Calling my shot

Time to gaze into the crystal (base)ball. It's prediction time!

We have almost made it to the finish line of winter. Opening Day is this close. The Royals have a few transactions left to settle ahead of the first pitch, but at this point, the preparations for the 2023 season are done and dusted. It’s time to play ball.

As is tradition around these parts, that means taking a (probably wildly inaccurate) guess at how the season will play out. All in fun. At least that’s my excuse.

Anyway, more coverage tomorrow and throughout the season. If you haven’t subscribed yet, hit that button so you won’t miss a thing.

The Royals will win 73 games.

Let’s start with a bang. The sharps in Vegas have set the Royals over/under win total in the neighborhood of 69 victories. So I’m betting on the over. By quite a bit.

On the surface, it feels a foolish wager to not only take the over, but to set the win total in the mid-70s. Their biggest off-season acquisitions were Jordan Lyles and Aroldis Chapman.

It’s just that I believe in this coaching staff. I believe in the improvement of the young hitters. I’m talking myself into believing in the bullpen. Add it all together and yeah…I’ll pencil this team in for eight more wins than they had in 2022. It’s symbolic as well as 73 wins avoids 90 losses.

Kris Bubic will be this year’s breakout starter.

A new slider, plus a new philosophy of filling up that zone will equal new successes for Bubic in 2023.

Bubic has been inconsistent—and otherwise mediocre—since his 2020 debut, but he seems like the guy who, with a new pitch at his disposal, can take a step forward with some guidance from pitching coaches Brian Sweeney and Zach Bove. The spring results were encouraging, with plenty of swing and miss that had previously been missing from his arsenal. If he can drop the hammer consistently and get some quick outs, he could be set for something of a takeoff.

He is officially the fifth starter for the Royals and will make his 2023 debut on the first Tuesday of the season against the Blue Jays.

Bobby Witt, Jr. will finish in the top 30 among hitters in fWAR.

Why top 30? Because that’s what the leaderboard page defaults to at FanGraphs. And because his rookie contemporaries from last year Julio Rodriguez and Steven Kwan both are on that first page. (Rodriguez finished 2022 with a 5.3 fWAR, good for 21st overall while Kwan tallied a 4.4 fWAR which was 29th.)

I’m going to bathe in this Royal-Blue KoolAid because what else is there to do? I remain convinced that while Witt’s debut season didn’t set the baseball world afire, the foundation has been set. Mortals just don’t go out and hit 20 dingers, 31 doubles and swipe 30 bags in their age 22 season and just hit the cruise control button. They get better from here.

I’m going in on the defense as well. Witt now realizes the game moves at a certain speed in the majors and is going to be able to handle that action a little better in his sophomore season. Working with new infield coach José Alguacil will pay dividends. Plus, just being the shortstop from the jump will help.

For the record, last year Witt finished with a 2.3 fWAR, good for 81st among qualified players.

Zack Greinke will record his 3,000th career strikeout.

Greinke will enter the 2023 season 118 whiffs away from the milestone. That’s not a lot. Except as you know, Greinke’s strikeout totals have tumbled the last couple of years. The shortened 2020 season did not help.

Here’s how it happens: If Greinke pitches 150 innings this summer, he will need to post a 7.1 SO/9. Ok, that’s going to be something of a challenge given he finished last season with a paltry 4.8 SO/9.

It’s just that I believe in Greinke and his competitiveness that he’ll find a way to get over that line. It’s going to come down to the wire, but I’ll call my shot and say that it happens on the road in Houston at the end of September.

There will be much celebration. Greinke won’t care.

Vinnie Pasquantino will finish the year with more walks than strikeouts.

This seems like low-hanging fruit. Vincenzo had 35 walks and 34 strikeouts last year in about a half-season in the majors. For the other half of his year—in Triple-A with the Storm Chasers—he had 40 walks and 39 strikeouts. You gotta love consistency.

None of the projection models think he can do it over a full season. Whatever. The dude just seems like a special kind of hitting machine.

Basically, I just wanted to work a Pasquantino prediction in this space.

I’m going to swipe this from Twitter. My quick take on the new rules:

Pitch clock - LOVE it, but we’re going to need to revisit it after a couple of months.
Shift ban - Agnostic, but generally think it’s going to be a good thing.
Balanced schedule - Better.
Increased interleague - Boo.
Bigger bases - Why not?
Pickoff limits - Embrace the potential for chaos.
Zombie runner - The worst rule change in the history of the game.

Feel free to copy/paste your takes in the comment section.

Friends, before I dive into my divisional standing predictions, let’s take a pause so I can pat myself on the back. I’ve been doing these for a long time (they are spread around so many corners of the internet, don’t bother looking for them), and I’m rarely correct. So you’ll forgive me that, in preparation for today’s edition I went back to look at what I did this time last year. I didn’t do half bad. In fact, I correctly picked five of the six playoff teams in both leagues. It’s a minor miracle.

My misses were Cleveland (who I picked last in the Central. Hilarious.) and the Cardinals. I don’t feel so bad about whiffing on St. Louis. It’s difficult to pick them to win anything.

So with the victory lap portion out of the way, here are my predicted divisional standings for 2023.

The AL Wild Cards will be the Blue Jays, Rays and the Angels. Ohtani and Trout to the playoffs!

The Wild Cards in the NL will be the Dodgers, Phillies and Mets. Sorry. I think that’s boring.

I will go with the Blue Jays and Braves in the World Series.

The Royals made several moves with the close of exhibition play on Tuesday. The most notable was the optioning of Collin Snider to Omaha. This means that Jose Cuas will almost certainly be with the club when they open the season on Thursday. I had projected Snider to be part of the relief corps. Like the other players optioned earlier this month, Snider will be back at Kauffman sometime soon.

Don’t forget, with the names all but settled for the 26-man Opening Day roster, the Royals still have to make a move on the 40-man roster to get the three expected non-roster invitees on the squad.

Here’s a refresher on how the pitching matchups shake out for the first series of the season:

Thursday, 3/29 - Pablo López vs. Zack Greinke @ 3:10 CDT
Saturday 4/1 - Sonny Gray vs. Jordan Lyles @ 3:10 CDT
Sunday 4/2 - Joe Ryan vs. Brad Keller @ 1:10 CDT

Have a great Wednesday. Real baseball tomorrow!