It is time for the Royals to call in some reinforcements
The Omaha Storm Chasers have a couple of guys who should probably be in the big leagues.
April has ended, and the Royals have managed to not bury themselves like they have the last two seasons. What they need to avoid is a repeat of 2021 where they came out of the gate 16-9 only to finish 74-88 and 19 games back in the AL Central. This team is better than that one, I think, but has enough flaws to concern me.
The main concern right now is the offense, which started out hot, averaging more than 5 runs per game as recently as April 20th. Since that day, they have averaged 3.4 runs per game. It is only a nine-game sample, and 3.4 is merely bad rather than horrific like the offense was at times last season. It has felt worse than 3.4 because that 8-run game was actually a game where they had one run going into the eighth inning. Also, I want to give this offense credit for still being somewhat productive even when struggling. Last year the Royals got shut out six times by their 31st game, but only once so far this year.
Outfield is the obvious place to start looking for upgrades. After a solid beginning, both MJ Melendez and Nelson Velasquez have become ice-cold. Melendez is 1-for-25 with 1 walk since the 20th and Velasquez is 1-for-22 with two walks. Add to that Hunter Renfroe and Kyle Isbel, who have mostly struggled from the first day of the season, and the outfield is hurting for some offensive production from any position. I think Drew Waters needs to be on this team. He is a better right fielder than either Renfroe or Velasquez and a better bat than possibly everyone in the Kansas City outfield the way they are all swinging it right now.
Currently, Drew Waters is hitting .306/.398/.500 in Omaha while walking at a nice clip and striking out about a quarter of the time. The strikeouts have been his Achilles’ heel and I would prefer that number be lower, but even with some swing and miss I think he is an upgrade currently. He can switch hit, so he can take Renfroe’s spot against righties and Isbel’s against lefties. Last year he was not great at the major league level with a wRC+ of 82, but an 82 would be second in the Royals outfield currently, only behind Velasquez’ 88 that is falling precipitously at the moment. You can send him down to make room and tell him to go remember how to crush fastballs out of the park to get back to the bigs.
The second player that needs to be on this team is Nick Loftin. He broke camp with the big league team and played pretty well only to be sent down when Massey came off the DL. I appreciate that he has options and Adam Frazier does not. I also think he is just straight-up better than Frazier. Adam Frazier is 32 and the last time he had a league-average season at the plate was in 2021 when he posted his highest full-season BABIP of his career. I am not sure why JJ thought the Royals should sign him. He was a negative defensively last year, though before that he mostly has been a pretty solid second baseman. The big problem is that Frazier and Massey both hit left handed, so it makes more sense to have a Massey/Loftin 2B combo. I do not know if the front office could cut Frazier so early in the year from a pride perspective, especially when Massey is struggling at the plate. That means getting Loftin back up would either move Massey back to the minors or maybe Dairon Blanco.
Blanco is a nice luxury for this team to have, a late-inning defensive and pinch-running specialist is useful. However, it is more useful when you have leads than when you are behind, so the lineup being productive in the early innings has priority. Loftin makes this lineup better. With Waters up you have another competent outfielder, so that would partially cover Blanco’s absence.
The last guy that should be considered to be on this team is Logan Porter. This one is a little tougher for me to see happening. A 28-year-old who has never seen the big leagues does not typically come up and set the world on fire. He is destroying AAA right now though, his current OPS is 1.266. He can play catcher and 1B and DH, which makes his main spot DH with Velazquez now being back in Omaha theoretically. Is he as good of a defensive catcher as Fermin? I don’t actually know, but my guess is probably not. Fermin is off to a slow start, but as a backup catcher the sample size is only 51 plate appearances. It’s probably too early to demote him and take away his backup role. Porter can also be a platoon bat option for the lefty Pasquantino as he is also having a hard time being productive at the moment. I think it might make sense to give him a shot just to see if DH can be a bit more productive. He can a have a pretty short leash while trying to find a spark for the offense.
I think it would be unlikely to see all three happen because the third demotion gets a little tough to figure out unless Massey is the second and for this one it becomes Blanco. The other solutions would be DFAing Frazier or Hampson, which I already said was unlikely on the former. Hampson could easily be cut in my opinion. He serves no real purpose. The only other candidate for being cut would be Renfroe, who is also not very good, but the two-year contract makes that extremely unlikely.
If this team is going to contend, long stretches of bad baseball need to be avoided. Having over half your lineup be unproductive makes winning a whole lot harder, and some of these guys need to earn their time if this is win mode instead of evaluation mode like last year. I would bring up both Waters and Loftin for sure ASAP, just to bolster the lineup and send the message that you have to perform and earn your spot in the lineup. Porter is slightly less imperative in my mind, but if he keeps destroying AAA, then he deserves a shot at trying to give some offensive punch to the big league team. The Central Division is available for the taking, go grab it Kansas City.