Two weeks. Two weeks is all it took. Shortly before Christmas, it looked like there was almost no chance Alex Gordon would return to Kansas City. He had too big of a market, and the Royals were sticking with too small of an offer. The Royals themselves were thinking about alternatives, more affordable replacement outfielders, but they made sure to stay in touch. Gordon remained the top priority, and the Royals were willing to be patient. Now it’s safe to say it worked out for all parties involved.

According to sources, Alex Gordon and the #Royals have agreed to a mult-year deal, pending physical. Announcement likely today

— Jeffrey Flanagan (@FlannyMLB) January 6, 2016

The terms: four years, reportedly, worth $72 million. There’s no opt-out clause, and the contract is said to be somewhat backloaded, to give the current Royals a bit of additional flexibility. Now that we’ve gotten here, this appears to be a tremendous deal for the team. And I suspect Alex Gordon knows that. I also suspect he doesn’t care, because this one’s about more than just money.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I ran an exercise on this site that required some audience participation. The premise was simple enough: the Royals, for the third consecutive year, haven’t looked like an elite team based on the third-party projection systems we host here on the site. The Royals, of course, have been an elite team, despite what the projections say, so there’s been some understandable hesitation in taking those projections at face value.

I simply asked everyone to take a look at each individual player projection, and either take the over, the under, or push. The idea is that, through crowdsourcing, we might be able to spot the individual places where the community thinks the projections are missing on guys, and then manually adjust the team projection from there.

And now for the seemingly ever-necessary reminder: The projections are not meant to be taken as gospel. They’re to be used as a guide. Anyone who reasonably understands what we do here on FanGraphs should get that, by now. We — we being the authors of FanGraphs — have no say in the projections. Just because the numbers say one thing doesn’t mean that every author has to agree. I can’t change the fact that the projections say what they do. I’m just here to report, and analyze, and think, and discuss.

The numbers are calling the current Royals roster a 78-win roster. That seems sort of silly. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find too many folks who’d think that sounds right. I’d certainly take the over, at least. Let’s see what the crowdsourcing results say. You should be able to click this image to view a larger version:

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in November, the Kansas City Royals were crowned champions of the baseball world, and rightfully so; they won all the necessary games! The Royals are the champions, and they’ll continue to be the champions until a new team is crowned champions in the upcoming October. Could be that the new champions are just a different Royals team, but that seems unlikely. Mostly, it seems unlikely because it’s really hard to repeat World Series titles. That hasn’t happened in 15 years. But also, it seems unlikely for another reason.

See, we’ve got player and team projections here on the site, and when looking toward the future, it’s usually better to rely on the projections than to rely on whatever subjective beliefs we can quickly work up in our own heads. The projections, by and large, are pretty darn good, and those pretty darn good projections thinks the Royals roster, as currently constructed, is the opposite of pretty darn good. Right now, at this very second, the Royals, the world champion Royals, are being given MLB’s sixth-worst team projection, a little worse than the Twins and Orioles and a little better than the Padres and the Rockies.

I know, I know. The projections didn’t much like the Royals in 2014, either, and they were one game away from being the champions. The projections didn’t much like the Royals in 2015, either, and now they are the champions. The projections have a two-year history of whiffing on the Royals, and plenty of Kansas City fans have scoffed at the forecasted 2016 numbers listed here on this site.

But this Royals roster, at this very second, is quite a bit different than the roster that won the World Series. The roster that won the World Series had a Johnny Cueto in the rotation, but this one doesn’t. The roster that won the World Series had an Alex Gordon and a Ben Zobrist in the lineup and the field, but this one doesn’t. The roster that won the World Series had a right fielder with more than 86 career games played, but this one doesn’t. The Royals have lost a lot — Cueto, Gordon and Zobrist were worth about nine wins last year (not all to the Royals, of course) — yet they’ve gained very little.

Of course, they’re going to gain some, but they’re not getting Cueto or Zobrist back, and it sure doesn’t look like they’re getting Gordon back. Looks like Omar Infante might again be the Opening Day second baseman, and the best starting pitcher they could hope to land looks like Scott Kazmir right now. Plenty of big-name outfielders are still out there, but the Royals don’t figure to be players for them. More than likely, the Royals pick up a veteran, mid-tier outfielder for one corner, and run a platoon in the other.

While the Royals seem likely to add some projected wins through the end of the offseason, it doesn’t figure to be many. Even if they were to pick up, say, five projected wins through the rest of their offseason moves, a figure that feels high, their team projection would still fall below league average, pitting them between the Rangers and the White Sox.

Point is: no matter what happens, the 2016 Royals aren’t going to project well, by the numbers we currently have, and that’s fascinating. More likely than not, the World Champions will project as something like a .500 team, at best, on Opening Day, and people aren’t sure how to feel about that, especially given the last couple years. Rightfully so. I’m not sure how to feel about it either, which brings us to the second half of this post.

Read the rest of this entry »

You have a choice. I’ll give you $100 right now, or you can let me flip a coin. If it lands on heads, I’ll give you $250. But if it lands on tails, I’ll give you $20. I’m using a fair coin, so the expected value of flipping the coin is $135 based on the 50/50 odds it lands on heads or tails. If you like risk or are a risk-neutral person, it’s an easy decision to take your chances with the coin because the odds are strongly in your favor. If you’re a risk-averse person, however, you’re more likely to take the sure thing because $135 isn’t a whole lot more than $100, and $100 is a whole lot more than $20.

Let’s add another wrinkle. It’s the same choice, but if you choose the coin flip, you have to wait a month. The dollar amounts are the same, but now there’s a time component. To get the value of the coin flip, you need to apply a discount factor to the $135. For some people, that discount factor is pretty close to one, but it might be much lower if you’re strapped for cash and the $100 would dramatically improve your life in the present.

Major league players face a much higher stakes version of this decision when their club comes to them with a contract extension. Do they take a sure thing now, or do they wait and gamble on themselves? While we’re focusing a lot on the 2015-2016 free-agent class this month, there are eight players who could have been free agents for the first time this year but instead chose to cash out early by signing extensions. Did they make the right decision?

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’d made your way over to the “relief pitchers” tab of our team depth charts section lately, there’s something peculiar that may have caught your eye. It didn’t seem to get past Twitter user Brad Shapiro, operating under the moniker @Big_Hebrew:

@BtBScore HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, that’s hilarious. Best bullpen in baseball last 2 season means nothing, got it

— Brad Shapiro (@Big_Hebrew) December 6, 2015

To whom is Brad referring? A quick perusal of Brad’s Twitter profile reveals a Royals “Took the Crown” avatar, a “Royalty” header, and tweets like “CRYING LIKE A BABY RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” posted minutes after the Royals won the World Series. Using these context clues, I’ve drawn the conclusion that Brad is a Royals fan, and that Brad’s tweet was in reference to the Royals bullpen being ranked 25th by our projected depth charts.

Now, I understand that sounds a little silly, given what you know about the Royals bullpen. But here’s the thing about the projections that doesn’t need repeating but probably needs repeating: the projections aren’t perfect, and under certain unique circumstances, they’re going to miss. Also: bullpens, in particular, are hard to project, because relievers are notoriously volatile.

So when you look at Wade Davis‘ Steamer projection for 2015 — the 2.74 ERA, the 3.04 FIP, the 1.4 WAR that’s the same as or lower than Brett Cecil‘s and Will Smith’s — you have to understand that these projections come with error bars. You have to understand that Wade Davis used to be a starter, a bad starter, and that the projection systems can’t make individual player exceptions. And you have to understand that the difference between 25th place and sixth place on the reliever depth chart projections is 1.0 WAR, and that if you just project Wade Davis as a 2.4 WAR reliever — still probably low — rather than a 1.4 WAR reliever, the Royals are right back near the top where they belong.

But about that Royals bullpen, which has, in fact, probably been the best in baseball the last two seasons (h/t Brad). It doesn’t have Greg Holland anymore, lost for the season to Tommy John surgery, and Holland’s been a key part those last two years. It doesn’t have Ryan Madson anymore, signed by the A’s, and Madson was a key part last year. It doesn’t have Franklin Morales anymore, currently a free agent, and Morales was a key part last year.

Even with incumbents Davis and Kelvin Herrera, the Royals bullpen, when Brad composed his tweet, looked a little vulnerable. The next-best option was Luke Hochevar, and while he’s a nice comeback story, his ERA and FIP were both near or at 4.00 last season, he’s now 32 years old, and remember that thing about relievers being notoriously volatile? No telling whether Hochevar returns to being anything more than a middle relief option at this point in his career. Teams could do worse than having Luke Hochevar throw high-leverage innings for them, but the Royals are World Champions with high expectations who have built this sort of bullpen model, and that model doesn’t include Luke Hochevar throwing high-leverage innings.

What it does include, though — and boy have I done some kind of job burying the lede here — is Joakim Soria throwing high leverage innings, because the Royals signed the 31-year-old reliever to a three-year, $25 million contract with a fourth-year mutual option.

Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple 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: Atlanta.

Batters
If the depth chart below seems to depict a more dismal situation than one might expect from a club that’s appeared in each of the last two World Series, note that it excludes at least one player (Alex Gordon) who’s been instrumental to the team’s recent success and another (Ben Zobrist) who benefited the 2015 edition of the club after arriving at the July trade deadline.

It’s not surprising, in light of Gordon and Zobrist’s respective departures, that corner outfield and second base are the team’s two weakest positions according to ZiPS. One assumes that the front office regards these as priorities for the offseason.

Read the rest of this entry »

Alex Gordon has been a really good, perhaps slightly underrated, player over the last five seasons for the Kansas City Royals. An untimely injury limited his role during this most recent regular season, but he was a big part of the club’s playoff runs each of the past two seasons and played a major role in Kansas City’s first World Series title in 30 years. Thanks to a team-friendly contract extension after his breakout 2011 season, the Royals have paid him just $37.5 million over the last four years, including two potential years of free agency. Although Gordon, heading into his age-32 season, is not reaching free agency at an ideal age, given his production he is still likely to receive a deal totaling around $100 million. The question for the Royals and the rest of the league is, will he be worth that kind of money into his mid-30s?

Gordon has hardly gone unnoticed as one of the best, if not the best, player on the two-time American League champion and reigning World Series titleholder. However, due to the way he’s produced his value — including above-average defense in an outfield corner — it’s possible that Gordon is slightly underrated heading into free agency. Over the last five seasons, he has been one of the very best players in baseball, as evidenced by the WAR leader chart below.

The next five players on that list are Josh Donaldson, Dustin Pedroia, Jason Heyward, Evan Longoria, and Giancarlo Stanton. Gordon has put up a well-above average 123 wRC+ during that time after struggling from 2007 to 2010 as he adjusted to major league pitching following just one full season in the minors. Alex Gordon and Jason Heyward’s name have come up together this offseason as similar players for good reason.

Read the rest of this entry »

In a pair of recent posts at this site, Matthew Kory has examined — first before the Royals’ great success and then also after it — has examined what sort of effect the World Series champions might have on the roster-construction philosphies of baseball’s other 29 teams. Both pieces are founded on a reasonable assumption — namely, that it’s common for franchises to imitate the process utilized by the league’s great victor, with a view to also imitating the product. The Copycat Effect, is how one might characterize this. Why felines specifically have been singled out for their mimetic inclinations, I can’t say. That the phenomenon exists seems like a reasonable possibility.

The current post resembles Kory’s own efforts in that the objective is to isolate and explore the most pronounced traits of baseball’s championship club — those traits which, were an organization tempted to emulate the champion, they would themselves identify as most important. Where it differs from Kory’s work, however, is that the intent here is to look towards the future. Instead of examing which current major-league players or teams most embody the Royals’ strengths, what I’d like to ask is which prospects do that. In other words, I’d like to ask this: which rookie-eligible players would a general manager, attempting to best imitate the Royals, set about acquiring (or keeping, as the case may be)?

That’s the guiding inquiry of the current post. How to answer it, though?

First, this way: by identifying those traits endemic to the Royals. Again, Kory’s work is helpful here. In the latter of his two posts, he identifies the traits which most distinguished Kansas City from the rest of the league: a low strikeout rate among the club’s hitters, strong baserunning, elite defensive ability, and a talented bullpen. For the purposes of this post, I’ll be ignoring pitchers. I’ll do it for a number of reasons, but largely because betting on even the near-term success of relievers is a fool’s errand. So the focus will be on hitters.

That’s the first step towards answering the question. The second: to utilize the recently published Steamer 600 projections for 2016. Here’s how I began: for all 4043 players for whom a forecast has been produced, I calculated the z-scores in each of three categories: strikeout rate (where lower is better), baserunning runs relative to average, and defensive runs (which accounts both for fielding runs and positional adjustment). I then averaged together the z-scores for each of those three categories. Reason dictates that the resulting figure should represent to what degree the relevant player might offer the skills possessed by Royals players.

Below are the top-10 rookie-eligible players by that methodology. Note that Age represents 2016 baseball age and all heading titles preceded by -z- represent z-scores.

Royals Prospects Who Aren’t Royals: Attempt No. 1

Name	Team	Pos	Age	PA	K%	BsR	Def	zK%	zBsR	zDef	Total
Willians Astudillo	PHI	C/1B	24	450	7.1%	0.1	7.5	3.1	0.2	1.2	1.5
Jose Peraza	LAN	2B	22	600	11.2%	0.9	1.9	2.3	1.5	0.3	1.4
Rossmel Perez	BAL	C	26	450	10.0%	0.1	7.5	2.5	0.2	1.2	1.3
Tomas Telis	MIA	C	25	450	12.2%	0.2	8.2	2.1	0.4	1.3	1.3
Hanser Alberto	TEX	2B	23	600	11.7%	0.4	4.7	2.2	0.7	0.8	1.2
Tyler Heineman	HOU	C	25	450	12.2%	0.1	7.5	2.1	0.2	1.2	1.2
Raywilly Gomez	LAA	C	26	450	13.3%	0.2	7.5	1.9	0.4	1.2	1.2
Benjamin Turner	SFN	C/1B	26	450	13.3%	0.2	7.5	1.9	0.4	1.2	1.2
Ramon Cabrera	CIN	C	26	450	14.2%	0.0	10.2	1.8	0.1	1.7	1.2
Alex Swim	MIN	C/OF	25	450	12.9%	0.1	7.5	2.0	0.2	1.2	1.2

So, an immediate observation: this is a list full of catchers plus also Jose Peraza and Hanser Alberto. Because catchers receive such a large positional adjustment (+7.5 runs per every 450 plate appearances), they’re inclined to gravitate towards the top of lists like this. Where projections are concerned, positional adjustments aren’t subject to regression and translation like other metrics. Strikeout rate, baserunning, fielding runs: where only minor-league data is available, Steamer is conservative — particularly so regarding the latter two variables. As such, the large catcher’s positional adjustment unduly rewards catchers. Catchers are important, but merely presenting a list of doesn’t seem entirely in keeping with our objective here. We’ll have to refine our methodology.

Read the rest of this entry »

The season is over. The games have been played, the asses have been crowned. That’s the end. All done.

Except of course, no, not at all. Baseball season is like outer space, or an order of breadsticks at WTF Thursday’s Neighborhoodish Restaurant. It never ends. But before we move on to the business of baseball’s business, our topic for the next [checks watch] five months, let’s look back just a tad. You’ll recall, in a bit of foreshadowing, that I graded the Royals’ division-winning celebration in September. It has been suggested by some that, now that Kansas City are champions, I should grade their World Series-winning celebration, and see how it stacks up. See if they’ve learned anything over the last month. So, rather than think too hard about a different, more original topic idea, I thought, “Yeah. Sure.” So here we are! Exciting!

We’ll start where we started last time: the beginning. Which is really the end. It’s here:

With two strikes, Wade Davis threw a fastball inside that may or may not have caught the corner. Didn’t matter. The game was already over. Wilmer Flores, already focused on his off season of deep disappointment akin to learning that WTF Thursday’s Neighborhoodish Restaurant closes at 9pm — meaning endless breadsticks are a myth — took the pitch. I’ve watched the play over and over and despite solid video evidence to the contrary I’m not convinced Flores didn’t wander back to the dugout three pitches earlier.

In any case, let’s get to the grading. You may (not) recall that the Royals’ division-winning celebration garnered 58 out of 70 possible points, or 83%. Not bad. But let’s see if the Royals can improve on that effort, or if I even remember what the categories are.

*****

Appropriate Excitement Level

Heh. Remembered that one.

Look, I really want to talk about the appropriate excitement level. I mean, heck, it’s the heading and everything. And sure, fine, the Royals were super excited. Ten points out of 10, boys. Well done. But the thing I keep noticing after Davis’ strikeout of Flores is Flores. Just watch this.

Davis throws the game’s final pitch.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is an oversimplification, but to be a successful starting pitcher in the current era, you have to maintain some reasonable level of effectiveness for something like 25 batters per start. If you can’t pitch into the sixth and seventh innings with regularity, you aren’t going to remain a starting pitcher for very long. In the past that number was higher and in the future it might be lower, but if you don’t have the tools to remain effective for two or three turns through the order, you’re destined for the bullpen.

Pitching is multidimensional, which means that in order to pitch well enough to remain a starter, you need some combination of skills which push you across that threshold. Command, endurance, and stuff all play into the equation. Command is the ability to throw your pitches where you want them and endurance is the ability to maintain your command and stuff over multiple repetitions. Stuff is more complicated because it is partially a measure of individual pitch quality (defined in many ways) and the number of pitches you have at your disposal.

In other words, if you have average command, decent endurance, and the world’s greatest fastball, you can probably get by if your other pitches are only okay. But you can also get by without a great fastball if your command is elite and you have three solid pitches. There’s no single path to success.

Read the rest of this entry »