After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Kansas City Royals. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Boston / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Los Angeles AL / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
As noted over the last month in these pages both by Jeff Sullivan and then Craig Edwards, the Kansas City Royals currently employ a number of players who are likely to become free agents after the 2017 season. What the ZiPS projections featured here do is reinforce the relative importance of those pending free agents to Kansas City’s likelihood of winning games. Because, consider: of the nine field players forecast to record a 1.0 WAR or better in 2017, five of them — Lorenzo Cain (503 PA, 3.1 zWAR), Jarrod Dyson (303, 1.9), Alcides Escobar (652, 1.3), Eric Hosmer (648, 1.3), and Mike Moustakas (381, 1.6) — aren’t signed by the club past next year. Over half the team’s core, in other words, is likely to depart.

That adds some urgency to the 2017 campaign. Unfortunately, Dan Szymborski’s computer doesn’t offer much grounds for optimism. Besides Cain, only Alex Gordon (529, 2.1) and Salvador Perez (561, 3.3) are projected to break the two-win threshold among the team’s position players. The prospective starters at second base and designated hitter, meanwhile — Raul Mondesi (410, -0.3) and Jorge Soler (346, 0.2), respectively — mostly profile as replacement-level types.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Kansas City Royals farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on thes 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen

The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell

Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)

55 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Recorded 30 strikeouts in 22 big-league innings.

Scouting Report
Strahm saw a 148% uptick in innings as a sophomore at Neosho CC in 2012 and pitched complete games in 11 of his 14 starts (though many of them were not a full nine innings). Strahm dominated and his stuff ticked up as the year went along. (All told, Strahm added almost 15 mph to his fastball between his senior year of high school and his sophomore year of JUCO.) Nevertheless, he lasted until the 21st round of June’s draft. He began experiencing discomfort in his elbow during the 2012 offseason and was misdiagnosed with a stress reaction when in fact he needed Tommy John, which he ultimately received in the summer of 2013. He missed all of 2014 recovering.

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The Houston Astros figure to be one of the better clubs in baseball this next season. They had a strong team last year and have added Carlos Beltran, Brian McCann, and Josh Reddick in the meantime. Presumably, that makes them a stronger team.

As for the pitching side, they don’t appear to be content yet. They have Dallas Keuchel at the front of the rotation. Lance McCullers is good, but had elbow problems last season. Collin McHugh is fine, Mike Fiers a little bit less fine. Charlie Morton and potentially Joe Musgrove also appear in the mix. The team could probably use one more good pitcher.

As such, it should come as no surprise that, according to Brian McTaggart of MLB.com, that the Astros have tried to trade for a starting pitcher. From McTaggart’s piece:

The Astros are trying to land a starting pitcher, but aren’t willing to trade Bregman. That has made things rather difficult. Among some of their targets are Jose Quintana, Jake Odorizzi, Chris Archer, Danny Duffy and Yordano Ventura. The team has the prospects to get a deal done and is likely to make a move at some point.

One of these things is not like the other. Here are those pitchers’ WAR totals from last season.

It would certainly appear from the data here as though Yordano Ventura isn’t particularly good. At the very least, you could say he had pretty forgettable season in terms of creating wins. He did incite a benches-clearing brawl earlier in the season — and, after multiple, similar incidents, it’s certainly possible he deserved more than the eight-game suspension he received for throwing at Manny Machado.

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Yesterday, while ruminating about the Royals opportunities this winter, I suggested the following.

If I’m Kansas City, I’d rather send Davis to a team like the Cubs or Dodgers, a team that doesn’t really have a ninth-inning guy with whom they’re currently comfortable, and would pay a bigger premium for the upgrade they’d get in their bullpen. The idea of swapping Davis for Jorge Soler and something else is more interesting to me, for instance. Soler is, in some ways, the outfield version of Kolten Wong at this point; a mid-20s guy who hasn’t shown he can be an above-average regular yet, but has a long-term deal at cheap prices that makes him somewhat useful even if he just is what he is. Except Soler still has mythical upside: if he figures out how to hit like people think he could hit, his value would skyrocket.

The Royals, it seems, had similar thoughts.

Sources: #Cubs close to acquiring Wade Davis from #Royals for Jorge Soler.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 7, 2016

The deal isn’t done quite yet, because reviewing the medicals on a guy who went on the DL twice last year with elbow problems is no minor matter. But assuming the Cubs are confident that Davis is healthy enough, the deal sounds like it will go through, and likely as a one for one.

Source: #Cubs' trade with #Royals, if completed, will be straight-up: Davis for Soler. No other players.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 7, 2016

So, let’s talk about Soler and Davis. In a challenge trade, it’s usually hard to pull off a win-win deal, given that the performance of the two players isn’t going to be identical. This one, though? This looks like this could work well for both teams.

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There are a few teams in baseball that just don’t trade with each other, at least not in any meaningful way. The Cubs and White Sox don’t send impact players to their crosstown rivals. The Dodgers and Giants would rather do anything else besides strike a significant trade that might help the other, to the point where you only have to go back four trades between the two franchises before you find a deal that involved Jackie Robinson. Yes, that Jackie Robinson; the deal was voided when Robinson refused to report to the Giants.

Less well known, the Cardinals and Royals also mostly just ignore each other in trade talks. They’ve made four trades together in the last 21 years, involving immortal players like Jose Martinez (twice), Tony Cruz, Jamie Romak, Victor Marte, and Jason Ryan. Back in December of 1995, the Cardinals helped facilitate a three-way trade in which the Royals got Mike Remlinger from the Reds, a move so essential that Remlinger actually never pitched for Kansas City, as he was claimed back on waivers by the Reds before the 1996 season started.

Realistically, the last significant trade between the two franchises was in February of 1993, when St. Louis sent Felix Jose to Kansas City for Gregg Jefferies. Both players had been roughly average players the year before, but Jefferies turned in a +5.4 WAR season in 1993 for St. Louis, while Jose put up a -0.9 WAR season in KC. The Royals apparently decided the Cardinals were not to be trusted after that, and we’ve now gone 23 years without a significant move between the two organizations.

But in reading Jeff’s post yesterday, and thinking about what the Royals could do this winter besides just sit around and hope things break their way, I started to think that Dayton Moore and John Mozeliak should thaw the ice. It’s time for the Royals and Cardinals to make an interesting trade again.

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Not long ago, I was thinking about the teams that might elect to rebuild next. The only really obvious candidate was and is the White Sox, who could begin the process at any moment. After them, I thought about the Diamondbacks, who might be a half-year away. The Orioles might be approaching their own cliff. The Tigers have already expressed a desire to get younger and cheaper. And so on. A team I didn’t think about enough was the Royals. In my head, I still associate the Royals with having so recently won a championship, but now that’s behind them. What’s ahead of them is a future that seems like it’s going to be very tricky to navigate.

Now isn’t the time for the Royals to start blowing it up. The Royals shouldn’t dismantle, not this week, not this winter. I don’t think that would really help them avoid the coming reality. But from the looks of things, 2017 is going to be it. Already, the Royals achieved the greatest success. The cost of that pursuit will begin to take its toll.

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Matt Strahm flirted with 80 mph in West Fargo, North Dakota. Now he throws mid-90s heat in Kansas City. The 24-year-old southpaw came a long way from undersized prep to overpowering Royals rookie.

A 21st-round pick in 2012 out of Neosho (Kansas) County Community College, Strahm jumped directly from Double-A to the KC bullpen in late July. He proceeded to set down opposing hitters with style. In 22 innings over 21 appearances, he fanned 30 and allowed just 13 hits. Only three earned runs went onto his statistical record.

Strahm started for the bulk of the past two minor-league seasons, and he will reportedly compete for a spot in the Royals rotation next spring. Wherever his future role, he has both an electric arm and a seemingly out-of-nowhere story. Strahm talked about both when Kansas City came to Boston at the end of August.

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Strahm on growing up in West Fargo: “Playing pro ball was always a dream of mine. That said, I was 6-foot, 150 pounds. I never lifted a weight. I was never on a throwing program. Baseball in North Dakota, our seasons are so short that you don’t really get to throw very much.

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Depending on your perspective, you might think that Eric Hosmer had a career season. After all, he wasn’t just an All-Star, he was the All-Star Game MVP! He hit 20 homers for the first time — his 25 dingers were six more than his previous season best. And he drove in 104 runs — 11 more than his previous best. And yet, for the third time in his career, he was a replacement player or worse in terms of WAR. Did Eric Hosmer just have the worst 100-RBI season on record?

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One can be forgiven for having forgotten about the Wyckoff v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball lawsuit. The class action case — filed back in July 2015 by Jordan Wyckoff, a former scout for the Kansas City Royals — accused Major League Baseball and its teams of violating both federal antitrust and employment law by colluding to deprive amateur and professional scouts both of the minimum wage and overtime compensation. Specifically, the case contended that MLB teams have unlawfully agreed not to compete with one another for the services of their scouts, with the result that wages for these employees have, in some cases, been depressed to as little as $5 per hour once all of their various job duties have been accounted for.

Late last year, MLB filed a motion asking the court to dismiss Wyckoff’s antitrust claims under its historic antitrust exemption. At the same time, MLB also argued that the suit’s minimum-wage claims should be dismissed against all but the Royals, since Wyckoff — the only plaintiff named in the suit who was asserting a violation of the minimum-wage and overtime rules — had never been employed by any of the other 29 MLB clubs.

Since then, the parties have waited… and waited… and then waited some more for the court to issue a ruling. That wait mercifully came to an end this past Thursday when Judge Paul Gardephe finally released his long-anticipated decision, more than nine months after MLB’s motion had first been filed.

In his opinion, Judge Gardephe granted MLB all of the relief it had requested, dismissing the overwhelming majority of Wyckoff’s case. As a result, while Wyckoff can continue to pursue his claim for back-pay from the Royals, any hopes he may have had that his suit would spur more systemic changes to the market for MLB scouts appear to have fallen short.

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This is not how a catcher reacts to your typical regular-season caught stealing:

And this is not the sort of enthusiasm with which a catcher is typically met in the post-game high-five line:

If you missed what happened in the ninth inning of Wednesday’s game between the Cleveland Indians and the Kansas City Royals, I’ve already spoiled the surprise. Terrance Gore, pinch-runner extraordinaire, was caught stealing in a regular-season game for the first time in his career. He’d gone 17-for-17 before Wednesday night. He’d gone 4-for-5 in the postseason, too, and his only caught stealing came at third base on a play in which he beat the throw and was originally called safe, only to have the verdict changed because his foot came off the bag for a split-second.

For more than a century prior to the advent of instant replay, Gore’s only caught stealing before Wednesday night wouldn’t have been a caught stealing at all, and even with replay, the ruling was dubious. Gore was damn near 21-for-21 in steal attempts to begin his career before Wednesday night, and the major-league record in the expansion era is 26, set by Mitchell Page in 1977. What was amounting to an historic streak has now come to a close, at the hands of Indians catcher Roberto Perez and reliever Cody Allen.

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