Calling my shot — the 2024 edition

These predictions aren't fearless. They're probably foolish. But fun nonetheless. Happy Opening Day!

Congratulations! You’ve made it to Opening Day.

We had to watch the postseason, suffer through the slog of November when really nothing happens. Then to the Winter Meetings and the hot stove. Pitchers and catchers reporting and on to Spring Training. After all of that…Finally. Real baseball. Nirvana.

As is custom around these parts, I’ll give my prediction for the Royals record for the upcoming season, along with a stab at the final standings in the AL Central. Spoiler alert: They will reflect the general optimism of the new season after a winter of a front office going against the grain and actively trying to improve their ballclub. I’ll also chime in with a few wayward predictions that are sure to be horrifically wrong in six months time. I’m not foolish enough to recommend you bookmark this. Instead, I suggest you burn your internet after reading this.

First pitch is coming up. Let’s not waste time. On with the predictions.

The AL Central will feature a surprise team in contention

It won’t be the Royals. The Twins will stumble and the Tigers, on the back of their better-than-expected pitching, will make a push for the division. The Guardians will fade and dump Shane Bieber at the trade deadline. Every division has one club that underachieves and it’s Cleveland’s turn. The Royals will make their patented September charge to finish third in the Central.

This is what you subscribe for, isn’t it? I’m predicting a 20-win bounce for the Royals. I think I might be feverish.

I keep coming back to last season’s third-order winning percentage. Third-order winning percentage was developed by Clay Davenport at Baseball Prospectus. It’s a team's projected winning percentage, based on underlying statistics and adjusted for the quality of opponents. It’s not longer published at BP, but Davenport has his own website and updates it daily.

Last season, you could make a case that the Royals were the unluckiest team in the majors based on third-order wins. They should have won 66 games, which is 10 more than they actually won. I know…big whoop. The difference between winning 56 and 66 games is swapping fifth place for fourth. But! And here comes some convoluted spring optimism…If you take it at face value that the Royals were better—as in 10 games better—than their final record reflected last year, then a 20-game improvement suddenly doesn’t look so extreme. At least that’s what I’m telling myself when I need to justify this logic.

After writing this section, I checked my emails and saw the latest odds roll in from BetOnline, which I get regularly delivered for some reason. They have the Royals over/under win total at 74.5. I wouldn’t touch that line with Shohei Ohtani’s millions.

Please feel free to drop your predictions in the comments. Or tell me how wrong I am.

The Royals Player of the Year—non-Bobby Witt Jr. division

Bobby Witt Jr. is the best player on the Royals. If you were to ask me who I think the team MVP will be this year, my answer will be Bobby Witt Jr. It’s fantastic that he’s so great at baseball, but he makes these prediction columns sort of boring.

So how about the second-best player this year? I’ll go with his teammate on the left side of the diamond Maikel Garcia.

Yeah, I’ll fanboy over the Statcast metrics. For starters, Garcia is what I would consider to be a very disciplined hitter. His chase rate of 20.6 percent was in the 89th percentile which is exceptional. He doesn’t walk a ton—his walk rate in 2023 was 7.4 percent—but that’s because he’s making contact on those pitches in the zone. He’s what I like to call selectively aggressive. It’s a good foundation.

Next, when he puts the ball in play, he’s hammering the crap out of it. His average exit velocity was 91.8 MPH which was the 25th best among all qualified hitters last year. Only MJ Melendez at 93.2 MPH average exit velocity hit the ball with more authority than Garcia last year.

Yet Garcia barreled just 3.9 percent of the balls he put in play last year. That rate is absurdly low, ranking him 124th out of 134 qualified hitters. Almost half of the balls he put in play were on the ground.

I’m on the Garcia bandwagon for a couple of reasons. One, the promise he showed in his rookie campaign last year is only scratching the surface. He turned 24 earlier this month so he’s just now entering his prime with a full season under his belt. Two, he played winter ball in Venezuela and showed more proclivity to generating some loft, hitting nine doubles and a pair of home runs in 129 plate appearances. Granted, the Venezuelan Winter League is not the major leagues, but consider Garcia managed just 20 doubles and four homers in 515 plate appearances last year in Kansas City. He carried that over into spring where he continued to generate a bit of loft.

Launch angle will be the key Statcast metric for Garcia this year. Bring that up a couple of degrees and he’ll be clubbing his share of doubles while taking the occasional leisurely stroll around the bases.

Bobby Witt Jr. will go 40/40

His home run total improved from 20 in his rookie season to 30 last year. After bingeing on the long ball in August, he experienced a bit of a drought in September so it took a little longer than anyone thought for him to reach that 30/30 total. This year sees him produce a season for the ages.

Pitcher of the year—non-Cole Ragans division

The same thing for player of the year goes for pitcher of the year. If Cole Ragans isn’t the best pitcher on this team this year it means one of two things. One, on the positive side, is that another starter took a massive step forward and gave the Royals an absolutely killer one-two at the top of the rotation. Two, the negative…well, I don’t want to talk about the negative.

Random Fun Fact: Both Witt and Ragans have top 10 odds to win the AL MVP and AL Cy Young, respectively. And both Witt and Ragans are in the top three in wagers placed. Doesn’t it feel like the Royals are edging back toward relevance? It’s not just on the gambling sites. They are starting to pick up notice from the national writers. This feels real to me.

This category is a little more difficult for me than position players because the pitchers are a bit underwhelming for me as a group. I could go for a reliever, in which case it would be James McArthur because that dude was lights out after his September callup. He pitched 16.1 innings, allowed five hits, struck out 19 and didn’t walk a batter. That stretch covered 12 appearances, one of which was a start as an opener. That’s crazy dominant.

But if you know me, you know I carry an irrational bias against relievers. I can’t help myself. Naturally, I’ll gravitate to the rotation for these types of things. That means I’ll tab Seth Lugo. The command is already exquisite. He walked 2.2 batters per nine last year, his first season in the rotation. As such, even at 34 years old, he has a little less mileage on his arm than the typical starter with seven-plus years of service time, so I’ll buy that he can keep healthy.

Lugo finished last year with a 2.8 fWAR and Steamer projects him for 2.0 fWAR this season. I think the shift in home parks to Kauffman Stadium will help his home run totals—which are already decent—and figure him for his usual 45 to 46 ground ball rate. Garcia and Witt are going to help him out big time on the left side of the infield. Hell, maybe Nick Loftin sticks at second which would further be a help to a pitcher like Lugo.

I’d feel better about my selection if he could get a few more whiffs, but the fact he’s now throwing six (or is it seven?) pitches and that he avoids hard contact while keeping the ball on the ground gives him a solid foundation for success in Kansas City.

Cole Ragans will top 200 strikeouts

Ragans punched out 113 hitters in 96 innings last year. I like him for 180 innings and 205 strikeouts. That’s a 10.3 SO/9 which would be in line with what he did last year, although it’s important to note he did spend some time coming out of the bullpen in Texas. Still, he’s hitting triple-digits with the heater already. I may be underselling this one. Please stay healthy, please stay healthy, please stay healthy…

Biggest offseason acquisition isn’t a player

The best news I saw from the Royals all offseason was when they sent out a press release a few days ago announcing they were getting back together with Coca-Cola. Finally!

Yeah, I’m that guy. I want nothing to do with Pepsi. I don’t order it in a restaurant and when I’m offered a Pepsi instead of a Coke my default reply is, “I’ll take a water.” In fact, I truly believe the Royals’ slide into the abyss in the 1990s had less to do with an aging core and the fact that George Brett retired, but was more about their alliance with Pepsi. Their success 10 years ago had more to do with Ned Yost going on a heater for the ages which was able to overcome the Pepsi Hex, but even Yost’s devil magic had it’s limits against the evil cola. Now that the Royals are back on board with Coke, the good vibes are going to roll again.

I am not a crackpot.

Vinnie Pasquantino will top .370 in on-base percentage

Initially, I had this at .350 OBP, but that seemed too pedestrian. Let’s go bold damnit! The Pasquatch kind of struggled in this category at the start of last season and posted a .324 OBP before he lost his year to a shoulder injury. Steamer has him projected for a .362 OBP and ZiPS checks in at .353. I think he beats those with ease.

James McArthur will lead the team in saves

This may be the most dangerous of the predictions, given how I expect Matt Quatraro to manage his bullpen. Nothing is given out there. Still, while Will Smith may get the ball in the ninth inning often to start the year, the bet here is that McArthur will far outshine his bullpen peers and that Quatraro will eventually be unable to ignore the excellence for long.

The Royals will have two starters in the All-Star Game

The obvious one is Witt. The less obvious one is Vinnie Pasquantino. The only reason I can come up with for this is that Royals fans are already in mid-season voting form.

Ok then. Jim Nantz voice: “A tradition unlike any other…Royals fans stuffing the ballot box.”

The Jackson County vote for the sales tax extension will fail, sending the Royals back to the drawing board

The vote will be close with a 52 to 48 margin against the extension of the three-eighths cent sales tax that would be used to fund a portion of Sherman’s Folly. I think the electorate is better informed after passing separate taxes to fund stadium renovations and to build a new arena. Promises were made in both cases and promises were broken so the fact that this all happened 20-odd years ago means the voters are going to remember. Plus, there’s a general distaste for giving billionaires tax money on top of an already pissed-off electorate in Jackson County. Then there’s the ham-handed way the Royals have handled this from the whole “concrete cancer” scam to changing sites every other month to slow-walking a community benefits agreement. They said just yesterday they would keep Oak Street open in their newest plan. Not sure how they can do that given where they, you know, actually want to build. What a mess.

If I had a vote, I would cast a “No” and feel good about it. Obviously, my bias is showing in my prediction, but all indications are pointing to this going down to the wire. Both sides are sweating the outcome. The deciding factor for me: Never underestimate angry voters.

Not a prediction, but an anniversary of sorts

This year will be my 20th writing about the Royals and haphazardly tossing it out on the internet for an unsuspecting public to consume. From Tony Peña and Allard Baird to Alex Gordon and Dayton Moore and Ned Yost and now to Bobby Witt Jr and Matt Quatraro, it’s been quite a ride.

I’ve enjoyed jotting down my thoughts about this baseball team and am humbled you continue to read. Your page views, comments and feedback are fuel to keep the newsletter fires burning, so thank you. I’ll continue to ask that if you have a friend who is, like you, a fellow Royals fanatic, to share this newsletter with them. The more the merrier as they say and if this year goes the way I’m predicting above, this could be a fun time to hop on board.

Here’s to the 2024 baseball season. Cole Ragans versus Pablo López. Royals versus Twins. First pitch at 3:10. Don’t forget to leave your prediction for the Royals record and order of finish in the AL Central if you’re so inclined.