Let’s Try to Spin the Mike Moustakas News

Mike Moustakas is out for the rest of the season on account of a torn ACL, which he sustained in a foul-territory collision with Alex Gordon, which also injured the other guy. Gordon is out for a few weeks, himself, and though the collision isn’t quite as costly as Mike Trout running into literally anything, the Royals have been pushed into a difficult spot. Gordon is good! They won’t have him for a bit. Moustakas is good, too. They won’t have him for a longer bit. What they will have is Cheslor Cuthbert and Whit Merrifield, and I just had to look those names up two times each.

Injury analysis? Oh, it doesn’t get much easier than injury analysis. Here’s how this projects to affect the Royals. Moustakas, the rest of the way, was projected to be worth nearly two and a half wins. Now the replacement third basemen are projected to be worth about one win. The difference: call it a win, or a win and a half. That’s the effect. The Royals are competing in a tight Central division, and every win will probably be precious. Down go the playoff odds, by a chunk. What could be simpler to understand? Moustakas was starting, because he was the best option, and now they have to go with another option, and that won’t cripple them, but it will make the situation worse.

Your basic player injury analysis could be crammed into a single tweet. It’s interesting, but only to a point. It’s certainly not worth a number of paragraphs. We already know what this Moustakas news objectively means. But let’s try to spin it! It’s brutal news for any Royals fan to digest, but the sky might not be falling. Considered differently, the sky is just getting closer.

To try to soften the blow, we can start with 2014. Mike Moustakas is a good baseball player, but if you’ll recall, he was a huge story in last year’s first half, because he’d figured out a way to no longer be an inadequate baseball player. Previously, he was not great, and that includes the 2014 season, in which Moustakas batted .212 with a 76 wRC+. He spent time that year in the minors, and his final WAR was 0.6. Yet as frustrating as Moustakas was, the Royals won 89 games around him. The roster, of course, was different, but it wasn’t wildly different. The approach was the same. Moustakas wasn’t the reason that team got to the playoffs.

Move ahead. This is about to get dorky, but I told you we’re spinning. So, last year was the magic year — Moustakas figured out hitting to the opposite field, and that allowed him to be consistently productive. By year’s end, Moustakas had a WAR of 3.8, and the Royals won 95 times. They won more in the playoffs, but I’m just focusing on getting there. Based on the way this is laid out, Moustakas was a part of the core. The Royals would certainly insist as much.

Yet there’s a funny thing that emerges if you dig deep. There’s no question that Moustakas was a valuable defender. That’s missing. With the bat, however, Moustakas posted just a .613 OPS in higher-leverage situations. He was great in the other situations, but those were situations of lesser importance. Last season, there were 141 qualified hitters. Moustakas ranked 37th in general batting value. He ranked 79th by Win Probability Added, which folds in the game context. That put him behind Billy Burns and Ben Revere. By no measure was Moustakas bad, but he was rather un-clutch, even though the Royals were clutch around him. So Moustakas was less valuable than his surface numbers. That makes him appear more replaceable.

And just for the hell of it: this year, the Royals are 13-13 when Moustakas starts. They’re 11-9 when he doesn’t. Very obviously, the Royals aren’t actually better when Moustakas doesn’t play, but they’ve succeeded without him, and they’ve succeeded with him underachieving. The team last year was different, but it had many similarities, and Alex Gordon even spent time on the DL. The team the year before was also different, but the Royals have remained the Royals. The bullpen is still there, leading baseball in WPA. Lorenzo Cain is still there. Eric Hosmer and Salvador Perez are still there. We’ve all learned our lessons about dismissing the group because the projections aren’t fond of it.

I’ve referred to this as spin because that’s what it is. It’s trying to find the best perspective possible, and that doesn’t make it the most realistic. Plus, the Royals have other problems. After a few years of getting fairly lucky with health, the tide this year has turned. The starting rotation has not been effective, and that puts more of a burden on the relief. Maybe this is the year the Royals crack. Maybe this is the year the projections look smart, even though Moustakas’ absence muddies that a bit. If the Royals drift a little under .500, it wouldn’t be a total shock, and the division would be opened to someone else. Ignore the Twins and it’s all pretty tight.

Any injury, though, is survivable. How can the Royals survive missing a 3- or 4-win Mike Moustakas? They’ve sort of already done it, a few times. They’ve earned the benefit of the doubt.