The Royals announced, via their official player development account, that they have signed infielder/outfielder Bobby Dalbec to a minor league contract. He opted out of a minor league deal with the Brewers last week. He will presumably join Triple-A Omaha in the coming days.
The book on Dalbec is well known around baseball at this point. He has big home run power but also strikes out a ton. He has 1,065 major league plate appearances in his career with 47 homers but a 36.6% strikeout rate. That’s led to a .222/.290/.422 batting line and 90 wRC+.
This is his third minor league deal of the year. The previous two came with the White Sox and Brewers. The Sox called him up for about two weeks in late April/early May. He struck out in 6 of his 21 plate appearances before getting designated for assignment. He cleared waivers and elected free agency before signing with the Brewers.
His numbers in the minors have been great, with a .276/.356/.531 line and 131 wRC+ this year. He has 16 home runs in 312 plate appearances but also a 33.7% strikeout rate. Triple-A success is nothing new for him, however. Dating back to the start of 2021, he has a .264/.357/.525 line and 123 wRC+ in 1,268 Triple-A plate appearances, despite a 34.4% strikeout rate.
Defensively, Dalbec has mostly been playing the corner spots this year, though he also has some middle infield experience. The Royals are presumably most interested in him as a depth outfielder, as they already have Maikel Garcia and Vinnie Pasquantino at the infield corners. The offense from their outfield has been notoriously weak for a long time, though they bolstered the group ahead of the deadline by adding Randal Grichuk and Mike Yastrzemski.
Photo courtesy of Jesse Johnson, Imagn Images
Good luck Bobby. Never stopped rooting for you.
I want a team full of guys,who strike out less than 60 times a year.
How about 50 times? Calling Jeff Keppinger…..the man was nearly impossible to strikeout.
The Minor league numbers are a mirage, he can’t touch big league pitching.
We’ll always have September of 2020 to remember fondly, but I was always worried he was going to be just another Will Middlebrooks and that’s basically exactly what he turned out to be. Got about a season and a half worth of a useful bat before the inability to make contact caught up with him and made him useless.
Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time!
Heartthrob Bob rides again!
Can’t miss Bobby Dalbec!
In the same family of can’t miss Blake Swihart and can’t miss Henry Owens.
Dalbec has future KBO star written all over him
Age 30. Probably invested his ML salary very well and can continued playing baseball anywhere; overseas, Independent League or just bounce around the minors for a couple more years. Needs to hook up with a Team that bangs the Cora drum on offspeed pitches out-of-the zone.
So, so many of his swinging strikeouts are on balls “just a bit outside”.
Good luck dude.
Some NPB team has to be offering him a couple of a million this winter, right?
Reports were he turned down the KBO to stay in the MLB system. I think he views himself a major leaguer. I think his failure to hit big league pitching is mental. He chokes up in MLB while being good in AAA. I think in 2020 he just played ball with no expectations, I think that’s his approach in AAA but something about being in the bigs is causing him to choke. It isn’t the lack of talent, part of it is the strikeouts it’d be nice if he worked counts while striking out mixing in walks like Gallo used to.
Signing minor league deals for less than 100K$ is not a good choice if Asian teams are offering 10-20-30x that.
That’s the thing he expects to be called up and get 750k without leaving home. I don’t think he wants to drag his family to South Korea or Japan.
I’d say that’s a poor expectation…since he’s only getting purchased for a week at a time – he’s not making 750…he’s getting prorated by the number of days in the bigs.