Royals Get Another Ninth-Inning Guy for the Seventh Inning

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.

What Soria gives the Royals is a replacement for Madson, who ended up serving as something of a replacement for Holland last year. Soria will either pitch the seventh or the eighth, usually, but the order doesn’t matter. What matters, now, is that the Royals again have a bullpen that resembles one that’s gone to the World Series each of the last two years — three guys, all of whom could close for plenty of teams across the league, coming at you back-to-back-to-back.

Soria got the same number of years and three more million dollars than Madson. Soria is four years younger than Madson, and has pitched four times as many seasons over the past four years. The projections like Soria a bit more this year, though Madson was better last year. You can take your pick. The point is, the Royals bullpen, which might have appeared somewhat vulnerable 24 hours ago, now looks quite a bit like the version that appeared in the World Series two months ago, and that version was more than fine. No one expected it to remain vulnerable. They could still use a lefty to replace Morales, but that lefty might end up being Danny Duffy, and that could easily be viewed as an upgrade.

When teams win a World Series, you start to hear about the possibility of “copycat teams,” trying to replicate whatever model of success most recently worked for that year’s winners. Last year’s Royals had a few unique characteristics, and one of them was the shutdown bullpen. Fans want their teams to replicate the Royals bullpen, and so fans clamor for their team to sign all the good relievers. The thing about the Royals bullpen these last couple years, though, is that it hasn’t been built through free agency. Holland, Herrera and Hochevar came up through the system. Davis was a failed starter who was slightly more than a throw-in piece in the James Shields/Wil Myers trade. Madson and Morales were picked up off the scrap heap on a minor league deals last season. The genius of the Royals bullpen these last couple years has been how easy they’ve made it look.

In that sense, the Soria deal is the Royals breaking character. At the same time, the Royals have money to spend, but not enough for the top-tier free agents, so it’s got to go somewhere, and you can’t bank on finding a Ryan Madson every offseason. Madsons are luxuries, not expectations.

With a Madson, you hope. With a Soria, you expect. These last couple years, Soria’s been about 20% better than average, by FIP. He’s been about 30% better than average, by ERA. Probably, he’s somewhere in the upper-third of current relievers. He’s also now the third-best reliever on his own team.

As pitchers age, they tend to lose velocity. Soria’s not old, he’s 31, but he’s at the point in his career where, if anything, the velocity should be going down. Yet, if there’s one thing you should know about Soria’s 2015, it’s this:

Biggest reliever velocity gainers, 2014-15, min. 40 IP

1. Joakim Soria, +1.8 mph
2. Zach Putnam, +1.8
3. T.J. McFarland, +1.7
4. John Axford, +1.5
5. Antonio Bastardo, +1.2

Soria’s not a hard thrower — even last year, he averaged just 92 on the fastball — and the extra velocity resulted in fewer strikeouts, more walks and more homers. But with an aging pitcher, you worry about a potential loss of velocity, and how that pitcher might be forced to adjust. When you lose a couple ticks, things that used to work don’t work anymore, and effectiveness can be the next thing to go. With Soria, there’s some room for error. We’ve seen him be successful at 90 in the very recent past, and now he throws 92. He could give those two extra ticks of velocity right back this season, and he’d be right back where he was two years ago, which was still a very good reliever. Nearly three-quarters of all Soria’s pitches are fastballs, and last year, the fastball looked like it got better.

Even after the Soria signing, the Royals bullpen is still projected as the 20th-best in baseball, but we’ve been over the issues with that. What’s important is that the Royals bullpen now has Davis, Herrera and Soria, and that’s among the best trios in baseball. The Dodgers have Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen now, and the Yankees still have Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller, and so maybe the Royals bullpen isn’t the clear-cut favorite anymore, but at worst, it’s right there. It doesn’t look much different than the one that helped win the World Series last year, and so that’s not a bad place to be.