The Royals in 2024 need to see an uptick in offensive production at multiple positions. They ranked 23rd in runs scored, 25th in OPS, and 28th in OBP a season ago, despite having Silver Slugger and All-MLB nominee Bobby Witt, Jr. in the lineup.
Thus, it shouldn’t be surprising that the Royal finished 56-106 overall in 2023. Bad offense paired with bad pitching is a recipe for disaster on historic levels (which ended up being the case last year, as the Royals tied for the most losses in franchise history).
One position that the Royals would most likely need some improvement at next season would be in centerfield.
On one end, Kansas City has had recent success on a defensive end at the position.
Michael A. Taylor won a Gold Glove in 2021 and was nominated for another one in 2022. Last year, Kyle Isbel primarily held down the position well for the most part, but Jackie Bradley, Jr., Drew Waters, and Dairon Blanco also added positive value defensively in center field, as evidenced in the OAA Statcast data below.
Isbel, Waters, Bradley, and Blanco combined for 20 outs above average and 18 runs prevented in the outfield in 2023, which is an impressive total. Additionally, the Royals ranked 5th in Def (defensive runs above average), according to Fangraphs.
On the flip side, hitting was a much different story last year.
In terms of Off (offensive runs above average), Royals centerfielders combined to produce a mark that was 23.5 runs BELOW average. Only the Colorado Rockies were worse than the Royals last year in that category. To make matters worse, on a wRC+ end, the Royals centerfielders’ 67 wRC+ ranked behind the Rockies (71) for dead last in baseball.
Therefore, to improve upon that 56-win mark from last year, the Royals will need to see improved offensive production from either their trio of current centerfield candidates (Isbel, Waters, or Blanco) or from someone outside the organization.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be a great centerfielder free agent market, as Harrison Bader, Kevin Kiermaier, and Tony Kemp may be the only ones who could be in the Royals’ price range, according to Spotrac.
In all likelihood, the club will need improvement at the plate from Isbel, Waters, or Blanco in 2024. They do not need to be the second coming of Lorenzo Cain by any means, but they have to produce better wRC+ numbers than did a year ago.
So who should Royals feel more optimistic about, heading into Spring Training next February?
In order to get a fuller picture, I figured it would be good to look at three primary PLV hitting metrics that adequately measure a hitter’s skill set. Here are those metrics and their respective definitions:
- Decision Value: Modeled value (runs per 100 pitches) of a hitter’s decision to swing or take, minus the modeled value of the alternative.
- Contact Ability: A hitter’s ability to make contact (foul strike or BIP), above the contact expectation of each pitch.
- Power: Modeled number of extra bases (xISO on contact) above a pitch’s expectation, for each BBE.
Let’s take a look at the rolling charts in each of those areas from Isbel, Waters, and Blanco in 2023 and see who stands out in each PLV metric area in both encouraging and discouraging ways.
Decision Value
On a rolling 200-pitch basis, Blanco and Waters showed more promising development in this area in 2023 though Isbel did finish the season on a positive upswing, unlike both of those hitters who ended on a slide in this area.
Blanco showed the best decision-making of the three at the plate last year. His season average in runs added per 100 pitches actually sat above the 75th percentile for the year and after the 350th-pitch mark, he never dipped below the 90th percentile. Hence, it isn’t a surprise that Blanco had the highest BB/K ratio of the three (0.30).
Between Waters and Isbel, Waters showed more promise than Isbel in terms of his decision-making in the batter’s box.
Waters actually sat in the 90th percentile around the 1,000th pitch range. Even though he saw some pretty rough dips (especially early on), his season average still sat around the 25th percentile. Isbel on the other hand produced a season average around the 10th percentile, and he actually sat at the -0.25 mark in runs added per 100 pitches.
Neither Waters nor Blanco ever hit the negative in that metric during the course of 2023.
A big problem is that Isbel only swung at 64.6% percent of pitches in the strike zone, which was significantly below Waters (75%) and Blanco (72.9%). Not swinging at pitches in the strike zone isn’t a bad thing, but it isn’t good when it’s compounded by a pretty high O-Swing % as well, which was the case for Isbel (31.7%) last season.
Contact Ability
In terms of contact ability, Isbel stands out the most of the three and by a considerable margin. Isbel produced a contact-frequency-above-expected rate of just under 7%. That ranked him and his season average around the 90th percentile, which was impressive.
On the other hand, Blanco’s rate was around -3% and midway between the average and 25th percentile for hitters. As for Waters, his contact-frequency-above-expected rate was around -4%, which put him at a season average even lower than Blanco and closer to the 25th percentile.
Waters and Blanco’s struggles shouldn’t be a surprise considering their low contact and high swinging-strike rates, according to Fangraphs. Waters produced a contact rate of 70.4% and a swinging-strike rate of 15.4% while Blanco produced a 74.2% and 12.7% contact and swinging-strike rate, respectively. Those metrics pale in comparison to Isbel’s 81.6% contact rate and 8.5% swinging-strike rate.
If the Royals desire a centerfield candidate who can put the ball in play more consistently, Isbel may be the better option of the three at centerfield in 2024 and perhaps long-term as well.
Power
While Isbel thrives in the contact ability department, power is another area where he lags behind, much like decision value.
For the season, Isbel’s expected-extra-bases-added per BBE was just above -0.05 and hovered between the 10th and 25th percentile from the 140th BBE mark to the 230th BBE mark. What’s surprising is that Isbel actually produced the highest hard-hit rate of the three at 39.8% (Waters was 35.9% and Blanco was 32.3%). That being said, he struggled to translate those hard hits into extra-base hits last season.
Waters showed the most power potential on his rolling power PLV chart in 2023. He produced a season average in expected-extra-bases-added per BBE close to the 75th percentile and he touched the 90th percentile around the 150th BBE range.
Thus, Waters’ rolling power PLV chart correlates with his 10.1% barrel rate last year, which was 3.6% higher than Blanco’s and 4.6% higher than Isbel’s. He also produced the best max exit velocity of the bunch with a 112.2 MPH mark, which shows that Waters, based on his max exit velocity and power PLV rolling chart has the most power potential of the trio.
Blanco’s power didn’t really tick up until the end of the season, as he didn’t touch the MLB average in expected-extra-bases-added per BBE until the 90th BBE mark, which was the end of the season for him. Thus, based on his small sample size for the year (138 plate appearances), it’s hard to tell if that power boost toward the conclusion of 2023 was a sign of things to come or simply a blip on the radar.
Final Takeaways
All three centerfielders off the Royals both have considerable pluses and risks.
Isbel is obviously the best defensive outfielder of the bunch and he also excels at making contact at the plate. Unfortunately, he lacks power and struggles with his swing decisions at the plate, which depresses his contact ability.
Waters has the most power potential and could be a 20-HR threat if he stays healthy and gets consistent at-bats. He also is above-average defensively and on the basepaths. However, his swing decisions, while better than Isbel’s, aren’t great and his struggles with contact are a big red flag as well.
Lastly, Blanco is the best base-stealer of the trio (24 stolen bases in 69 games) and he demonstrated better-than-expected swing decisions for a player who didn’t make his full-season MLB debut until his age-30 season. That said, his power and contact ability PLV metrics from a season ago were both questionable and could get worse with more plate appearances in 2024.
At the very least, Isbel, Waters, and Blanco all showed a season ago that they can be fourth outfielder types, both with the Royals and at the Major League level in general. That said, if they want to be regulars at centerfield, or in the outfield in general, for Kansas City in 2024, they all will need to show some kind of improvement in one or two of the areas I analyzed in this post.
So, should the Royals look outside then? Well, let’s take a look at the PLV rolling charts of Kevin Kiermaier, who’s been suggested as a possible fit in Kansas City via free agency.
Kiermaier produced a power season average mark below the 25th percentile and a contact ability season average just slightly above the 25th percentile. Even though his season average in decision value was around the MLB average, that was heavily boosted by a crazy stretch between the 300th and 500th pitch mark where he was tops in the league in runs added per 100 pitches.
Take that 200-pitch stretch away at the beginning of the season and Kiermaier was pretty average in his swing decisions overall in 2023, perhaps even below.
Based on those unimpressive rolling PLV charts, I am not sure the former Blue Jay and Ray would be worth a deal that could cost the Royals $8-10 million per year in terms of Average Annual Value (AAV).
The Royals would be better off saving that money and seeing if Isbel, Waters, or Blanco could emerge with the starting centerfield job by the conclusion of Cactus League play.
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