Royals could win more than 22 of their 86 non-Central games this season. It's possible one of the 3 AL Central teams that will be making top 5 picks in the 2019 Draft could win 70 games this year if everything breaks just right.

Guess we'll just have to see what wins out this year between "young-ish players getting better" and "extracting trade value from 30-somethings". Opening day is today, probably, or Saturday, or Sunday, or maybe Friday. But likely it's today.