Year Two of the Matt Quatraro tenure. Time to take a step up this year. Active in free agency and trades this offseason. A new look pitching rotation and bullpen. Will the young players take the leap up offensively? Bobby Witt extension? New stadium? Will Vinny recover from injury? Salvy taking aim at the Royals record book? Will Cole Ragans turn into the best Royals starting pitcher since Greinke 1.0?
Free Agents/Trades Acquisitions
Seth Lugo, SP
Michael Wacha, SP
Kyle Wright, SP
Hunter Renfroe, OF/DH
Will Smith, RP
Chris Stratton, RP
Nick Anderson, RP
Adam Frazier, 2B
Garrett Hampson, INF/OF
Matt Sauer, RP [Reply]
Originally Posted by BWillie:
Only two players OPSing over .700 in Perez and Witt Jr. I have pretty good faith that Vinnie and Garcia will get to at least .750 though.
It's really amazing how bad all the free agents have been though in Frazier, Renfroe and Hampson. They projected to be alot better than they've been.
Frazier and Hampson are backup versatile utility players, nothing more. Massey was always gonna be the starting 2B unless he just was awful.
Renfroe has been pretty bad.
But I think you're forgetting the starting pitching additions and a couple of the bullpen guys that have been really good. [Reply]
Originally Posted by ChiefsCountry:
One of the Royal Twitter guys posted Salvy and Johnny Bench's stats through this amount of games. Very, very close to each other.
Yeah, it's just the difference between teams. That Red's Machine was a monster. If Salvy played on teams like that and already had 2-3 rings this wouldn't even be a discussion. Not to mention all the offensive production around him setting him up for success. Something he hasn't had most of his career here.
Johnny Bench was a great catcher, but he was also in an ideal situation. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Nightfyre:
A large number of regular bats are underperforming their xBA according to baseball savant. This is consistent with the eye test. MJ is.064 below - which I would expect given his hard hit outs this year. Next is Frazier at -0.055, Vinnie at -0.050, Renfroe at -0.048, and Garcia at -0.046. Every royal is negative on xSLG.
Overall, this would lead me to conclude that the royals should stay the course and wait for coin to flip. Maybe that's faulty logic, but it's worth discussing.
They are 28th in BABIP so hopefully some positive regression there. [Reply]
