How Good Will KC Be in 2012?

The Royals have an awful lot of young talent. Even after graduating top prospects Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, and Danny Duffy to the Majors last year, they still placed five players on Keith Law’s list of the 100 best prospects in baseball, and he rated their farm system as the fifth best in the game right now. Their oldest projected position player is Alex Gordon, who just turned 28-years-old on February 10th, and besides Bruce Chen, their entire pitching staff is a bunch of 20-somethings.

The Royals will almost certainly be one of the youngest teams in Major League Baseball this year, and with all the highly touted young talent they’ve developed internally over the last few seasons, comparisons to the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays are inevitable. However, a closer inspection of what we should actually expect from the Royals young talents this year suggests that this team just isn’t ready to win yet.

Let’s start with the line-up, which is where a good amount of the optimism around the Royals is based. With Alex Gordon coming off a breakout season, continued improvement from 26-year-old DH Billy Butler, and and the potential for full years from Hosmer and Moustakas, the Royals have a core group of talented young hitters to build around. However, the Royals shouldn’t expect to get that much more from that quarter than they got from those same positions one year ago.

If the Royals offense fails to improve much over their 2011 performance, regression from Alex Gordon may well be one of the reasons why. He was one of the best hitters hitters in baseball last year, putting up a .303/.376/.502 line that was good for a 141 wRC+ – that tied him for 17th best in all of baseball. Unfortunately for the Royals, a large part of Gordon’s surge was a massive increase in batting average on balls in play. His BABIP jumped from .254 in 2010 to .358 last year, and he’d never posted a mark better than .309 in any season prior. Put simply, it’s highly unlikely that Gordon will have as many balls fall in for hits this year, and his overall offensive line is in for a significant step back if he doesn’t offset it with a massive gain in contact rate or power. Given his underlying skills, a 120 wRC+ is more realistic, and the difference between 2011 Gordon and what the Royals should expect from him at the plate in 2012 could cost them as many as 15 runs.

Can Hosmer, Moustakas, and Butler not only offset that loss, but create a substantially improved offense as well? It’s unlikely. The ZIPS projections suggest that Hosmer will see just a modest gain this year (improving by the equivalent of approximately seven runs), while Moustakas is projected to hit about as well as the departed Wilson Betemit did for the Royals last year. They should expect a 3-5 run improvement due to Moustakas’ own struggles being replaced by an average bat in 2012, but it’s more minor upgrade than any large step forward. As for Butler, ZIPS expects him to have nearly the same offensive performance, and with 159 games played last year, he has nowhere to go but down in terms of playing time.

Realistically, those four hitters will do well to simply match what the Royals got from left field, first base, third base, and designated hitter in 2011. If the offense is going to dramatically improve, the upgrades would have to come from other positions on the field, but they’re already trying to replace Melky Cabrera’s 118 wRC+ in center field with rookie Lorenzo Cain, who will likely be a big step backwards at the plate. Having a full season of Salvador Perez will help, but again, he’s replacing a pretty decent performance from the departed Matt Treanor, so the upgrade might not be as large as you might expect. Improvements from guys like Alcides Escobar or Johnny Giavotella will likely be counteracted by some regression from Jeff Francoeur.

Overall, there just isn’t a lot of reasons to expect the Royals to score much more than the 730 runs they managed as a team a year ago. If they’re going to have a breakthrough season, the improvements are going to have to mostly come from the pitching staff. And, unfortunately, that isn’t where most of the talent in the organization currently lies.

There are legitimate reasons to expect better performances from both Luke Hochevar (4.68 ERA, 4.05 xFIP) and Felipe Paulino (4.46 ERA, 3.73 xFIP), but neither project as more than middle-of-the-rotation starters at this point. Jonathan Sanchez was imported to provide another rotation arm with upside, but his severe command problems have shown no signs of improvement, and in over 700 career big league innings, he’s essentially been a league average starting pitcher. Toss in Bruce Chen and either Danny Duffy or Aaron Crow at the end of the rotation, and the team essentially has a collection of starters who each could be okay if everything breaks in their favor. There’s no aces anywhere to be found, and the rotation lacks pitchers with the ability to work deep into games and reduce the strain on the bullpen.

That issue raised its head last year, when the Royals had to ask their relievers to throw 508 innings – among AL teams, only the Orioles and Red Sox got more work from their bullpen. With that many early calls to the bullpen, the team can’t help but go to mediocre middle relievers in critical situations, and the result is too many blown leads due to handing the ball to guys who don’t belong on the mound in close and late situations.

Rather than upgrading the rotation with a durable innings eater, the only rotation upgrade the Royals made was Sanchez, whose high pitch counts often force him out of the game in the fifth or sixth inning. As such, the Royals will again have to lean on their bullpen very heavily, and they don’t have enough good young arms to make that strategy really pay off.

There just aren’t that many areas where the Royals should expect to be that much better in 2012 than they were in 2011. With some further maturation from the likes of Hosmer and Moustakas, the team could take a big step forward in 2013, but if they can finish the year at .500, they should consider 2012 a success. There’s just too many holes to fill in one season, and this roster just isn’t quite good enough to contend yet.