The Royals dropped the first game against the Tigers 7-5 in Detroit on Friday night.
After getting off to a 3-0 lead, the Royals allowed seven unanswered runs, including two in the sixth inning and four in the seventh. This was despite another sterling outing from Ryan Bergert, who hasn’t gotten a win yet this year for the Royals, but has continued to flourish in Kansas City.
In 5.2 IP, Bergert allowed two runs on three hits and one walk while striking out five in the no-decision. He also generated 12 whiffs and produced some solid stuff and Statcast metrics on Friday, as demonstrated below in his TJ Stats data.
With the Royals having lost Kris Bubic for the remainder of the season and Cole Ragans for most of the season, the arrival of Bergert to the rotation at the Trade Deadline has been much needed.
Conversely, it’s been a more challenging tenure in Kansas City for Bailey Falter, who was also acquired at the Trade Deadline from the Pirates for reliever Evan Sisk and infielder Callan Moss.
In four outings and two starts for the Royals, Falter is posting an 11.25 ERA and 2.25 WHIP in 12 innings of work. His K-BB% is 6.6%, 0.2% down from his tenure with the Pirates, and his HR/9 with the Royals is 1.50, 15 points higher than his mark in Pittsburgh this season.
Now, Falter wasn’t the reason why the Royals lost on Friday night to the Tigers. The Royals’ offense had a lot of hard-hit balls and base hits, but they didn’t cash in nearly enough off Tigers starter Casey Mize, as Hunter Samuels pointed out on Bluesky.
That said, it was another brutal outing for Falter with the Royals, as not much has gone right since he made the move to Kansas City. Not only have his numbers been awful, but he was also demoted to the bullpen after Michael Lorenzen returned from the IL.
Falter still has plenty of years of club control, and Royals pitching coach Brian Sweeney has experience working with Sweeney when both were in the Phillies system. However, how patient should the Royals be with Falter, especially with every game being important as they make the push for a Wild Card spot?
Let’s take a look at Falter’s struggles with the Royals and what Sweeney and Co. could do to help get the 28-year-old lefty out of this August rut.
Falter Struggling With Command and Contact (And Thus, Hits Allowed)
Falter is not a big-time strikeout artist by any means.
According to Fangraphs, his career K/9 is 6.68, and his K rate is 17.8%. He is known more for his control and command, as demonstrated by his career 2.59 BB/9, 6.9% BB rate, and 17.1% called-strike rate. For context, his career CSW (which includes called strikes and whiffs) is only 25.9%, thus showing that a majority of the strikes he accumulates are of the called-strike variety.
Unfortunately, his command and control have been all over the place in Kansas City.
After posting a 17.7% called-strike percentage with the Pirates this year, his called-strike rate has dropped to 11.5%. As a result, his CSW% has also gone from 24.7% in Pittsburgh to 22.1% with the Royals. That’s not a recipe for success, especially for a pitcher without premium stuff.
To illustrate these command problems affecting his overall performance, Royals fans can look to his walk rate and BABIP as examples. His walk rate is up to 11.5% with the Royals, which is three percent higher than his rate with the Pirates. Additionally, his BABIP with the Royals is .439, 203 points higher than his mark with the Pirates.
When looking at his batting average rolling chart this season, he has been allowing more and more hits over the course of the season. Thus, this stretch in Kansas City feels more like the fruition of Falter’s contact issues than something dramatically different from what he was doing with the Pirates.
Earlier in the year, it seemed like he had great batted ball luck, as demonstrated in that 150 to 300th plate appearance stretch. Since then, however, he’s been pretty mediocre when it comes to allowing base hits, based on batting average allowed.
Interestingly enough, he is generating more whiffs and chases with the Royals.
His 33.8% O-Swing% and 10.7% SwStr% are both significant improvements from his marks earlier this year with Pittsburgh (25.2% O-Swing% and 7.0% SwStr%). Unfortunately, the increase in whiffs and strikeouts (15.3% to 18% K rates) hasn’t helped him produce better overall lines in Kansas City.
Issues With Secondary Pitches
When looking at his TJ Stats profile, his stuff still profiles as slightly subpar, which seems to correlate heavily with his high xwOBACON and low whiff rates.
Since coming to Kansas City, Falter’s four-seamer has been his best offering, stuff-wise, with a 101 TJ Stuff+ and 56 grade. He is also sporting a 36.2% chase rate on it, which is promising. Unfortunately, his 18.5% whiff rate on it is the worst mark of his five pitches, and his .464 xwOBACON isn’t an encouraging mark either.
The rest of Falter’s pitches sport below-average Stuff ratings, except his sinker, which has a 99 TJ Stuff+ and 58 grade. However, he has only thrown the pitch 4.7% of the time, so while it’s effective (75% zone rate, 66.7% chase, 60% whiff, and .080 xwOBACON), it’s not a significant part of his arsenal.
The main concerns with his secondary offerings seem to center on his slider and curveball, which he throws 26.5% and 17% of the time, respectively. He only sports a 41 and 35 grade on the offerings, and they both have gotten walloped in his time with the Royals. He sports a .493 xwOBACON on his slider and .463 xwOBACON on his curve.
Let’s look at what he did with the Pirates to see if there were any differences between those two offerings.
With the Pirates, the curve actually was Falter’s best whiff pitch, as his 26.6% mark was the best of any of his offerings. He also did an excellent job finding the zone with the curve (54.5% zone rate) and minimizing damaging contact (.349 xwOBACON). He also threw the breaking pitch less (13.1%) and actually threw his sinker more (15.1%).
I was curious to see how Falter was locating the curve with the Royals compared to his time with the Pirates. Thus, I decided to compare his curveball heatmaps from those two teams this season, via Savant.
The curve has been Falter’s primary breaker against right-handed hitters, as he has thrown it 212 times against righties and only 53 times against lefties. When he was with the Pirates, he seemed to do a much better job of locating down and in against righties. That location made it tough for hitters to do anything with it, unless they were hunting for it.
An example of this can be seen in this strikeout on the curveball against Miami’s Heriberto Hernandez back on June 11th at PNC Park.
With the Pirates, it appeared that he made it a priority to attack the lower glove-side part of the strike zone. Unfortunately, that isn’t happening as much in Kansas City, as evidenced by both his curveball heatmap and some of the results.
An example of Falter missing more armside with the curve can be seen in this lineout by James Wood back at Kauffman on August 11th. Falter gets the out, but Wood hits the ball hard because it’s located up in the zone.
The curve could be a key pitch for Falter in the future, especially against right-handed hitters, who are posting a .325 wOBA against him this season, according to Fangraphs. I also wonder if throwing his sinker more, much like he did in Pittsburgh, could also be helpful, especially since it could get him back into the rhythm he had on the mound with the Pirates.
Here’s a look at his pitch chart by month this year, via Savant.
He’s increased the slider usage, which has offset the decrease in sinker usage in Kansas City. Perhaps going back to utilizing the sinker more and the slider less could be the change in pitch mix that could get Falter on track again, especially out of the bullpen.
Looking Forward With Falter
I was pretty frustrated with Falter’s outing against Detroit as the game went from a tie to essentially out of reach when he came in.
To his credit, after giving up four runs in the seventh, he had a cleaner eighth inning where a double was the lone blemish.
With no Minor League options, Falter’s is a dilemma for Royals GM JJ Picollo and manager Matt Quatraro. Falter does have years of club control, as he won’t be a free agent until 2029. Furthermore, with his history with Sweeney, it’s possible that with a full season, Falter could make the proper adjustments to his pitch mix and quality and thrive, whether that’s as a starter or a hybrid reliever.
I think there’s upside to keeping Falter along for the remainder of 2025, even if outings like last night will be frustrating to sit through and watch.
That said, as long as the Royals stay in the Wild Card hunt, they will need every arm in the bullpen. Thus, Falter needs to find the right mix or adjustment to become a productive middle-innings reliever for the time being, at the very least. He cannot be a mop-up man, especially recently, with the Royals’ bullpen getting taxed.
If Falter can make the right tweak and perform much better in September, then I think the Royals could have a pitcher with some long-term upside, especially if he can make a move to the bullpen. There’s no reason to believe that he could be similar to Bubic as a reliever in 2024, when the fewer innings allowed him to ramp up his velocity. Falter has good extension, so the potential for more velocity is there (though he has to adjust as a reliever, which isn’t easy, especially on the fly).
However, if Falter continues to struggle down the stretch, he is putting himself at risk of being non-tendered by the Royals at the conclusion of this season.
That would be a shame, even if the Royals didn’t give much of a prospect package to acquire him.
Photo Credit: David Butler II Imagn Images
Mr. O’B, Just curious, could they technically DFA him and, assuming he clears waivers (who’d want to take on that mess?), assign him to Omaha or sign him to a new minor league deal and let him be worked on there?
They could but I would imagine a team desperate for arms (like Colorado or White Sox or Nationals) would probably claim him. He’s not good right now but someone would take a flier on him because of his recent starting experience.
[…] after I wrote my piece on Bailey Falter, the Royals proceeded to put him on the IL and bring up Jonathan Bowlan in his […]