Fantasy baseball expert Nicklaus Gaut held a live chat today, dishing out advice on Paul Skenes, Wyatt Langford, Corbin Carroll, and many more.
The Royals’ 20-13 start to the season on the heels of an active offseason that saw Kansas City spend more than $100MM on nine free agents – to say nothing of trades acquiring relievers John Schreiber and Nick Anderson – has plenty of people buzzing.
The Royals are right in the thick of things in a largely improved AL Central that looks more like a four-horse race than the perennially weak division that’s been won in a romp in each of the past three seasons (Twins in 2023, Guardians in 2022, White Sox in 2021). Every team except the again-rebuilding White Sox has a legitimate chance at postseason play as of this writing.
A frequently maligned Royals pitching staff is at the heart of Kansas City’s early run. Lefty Cole Ragans hasn’t been quite as dominant as he was following the trade to acquire him from the Rangers last year but has nonetheless looked like a quality big league starter. Brady Singer looks more like the 2022 breakout version of himself than the 2023 version that struggled to a 5.52 ERA.
Free-agent signees Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha have been a needed boon. Lugo’s strikeout rate is down, and Wacha has been more steady than great, but they’ve provided needed, competitive veteran innings. Even fifth starter Alec Marsh has been sharp, though his K-BB profile is rather worrying and he’s on the shelf at the moment after being struck by a comeback liner.
The bullpen has been sound, though free-agent additions Chris Stratton and Will Smith have both struggled. Even still, K.C. relievers are eighth in the majors with a 3.28 ERA. Like some of the starters, their lowly 18.4% strikeout rate (second-lowest in MLB) and 10.2% walk rate call into question whether that ERA can be sustained. But the early results have still contributed to a nice start.
The Royals, to no one’s surprise, are getting strong offensive commitments from perennial slugger Salvador Perez, talented young first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino and emergent face-of-the-franchise shortstop Bobby Witt Jr.
Put more concisely: a lot is going right in Kansas City! It’s a good time to be a Royals fan – perhaps not relative to 2014-15 but certainly relative to the eight years since that consecutive pair of World Series appearances.
If there’s one area that has to remind Royals fans of that eight-year drought, however, it’s the team’s once-again middling outfield. Kansas City outfielders are hitting .190/.254/.323 on the season. The resulting 63 wRC+ indicates they’re 37% worse than league-average at the plate as a group. That ranks last in Major League Baseball. Let's get into the grisly details.
MLBTR writer Anthony Franco held a live chat today exclusively for Trade Rumors Front Office subscriber
As explained here, we have been writing Trade Rumors Front Office originals such as this one for the last four years or so, but moving forward they'll be available on the website and not just in subscribers' inboxes. In the near future, expect to see roughly six such paywalled posts per week here on MLBTR. This week's mailbag explores the logic behind a Mason Miller trade, the Giants' slow start, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s true talent level, potential rotation upgrades for the Orioles, musings about the White Sox and Angels, and a look at Kim Ng's tenure as Marlins GM.
Phillip asks:
Mason Miller and Lucas Erceg are amazing, and totally wasted on the A's right now, despite them playing better than expected. But any trade would best be for solid prospects-SEVERAL solid prospects- who are 2-3 seasons away instead of MLB-ready guys who would also be wasted on the current and near-future teams. Given that, what team has those far away prospects to pay for one of those splendid slingers? Not Baltimore, more's the pity.
This brings up a philosophical question: should bad teams have nice things? Mason Miller provides a reason to watch the A's, and his season has been insane so far. And while he's under team control through the 2029 season, we can't count on him to hold up or on this franchise to be willing to pay him those last few years if he does.
So the cold-hearted logical answer is for the A's to trade Miller as soon as possible, as he might be at peak value and could be a lot less valuable the next time this organization has a realistic shot at contending. (I am aware that the A's are not awful so far this year at 15-17, but I do not think they have a realistic chance at making the playoffs anytime soon).
It's worth considering that Miller was a starter in college and all through the minors. He came down with a "mild UCL sprain" in mid-May of last year, which involved a four-month recovery period and short appearances when he returned in September.
A's GM David Forst explained to MLB.com's Martin Gallegos last December that he'd like to see Miller stay healthy for a year as a reliever before the team considers moving him back into a starting role. When a pitcher excels as a closer to the degree Miller has thus far, it's often hard to get him out of that role, but if he can eventually transition back to starting, he could theoretically be even more valuable. But given last year's UCL sprain and the attrition rate of the game's hardest throwers, there's a pretty good case that Miller is indeed at peak value right now.
I don't know where the hell the A's are going to be (as an organization) in 2026, when Miller will receive his first arbitration salary. Given the extra uncertainty around the franchise these next few years, Phillip's case makes some sense: trade Miller (and/or Erceg) now for prospects who are several years away from the Majors.
The problem with this idea is that a prospect's uncertainty is higher the further away he is from the Majors. Trading Miller this summer might require threading the following needles:
In my subscriber chat last week, a questioner asked which players I'd take as respective Rookies of the Year. While the race in both leagues could be interesting, the picture in the National League seems particularly fascinating. There are 10-15 players who could be legitimate threats for that award, a reflection both of an intriguing level of prospect talent and NL teams' signing of a handful of players out of foreign professional leagues last offseason.
Let's run through what is shaping up to be a strong class.
Jared Jones, Pirates RHP
Jones would be my pick for the most impressive rookie of the season's first month. The Pirates right-hander has followed up an excellent spring with a dominant six MLB starts. He owns a 3.18 ERA over 34 innings while striking out nearly 32% of batters faced. Jones has walked fewer than 4% of his opponents, and while he'll probably have a tough time maintaining quite that level, he's getting opposing hitters to flail aimlessly at stuff off the plate.
Among all major league pitchers with 20+ innings, only Sonny Gray and Jack Flaherty have a better strikeout/walk rate differential. No one is inducing swinging strikes at a higher clip. Jones has surpassed 120 innings in the minors in each of the last two seasons, so he shouldn't be on too strict a workload limit. The only quibble with his performance is an elevated 1.85 HR/9 rate, but the longball wasn't much of an issue in the minors. This didn't come out of nowhere -- the former second-round draftee entered the year as a Top 100 prospect and trendy Rookie of the Year pick -- but it would've been tough to predict this level of immediate dominance.
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The 2024 season is now rolling along, which means it’s time to wildly overreact to small samples of data. Previously unremarkable players are suddenly looking like Hall-of-Famers while reliably good players now seem to be washed.
A midseason slump is easy to dismiss when you look up and the full season stats still seem good. Maybe a slumping hitter is still hitting .265 or a pitcher that just got lit up still has an earned run average around 4.00. But early on, a batting average that starts with a zero or an ERA that has two digits before the decimal place can be a cause for concern.
Thankfully, Stathead has an amazing tool to help put this all into proper context. Using the Span Finder, we can search a player’s entire career to see if they have ever had a previous slump that compares to what’s currently happening. Let’s use Francisco Lindor as an example.
It’s no secret that Lindor hasn’t exactly been his best self so far this year. His struggles became such a talking point amid fans of the Mets that some of them got together on social media and decided to support Lindor with a standing ovation, mirroring how Phillies’ fans responded when Trea Turner was struggling last year.
Through 15 games, Lindor has just eight hits in 62 at-bats for a .129 batting average. Just two of those eight hits have been for extra bases, one double and one home run. His batting line is just .129/.236/.194 and his on-base plus slugging is just .430, well below his career mark of .810.
Now that Lindor is 30 years old, it might be tempting to consider this the start of some age-based decline, but Span Finder shows us that he has been here before. Doing a custom search for every 15-game stretch of Lindor’s career and sorting by ascending OPS, we get this…
Lindor is clearly in one of the worst stretches of his career right now, but it’s not totally without precedent. He slumped real bad at the end of the 2016 season when he was 22 years old. Despite that awful finish, he still hit .301/.358/.435 on the year overall for a 106 OPS+. Cleveland made the playoffs that year and Lindor immediately put that slump behind him, hitting .310/.355/.466 in the postseason as the club went all the way to Game 7 of the World Series, even going to extra innings in that classic game.
Given that there were also some notable struggles early on in 2018 and 2021 mixed in there, it seems fair to conclude that Lindor is performing within the range of previous outcomes. It’s clearly not ideal for him or the Mets that he’s started the season in this hole, but it’s one he has climbed out of before. Throughout the ups and downs of his career, he has hit .272/.340/.470 for a 116 OPS+.
That bat, along with Lindor’s speed and defense, are why the Mets gave him a ten-year, $341MM extension a few years ago. That deal pays Lindor $32MM annually through the 2031 season, so it’s good for the Mets that his current slump isn’t totally unprecedented.
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As the 2024 MLB regular season continues, here are three things we’ll be keeping an eye on around the baseball world throughout the day today:
1. Valdez to be evaluated:
Astros southpaw Framber Valdez was scratched from his start yesterday due to elbow soreness, becoming the latest player of note in the league to suffer an elbow-related injury scare. Per Matt Kawahara of The Houston Chronicle, the lefty has departed the team’s road trip and is set to return to Houston today for further evaluation. Kawahara adds that both manager Joe Espada and GM Dana Brown downplayed the seriousness of Valdez’s injury, with Espada emphasizing that Valdez has not yet been placed on the injured list. If Valdez misses time, he’d join Justin Verlander, Jose Urquidy, Luis Garcia Jr., and Lance McCullers Jr. as Astros starters on the injured list, though Verlander could be nearing a return later this month.
Right-hander Blair Henley was called up to take the mound in place of Valdez yesterday, but he allowed five runs while recording just one out against the Rangers. Fellow righty Spencer Arrighetti could be an alternative option to take the ball next time Valdez’s spot in the rotation comes up if he’s not cleared to take the ball and Houston decides not to stick with Henley.
2. Gray to make Cardinals debut:
The Cardinals are expected to activate right-hander Sonny Gray from the injured list today to make his club debut in St. Louis against the Phillies. The 34-year-old signed with the club on a three-year, $75MM deal this offseason on the heels of a dominant 2023 campaign with the Twins where he led the majors with a 2.83 FIP and finished second to Gerrit Cole in AL Cy Young voting. He’ll get a tough assignment in his Cards debut, taking the mound opposite Phillies ace Zack Wheeler. St. Louis is surely hoping that Gray can help the club turn its rotation around. The group’s collective 4.85 ERA ranks 20th in MLB, and their 5.48 FIP ranks 29th, ahead of only the Blue Jays, through the young 2024 season’s first 11 games.
3. MLBTR Chat today:
The 2024 season is now in full swing, and some clubs have gotten off to surprisingly strong starts while plenty of expected contenders have struggled to open the year. If you have questions regarding your favorite club’s start to the campaign, MLBTR’s Steve Adams will host a live chat with readers this afternoon at 1pm CT. You can click here to ask a question in advance, and that same link will allow you to join in on the chat once it begins or read the transcript after it is completed.
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