Royals Review Mailbag: Let’s talk about the off-season

The questions for this week’s mailbag were all asked and mostly answered before we learned the terrible news of Yordano Ventura’s death. So if you’re feeling deep sorrow as many Royals fans are, right now, let this post be a little of normalcy for you. Let’s talk baseball, while waiting for spring training to get here.

Well, it actually is possible for a couple of the Royals to replace Kendrys Morales’ production. For starters it is important to note that Kendrys Morales, given his age and track record, is unlikely to match his production from 2016. Then you have Mike Moustakas who, while technically a Royal last year, didn’t play much. He’s more than capable of matching Morales offensive numbers if healthy; FanGraphs projects him to bat in the mid-upper .200s while banging out ~25 home runs. So you might lose a couple home runs but when you add in that Moose is a terrific defender at third base and runs a little bit better than K-Mo you’ve got something going. Jorge Soler also has a chance to replace that value in the batting order if, as the Royals decided to bet when they traded for him, he finds a way to start making contact more often with the baseball without sacrificing any of his power.

If neither of those guys can do it it’s unlikely to production will be replaced by any player or group of players in the Royals’ lineup because they’re already counting on everyone to have career or near-career seasons in order to make another push for the playoffs.

I think it’s very likely that as of right now Whit Merrifield is your opening day second baseman. To answer your other question if the Royals don’t find their way to signing a full-time DH before the season starts it wouldn’t shock me at all to see Whit playing all over the field as they rotate guys through the DH slot while playing Christian Colon behind him at second.

Anything is possible. I want to say that if the Royals were going to do it it seems like they should have, by now. However, I recall the Chris Young signing halfway through Spring Training before the 2015 season and...well, anything is possible.

Max has got some excellent stuff about Nate Karns here and Jorge Soler here. But the tl;dr on them is like this:

Nate Karns is a pitcher who gets a lot of strike outs but also walks a bunch and has trouble getting deep into games. If that sounds like Danny Duffy to you, you’re wrong. Danny didn’t strike people out before last season. Karns is also a year older than Duffy, but there’s still time for him to figure it out.

Jorge Soler is an outfielder with questionable defensive skills but plenty of athleticism and a power stroke to die for. The biggest thing holding him back is that he has a hard time making consistent contact when he swings. If he can improve on that he could become a superstar overnight.

I’ll get to the other two guys in a minute, but I wanted to address the second half of your comment. First of all, the Royals kept all the guys that worked for them in 2015 for 2016 and it brought about a disappointing 81-81 season. I feel your pain, especially in losing Jarrod Dyson who is one of my favorite players, but sometimes you have to let guys go in order to spend money on better and/or younger players. This is true of even the big market teams. The Yankees held on to their aging stars way too long after their dominant playoff stretch in the late 90’s-early 00’s and it prevented them getting very much playoff success when a younger Boston team started to rise up.

The Royals don’t have much in the way of a farm system right now, they were recently ranked as the fifth worst farm system in baseball. David Glass demanded they cut payroll and Dayton Moore chose to take that opportunity to move a couple guys he felt he could easily replace (Kelvin Herrera replaces Wade Davis, Paulo Orlando/Billy Burns replace Jarrod Dyson) while filling some holes in the roster and helping out future Royals teams as well. These kinds of moves aren’t fun, and you certainly don’t have to be happy about them, but they are the kind of tough calls a GM has to make if he wants to keep the team competitive.

Last year was Jorge Soler’s 24 year old season. Emil Brown still wasn’t a true big league player at 24, getting only 6 games for Pittsburgh that year. Of the remaining players, including Soler, only Danny Tartabull was a full-time starter. Michael Tucker and Jermaine Dye were both part-time starters, same as Jorge Soler. If you scale up their results to 162 games you get this:

As you can see, Jorge Soler’s age 24 season was clearly superior to Tucker and Dye, who were both well-regarded prospects, though vastly inferior to Tartabull. There is reason to believe, however, that Soler could still reach Tartabull if the Royals and Dale Sveum can help him make more contact on pitches in the zone.

Holland signed a contract with the Colorado Rockies this week. Ordinarily that would be a really odd place to go if you’re looking to boost your value while returning from a long absence and hoping for a really good next contract. However, Colorado offered him a ton of money given his recent injury history - at least $7 million and up to $14 million if he pitches well as a closer, plus a vesting option for 2018. Either he’s counting on everyone watching his mechanics for the next 1-2 years and disregarding any bad results due to his new home park or - and this is my pet theory - he actually isn’t completely sure he is healthy or will be able to remain healthy and just took the most money wherever he could find it, because he figures his results will be bad wherever he goes.

That being said, the Royals are definitely going to need more relievers. They gave minor league deals with invites to spring training to Jonathan Sanchez, Brandon League, and Al Alburquerque who will all compete for spots in that pen. Those names may not sound very sexy, but remember neither did Franklin Morales before 2014, Ryan Madson or Joe Blanton before 2015, or Peter Moylan before 2016. Dayton Moore and the Royals have an excellent track record of picking guys up who look like they’re done and turning them into useful bullpen pieces. Speaking of Moylan and Blanton, they, along with Luke Hochevar, are still free agents who don’t seem to be drawing a ton of interest. They might see the benefits of reuniting with the Royals, yet again. And don’t forget pitchers like Josh Staumont, Alec Mills, Jake Junis in the Royals’ minor league system. They will all get a shot to compete for bullpen opportunities just like Matt Strahm saw last season.

I would be very surprised if the Royals didn’t sign one or two more pitchers who could compete for rotation spots or go down to the minors and provide depth. The players they sign may not have sexy names that you’re excited about - the market for starting pitchers was never exciting this off-season and waiting until this late didn’t improve it - but there are still a few guys worth considering on at least minor league deals, out there.

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I put the odds of the Royals re-signing Eric Hosmer following this year at somewhere less likely than contact from an unknown intelligent species in the next 5 minutes. Hosmer has a reputation as a great character guy with strong leadership skills and has positioned himself as the face of the franchise for a lot of people. However, there are a lot of flaws in his game and by some measures the Royals would have been better served to play practically anyone except Hosmer at first base last season - he a negative WAR according to both Baseball Reference and FanGraphs. Hosmer is also still young and even if another team believes in the flaws over the successes it would make a lot of sense for a team with more resources to bet on him to figure out how to hit the ball in the air.

The only guy currently in the Royals’ system who appears like he might possibly be ready to take over first base next year is Ryan O’Hearn. O’Hearn has a lot of power potential and will be getting a spring training invite this season, so we should get to learn a little bit more about him. Another option might be moving Cheslor Cuthbert or Hunter Dozier over to first base, especially if they manage to find a way to bring back Mike Moustakas who is also a free agent after this season and a bit more likely to re-sign, though still a long shot. Neither Cuthbert nor Dozier is likely to hit or defend well enough to justify the position switch, however.

Karns has spent significant time in the big leagues in 2015 and 2016. If you go by the FanGraphs DEF stat, Nate Karns pitched in front of the fourth best defense for the 2015 Tampa Bay Rays and the ninth worst defense for the 2016 Seattle Mariners. A lot of his peripheral stats do look very similar between the two seasons, outside the ERA and the defense behind him so you might be on to something there. He was a very good pitcher for the Rays and subpar for the Mariners. The Royals, of course, were first in 2015 and third in 2016 so to paraphrase a recent Nate Karns quote, he won’t have any excuse not to succeed in Kansas City.

That’s all for this week! If I missed your question or you have some more, feel free to ask it in the comments below and I will try to answer it for you.