Friday Notes — Royals Thoughts for August 16, 2019

If the seven-game losing streak didn’t wipe away your good thoughts from the start of the second half (I know, it’s not half the season, but it’s just easier to say it that way), then getting shut out in an entire series probably will. On Tuesday, it was easy to chalk it up to Jack Flaherty just being very good, but there was really no excuse on Wednesday night. And now with Cheslor Cuthbert hitless in his last 22 at bats, Ryan O’Hearn 5 for 41 since his recall and Bubba Starling just 5 for 47 since his career-opening hitting streak ended, the Royals are on the hunt for some Jorge Soler protection. Soler is absolutely on fire right now and teams both know it and know the guys behind him can’t hurt anyone. He has nine walks in his last eight games. So he has a .618 OBP, but if everyone behind him is doing what they’re doing, that OBP doesn’t help the team very much. What to do? I’ve got an idea.

• I know I’ve talked about this before, but it’s reached a point that it can’t wait any more. Brett Phillips has channeled his inner Luke Hochevar and turned a corner. He’s hitting .283/.405/.618 since May 25th. That’s 66 games, 263 plate appearances and 31 extra base hits. Yeah, the PCL is stupid with the new baseball, but these numbers are still fantastic. Maybe most importantly, he’s struck out less than 25 percent of the time while walking more than 16 percent of the time. It’s time to find out if the new Brett Phillips is really the new Brett Phillips or if this is all a mirage. And what better time than with Alex Gordon in the midst of a deep, deep slump that might push him back toward retirement rather than returning for one more season. Gordon is 4 for his last 57, but what’s more concerning about this stretch is that he’s struck out just 10 times. His strikeout rate in that time is just 16 percent. A lot of times when a guy goes into a slump, the strikeout rate skyrockets, but the fact that it didn’t makes me even more worried that it’s not going to come back with a small adjustment. He just seems…off. Maybe he can turn it back around, but for a guy who has such an uncertain future, he can take a few days off here and there to help the Royals sort out the future. It’s not that he can’t play many days, but it probably won’t hurt a guy in his mid-30s to take a couple days off a week as the season winds down. It might help him to finish strong, but it definitely will give the Royals a chance to get a look at Phillips.
• And to keep this Phillips-centric for a second, there’s been some speculation that the reason he’s still in the minors is that they’re waiting to delay his free agency. Let’s talk about that for a second. First, the Royals haven’t really done that, well, ever. They did get an extra year of Soler by keeping him in AAA in 2017, but you’d have a hard time convincing me it was anything but wanting him in AAA to work. That may be the most important thing here, but also, we’re talking about Brett Phillips. I really like the player, but he’s 25 years old already. He’s already under team control for his age 25–30 seasons if you call him up today. That’s a nice chunk of time. And if you think delaying his free agency a year is going to make a huge difference, then he’s a player who should have and would have been up sooner anyway. But for all those saying it benefits the Royals financially to wait, it doesn’t. If they call him up now, he’d have two more pre-arb years and then three arbitration seasons. Wait until September 1 or whenver (it’s late August that would be the date to get an extra year of service) and then you’re looking at starting his arbitration at the same time but paying him for an extra season. For a guy like Phillips who is not likely to be a huge money player at any point, take the decreased long-term cost with the ability to extend rather than play a waiting game and get yourself stuck in a longer time to pay a guy. Yeah I know you can walk away, but if you’re concerned with his service time, you’re already assuming they’ll be paying him. Either way, just get the guy up to the big leagues.
• This isn’t news, but the 2018 draft has been nothing short of amazing so far in their short minor league careers. Brady Singer is coming off the best start of his AA career. Jackson Kowar has actually been better in AA than he was in High-A and looks like he might be the best pitching prospect in the system. If he isn’t the best prospect in the organization, it’s because Daniel Lynch is and he made it back from an injury to get back to Wilmington this past week. And the forgotten names are Kris Bubic and Jonathan Bowlan. One of them threw a no-hitter earlier this year and the other took one into the ninth last night. Bubic has been at the top of the minor league strikeout leaders all season long. He has 174 in 132.1 innings with a 2.24 ERA across two levels and just 88 hits allowed. Those are video game numbers. It doesn’t stop there either, though the rest isn’t quite as impressive to talk about. The point is that if you believe Brad Keller and Jakob Junis are the real deal in the rotation (as like a three and a five maybe) and if you believe that even one of the five listed above can be an impact starter, then the Royals are 60 percent of the way to a rotation that can compete. When you combine that with already being about halfway to a competent offense, the path to contention doesn’t seem quite as daunting. They have the stars on offense. They just need to replace the scrubs with, well, non-scrubs. If one of the pitching prospects isn’t a top of the rotation guy, they’ll need that too, so let’s not pretend this is an easy task, but maybe there is a way to contend sooner than I expect it to happen.
• It really seems like the Royals give up a lot of home runs. But the problem is that everyone gives up a lot of home runs. Most teams hit a lot too, but I think the Royals not hitting that many (outside of that crazy road trip) makes it seem like they’re giving up a ton. In reality, they’ve allowed nine fewer than league average and only four American League teams have given up fewer. It also probably doesn’t help that only one of their starting pitchers has been actually good at limiting the home run ball, but the bullpen, if they do one thing well, is just that. Ian Kennedy, Scott Barlow, Kevin McCarthy, Tim Hill and Richard Lovelady have all been above average at limiting home runs. So it actually seems that the strategy in building the staff might have been not so bad given the 2019 offensive environment, but the pitchers just haven’t really executed beyond limiting home runs. You have to assume Mike Montgomery’s home run issues this year are a blip, and if you don’t assume, you have to hope. The last three yers, he’s allowed fewer than a home run per nine innings. He’s always been a ground ball guy, but has gotten away from that a bit this season. So if you want to dream a little that things can get better next year, you can see it in home run suppression potentially. As with pretty much everything, the Royals future probably isn’t nearly as dire as it seems at times.