How long must we wait on the Kansas City Royals to rebuild? It’s time for progress
In the afterglow of a World Series that brought Kansas City its first trophy in three decades, then-Royals manager Ned Yost stood inside a spring training clubhouse and talked about winning another.
Financial restraints had prevented the Royals from keeping their entire championship roster together— key pieces departed in free agency — but they elected to try for an encore. They held onto Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas and Lorenzo Cain for two ensuing years, signaling they were all-in on the present, even if it meant dire consequences for the future.
A May afternoon collision between Alex Gordon and Moustakas shattered the present.
As for those future consequences? They’re still here, lingering long past their welcome.
The Royals knew those decisions would spark the valleys of a rebuild. They even figured they might cut deep — when Cain and Hosmer eventually signed mega-contracts elsewhere after the 2017 season, many within the Royals organization assumed 2018, 2019, 2020 and maybe even 2021 would be grim years.
But 2022? It’s not like those predecessors.
OK, it’s very much like those predecessors in the spot where it actually matters: the standings. And in the metrics that produce the standings — the Royals are not a good hitting team, and they have not been for awhile now; they do not pitch the ball particularly well as a whole, and they have not for awhile.
But there’s one key difference in this season in comparison to the previous four. It’s supposed to be the time they turn a corner. Based both on public sentiment and recent evidence across baseball, this was intended to be a season in which the Royals would show signs of a brighter future. Instead, through five weeks, it resembles one more link in a chain from the past.
Which is where the honeymoon phase of a championship from seven years ago needs to reside — in the past.
The 2014-15 trips to the World Series are recent history no more. The Royals tell you that, too, by the way. Seven years can represent an eternity in baseball. Those successes issued currency, of sorts, for what would inevitably follow.
But how long will it follow? How long will the consequences still be here?
Over the past 14 seasons, as the proverbial tanking has washed over baseball, the average rebuild spans barely more than three seasons. The small markets, such as Kansas City, can take a bit longer to regroup, but the gap isn’t as wide as you might suspect. Neither the A’s, Rays nor Brewers have endured more than four straight losing seasons in the past 15 years, even while going through varying degrees of rebuilds.
The Royals have put together five straight losing years, and they are pushing the pedal toward a sixth. Only one team is on a worse streak currently — the Angels already have had six straight losing seasons, though they’ve opened this year 21-12.
The Royals were 80-82 in 2017, so there’s a bit of a twisting of the numbers here, but their rebuild is unquestionably in its fifth season. It has outlived the expiration date of the actual word in news conferences. The Royals are 227-347 over the past four-plus years.
How patient must you be?
A rebuild is the norm. It’s the length of this process — five years ... and counting — that should produce a better outcome in 2022.
That’s more than reasonable. Those aren’t just my words.
“It’s our responsibility as a baseball operations department to analyze all of our processes and to ask tough questions on why things aren’t going the way we need them to go and the way we expected them to go,” president of baseball operations Dayton Moore said.
Those examinations all derive from the same question:
Where is this headed?
The substandard results at the Major League level do not change what awaits in the minor leagues — the Royals still have a quality crop of prospects that Baseball America ranked fifth-best in the game — but you’d like to see the major-league product going somewhere by now, if for no other reason than to instill a bit of confidence in its ultimate destination.
As the Royals sit 10-19 after Thursday’s game, there was — is — enough frustration in and around Kauffman Stadium to have serious discussions about what’s next.
The success on the other side of this rebuild was never going to be dependent on the bats of stopgaps like Carlos Santana and Michael A. Taylor. But can it really afford to rely on the potential success of Ryan O’Hearn, who is closing in on 1,000 plate appearances with a career WAR of -2.7? What about Hunter Dozier, who has a career WAR of -1.2 in 1800 plate appearances? And if not, well, then what?
Alternatively, if the Royals’ evaluations show optimism in the talent on the field, they must arrive at a different conclusion for those in charge of developing it. That’s the simple logic of it.
This much is certain: Change must occur somewhere. This won’t reverse itself. They Royals would be fortunate if the required impact on the roster is minimal, but at some point, they will need to re-determine if the pace of their rebuild can accelerate more quickly than the decline of 32-year-old Salvador Perez and 33-year-old Whit Merrifield. Because right now, it looks like the latter is winning the race.
Granted, it’s been only five weeks, but those five weeks provide all the data we have to go on. Those five weeks are the reality, and this span has supplied something of a reality check.
Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the lineup. The Royals departed spring training believing they had multiple ways to score runs, a belief that has been proven wrong. Only two teams in baseball have a worse OPS than their mark of .596. Only the Tigers have hit fewer than the Royals’ 14 home runs.
The Royals rank 29th in runs, 29th in doubles, 29th in homers and dead last in total bases.
They have the second-worst line drive rate in baseball among balls put in play, per Fangraphs, and they hit the sixth-most fly balls. Based on individual hitters and opposing pitchers, the Royals target specific zones for players to eye attractive pitches, as most teams do. The data shows a group of hitters consistently reaching outside those targeted zones and making weak contact.
Why have they been unable to make the adjustment?
Why is it taking Merrifield more time than usual to return to being a line-drive hitter? He swings under pitches (leading to fly balls) more often than at any point in his career and has one home run and three doubles to show for it. He’s gone through stretches like this before, but five weeks?
Why are the valleys for Perez, a known streaky hitter, more prolonged and more pronounced? In a stretch of nine games recently, he concluded eight without a hit. He was 2 for 38 with one walk. Why is he swinging under the ball 16% more often than he did last year, when he hit 48 home runs?
They form two examples the Royals did not see coming. Those two will hit better ... and in some cases, cannot hit much worse.
The pitching has been its own roller-coaster, though that’s better than a lineup that cannot leave the gates. They have the benefit only of relativity. They are 26th in earned-run average, at 4.52.
The Royals’ win-loss record, in other words, is justified. It’s well-deserved.
They should be past this in Year Five of a rebuild. Nobody in that front office will tell you otherwise. But it’s their responsibility to figure out why they’re here. We know the numbers. They task is deciphering the why.
Because the complication isn’t just where they are now. It’s what it might mean for where they’re headed.
This story was originally published May 13, 2022 at 5:00 AM.