The Royals’ lineup needs to make a change. Here’s where to start
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- Salvador Perez has batted cleanup in all but three Royals games this season.
- Vinnie Pasquantino has occupied the No. 3 spot in the lineup in 40 of 48 games.
- The Royals have the worst OPS from both the cleanup and No. 3 spots in the AL.
The knuckle-curve crawled over the plate, just 77 miles per hour, and Salvador Perez redirected it 393 feet into the left-field stands.
An easy swing.
An easy home run.
It looked, dare I say, like what the Royals have been missing this season — a prototypical cleanup hitter.
A Sunday afternoon blast inside Busch Stadium sparked a 2-0 win to close out the Royals’ otherwise sour road trip, but it also offered an all-too-brief reprieve to the storyline that’s showing a lot of correlation to KC’s current standing:
Their run producers aren’t producing runs.
The Royals have received the worst OPS (on-base plus slugging) from the cleanup spot of any team in the American League. Perez has occupied the cleanup spot in the lineup in all but three games this season.
The Royals have received the worst OPS from the No. 3 spot in the lineup in the American League. Vinnie Pasquantino has occupied the No. 3 spot in the lineup in 40 of the 48 games.
The middle of the order is not the only reason the Royals are 20-28 — the rotation has been mediocre and the bullpen has been less than mediocre — but it’s atop the list.
Which sparks an obvious question: Should the Royals perhaps mix up their middle of the order?
At the outset, I’ll point out there are parts of that conversation, even major parts of it, that seem to gloss over two necessary follow-ups:
• If Pasquantino and Perez are not hitting third and fourth in the lineup, who would be? It’s not as though the Royals have been flush with power-hitting options.
• The bottom line is that for the Kansas City lineup to truly operate at a high level, Perez and Pasquantino have to be reasons why — whether they’re lined up back-to-back at three-four or whether they’re sitting at eight-nine. They are the among the players on which this lineup depends most.
But they’re also occupying the spots in the order on which this lineup depends most.
I don’t say that because of the conventional wisdom that you should put your best hitters in a specific sequence at the top half of the lineup — that can actually be frequently overstated. I say that because of the data. It’s not overstated in this lineup.
Pasquantino has stepped to the plate 60 times with runners in scoring position — most in the American League.
Perez has stepped to the plate 59 times this season with runners in scoring position — second most in the American League.
They each have at least 25% more run-producing opportunities than any other players on the team. That’s not surprising, right? They bat on the heels of Bobby Witt Jr., who ranks second in the league in hits.
Which brings up how this dilemma should be approached. It’s not that the Royals should yank Pasquantino and Perez from their spots in the lineup as some sort of punishment — or for some symbolic reason that they don’t deserve the traditional prestige of the third and fourth spots in an order.
Instead, the question of whom the Royals want to bat with runners in scoring position should be the hitter(s) that directly follow one of the best hitters in baseball.
Witt offers the best chance to score a run. Who offers the best chance to drive him in?
Maikel Garcia, I’d argue, is more valuable as a run-producer than as a player who gets on base in front of Witt. (Isaac Collins has actually posted an on-base percentage 16 points higher than Garcia’s, but Garcia is slugging 58 points better.)
But at this point, it’s not about stripping Pasquantino and Perez of responsibility. It’s about relieving some pressure, too.
Vinnie Pasquantino can hit.
Vinnie Pasquantino is not hitting right now.
There are few players in baseball who are harder on themselves. He wears it, and he’s willing to wear it publicly, at that. He stood in front of the media and spoke on it yet again Monday, after an 0-for-4 day with two strikeouts.
The Royals have expressed confidence in a turnaround — they wouldn’t be batting him third and Perez fourth if they didn’t believe in one. But general manager J.J. Picollo acknowledged the Royals have had this discussion you’re reading about right now, and they have it daily before leaving the lineup decisions to manager Matt Quatraro.
“I believe in those guys because of the track record, and also (because of) the stuff behind the scenes of what they’re working on, how they feel, the state of mind they’re in and what they mean to us as a team,” Quatraro said.
The Royals are prioritizing history in a sport that demands patience. If teams implemented quick hooks, a 162-game season would be defined by its knee-jerk reactions.
But the reality is this isn’t a knee-jerk response. The season is nearly 50 games old, and Pasquantino and Perez have OPS shy of .500 with runners in scoring position.
Perez’s bat has slowed a tick. Pasquantino has swung at a higher percentage of pitches outside the zone and a lower percentage of pitches inside the zone.
“So there’s some pressing...” Picollo said. “Being able to slow the game down in the moment is a big challenge when guys are struggling a little bit, so that’s probably more than anything what his challenge is right now.”
Which is why the concept of mixing up the lineup is actually two-fold. The Royals could theoretically have a hotter hitter follow Witt to the plate.
And such a change could offer Pasquantino a role that is statistically likely, albeit not statistically guaranteed, to encompass less pressure.
Pasquantino said Monday he hasn’t lost confidence. He also said he knows he needs to come through at a higher rate than he’s shown.
That can happen — even if they first offer him a break from asking him to produce it. An alteration isn’t altering the season objectives — or those on whom you’re depending to achieve them.
Rather, in a year that has been defined by missed opportunities at the plate, it’s giving the most important players in the lineup an opportunity for a reset.
And it’s giving the lineup a different look in the interim.