The Royals are in a galaxy far, far away from contention

The current Kansas City Royals front office knows that the team is not good enough to contend and has acted as such. While that seems like it would be given, it is nevertheless a near complete about face from what the previous front office broadcasted about their expectations. After losing 100 games in 2018, previous GM Dayton Moore said that “Our expectations are to win our division.”

Kansas City then lost 103 games the next season. Whoops.

Compare that to what JJ Picollo said about the Royals back last November, before they even played an inning this year. It has been a consistent message, that this year would be a year of evaluation and one of building (Picollo’s preferred term for “rebuild”):

“We always want to win now, but we know where we are and I think it’s time to start looking more towards 2024 and 2025 and that will happen with the guys getting the at bats and innings they need.”

This is a good answer. Obviously, even bad teams want to win and try to win. Nobody loses on purpose. Rather, rebuilding teams simply have different objectives, which involve sacrificing wins now to free up salary for and to gather talent for later. Another objective, as Picollo states, is not to clog up playing time for veterans when there is young talent to try out.

But Picollo’s comments about 2024 and 2025 are worrying, because this is not a Royals team that is at the end of the rebuild. This is a Royals team at the beginning of a rebuild.

I don’t think anybody wants to think about the Royals like this because it is depressing. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it less true. The Royals currently have a winning percentage below .300 in June, putting them on pace for over 110 losses. Even taking account the Royals’ crappy luck so far this season, second and third order winning percentages put the Royals at about a 96-loss team—no better than last year.

Do the Royals at least have a good farm system? No, is the answer. Baseball America placed Kansas City’s farm system second to last in the league in its most recent offseason rankings. They have zero (0) players in Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects: Gavin Cross, a top-ten, first round pick from last year recently fell of the list because he is riding the struggle bus in High-A ball. Kansas City’s top-ten, first round pick the previous season, Frank Mozzicato, is still in A-Ball and will be out injured for a month. Kansas City’s top-ten, first round pick before that, Asa Lacy, has pitched all of 30 innings these past two seasons.

And when you look at the big league roster and are truly honest with yourself, how many players are under team control and can be counted on to be productive baseball players? Bobby Witt Jr. will likely be good, even if he might never be great. Vinnie Pasquantino, who will probably be a good hitter his whole career. Brady Singer and Daniel Lynch in some capacity.

That’s, uh. That’s it. The Royals have a decent chunk of players who are young and talented. But for varying reasons, you can’t expect them to be productive big leaguers. Nick Pratto might be a productive player. He is also a first baseman with bad defensive metrics and a strikeout rate over 30%. Maikel Garcia might be a productive player. But he has a career minor league ISO of .099 and has been a below average hitter in the big leagues so far. If the Royals had productive players rather than guys who are not productive but might be at some indeterminate point in the future, they’d have won more games.

Royals fans are understandably frustrated with the team, as they should be. The good news is that the Royals truly do have a new philosophy and new leadership in place, one that is revamping and updating infrastructure and whose decisions are already reversing trends set in place by the previous administration. The bad news is that they’ve got a long ways to go, and that their new philosophy might not be effective.

Self awareness has not been a strong suit of the Royals front office in the past. I just hope that the team fully realizes the reality of where they are now. This is not a team that’s going to scrape .500 next year. They are probably not going to do it the following year. That will mean different approaches than what it would be otherwise. It will not be pleasant. But that’s where we are.