My ballot for the 2022 Royals team awards

This year, I voted for two of the three winners of the awards as voted on by the media covering the team. Which one did I miss? Read on!

Jeez, I’m late on this.

The Royals announced their annual team awards sometime last month. I cast my ballot sometime in early November. It’s all a bit hazy.

To recap, the winners were Bobby Witt Jr. as the Player of the Year, Brady Singer as Pitcher of the Year and Salvador Perez with the Special Achievement award. This was my fourth time with a vote. Of those four years, this was the first time I voted for someone who didn’t ultimately win something. There’s usually not a lot of suspense around these awards.

Yet, it’s that post-Thanksgiving, pre-Winter Meetings lull where content is kind of difficult to come by. This may be some sort of navel-gazing, but it’s what we have at this moment.

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The vote for these awards is usually straightforward. As I mentioned last week, in the previous three years I cast a ballot, I’ve voted for the eventual winner on every single award. This year? I was just two for three. I like to believe that I was thinking outside the box!

Read on for how I voted this year.

I had a bit of an inner monologue going on with the Royals’ Player of the Year, but in the end, it was always going to be Bobby Witt Jr. He got my vote.

He led the team with 82 runs scored, 80 RBI and 30 steals. He was second with 20 home runs. Despite being just around league average at the plate with a 99 wRC+ and a 102 OPS+ and with some sometimes shaky defense, he still led the Royals’ offense in fWAR with 2.3. Oh, he did it all as a rookie, finishing fourth in the AL in the Rookie of the Year balloting.

This isn’t to say there aren’t flaws in his game. His 4.7 percent walk rate was extremely poor and if he can’t find a way to add a few more walks it’s absolutely going to compromise his on-base percentage. That’s what’s holding him back in the index stats like OPS+ and wRC+. Bump that walk rate which increases the OBP and you have a player well above the league average.

Hey, there’s plenty of time for that. The kid just finished his age-22 season. The projections for next year are slowly rolling in and they’re trending bullish. Steamer has him at .263/.313/.463 with 4.2 fWAR. Those are numbers we can all get excited about.

To circle back to my point about his walk rate, Steamer projects Witt at 6 percent BB% next season. That would help add around 20 points of on-base percentage. That extra 20 points would push his wRC+ to 115. Again…bullish. But he has to improve that plate discipline.

Meanwhile, the power is easy and impressive.

From the Royals Media Relations Department, Witt hit six home runs that flew at least 435 feet and averaged 416 feet per dinger, the third-highest distance in the majors last year. Witt had two hitting streaks longer than 10 games, including a team-best 13-game streak. Oh, and he led the league with a spring speed of 30.4 feet per second. I already mentioned he was 22 last year, so all of this is somehow even more impressive. The dude can do everything.

If there was an area of his game that was a disappointment, it would have to be on the defensive side. According to Statcast, Witt was -11 Outs Above Average, ranking 259th out of 267 players. There were a lot of seemingly routine plays he would struggle with from time to time. Then, he was capable of things like this…

I feel like I’m spending too much time pointing out flaws in his game, but that’s just my way of writing that there’s just a ton of upside, both offensively and with the glove. He’s only going to get better. This award is the first of many.

What about the other candidates? It was an interesting year to cast a ballot because the lineup really turned over midway through the year and there were a ton of rookies who played less than half a season. Only five Royals played 100 games for the club in 2022. Andrew Benintendi would’ve merited consideration, but he played in 93 games before getting dealt to New York. Injuries limited Salvador Perez to 114 games and while he was still flashing that clutch gene and the power, he didn’t significantly outpace Witt offensively in my opinion. I am intrigued by Michael A. Taylor and the fact he led the Royals in bWAR at 3.2. (Witt was at 0.8 bWAR, tied with Emmanuel Rivera.) Of course, Taylor’s value comes almost completely on defense.

Witt was the deserving winner.

The pitcher of the year was simple. If someone didn’t vote for Brady Singer, they may as well have set their entire ballot on fire.

Singer led the Royals’ starters in innings (153.1), strikeout rate (8.8 SO/9), ERA (3.23), FIP (3.58) and was second in walk rate (2.1 BB/9). Oh, and he posted a staff-high 2.9 fWAR.

And here I was ready to write the guy off as a bust following a 2021 season that saw him regress from his solid, if unspectacular, rookie season. Singer had a rough camp in spring, opened the season in the bullpen and ultimately had to make a trip to Omaha to get stretched back out as a starter.

He made his first start on May 17 against the White Sox, throwing seven innings of four-hit ball with nine strikeouts. There was a bit of a rough patch in late May and early June, but from June 19 to September 23 (a span of 17 starts), Singer posted a 2.52 ERA with a 4:1 SO:BB ratio. It wasn’t just that he was good…he was dominant.

According to the Royals media relations department, Singer had seven starts where he went at least seven innings and allowed one run or fewer. The only pitchers in the league who had more were Martín Pérez (with nine), Justin Verlander and Shohei Ohtani (both with eight). That’s some elite company—at least the last two names. The last Royal who had more starts that fit that criteria in a single season was James Shields back in 2014.

Seriously, this was Singer’s award all the way. Zack Greinke got some consideration from me because he’s a marvel and I hope he pitches forever. He was clearly the second-best starter for the Royals in 2022. That’s kind of an indictment on the young starters behind Singer as much as Greinke’s amazing ability to remain relevant, isn’t it? Scott Barlow in the bullpen had another solid season and won this award last year. Long-time readers know my aversion to voting for relievers in these awards. I like to see innings in the ledger, so for a reliever to get that vote he has to be especially dominant. That wasn’t really Barlow in 2022.

I’m not privy to who cast what vote for this award, but if Singer didn’t top every single ballot, something was wrong.

If you’ve been keeping score up to this point, you’ll see that I’m two for two, voting for both winners of Player and Pitcher of the Year. That leaves the Special Achievement Award. That’s the one I whiffed.

My vote went to Vinnie Pasquantino. Perez had a fine season, but Pasquantino walked more than he struck out! As a rookie! In 2022, that qualifies as a special achievement!

Besides, Pasquantino had an extremely strong season, even though he only had 298 plate appearances. That’s kind of how I view the Special Achievement Award…an opportunity to recognize a player who maybe didn’t put together a full season but was outstanding in his limited time on the field.

If you don’t get caught up in the “qualified” stuff when it comes to leaderboards, Pasquantino had the second-highest OBP among all Royals batters in 2022 (.383) and the third-highest slugging percentage (.450). His 137 wRC+ and 135 OPS+ led the club. It’s too bad he played less than half the year in the majors because the dude raked.

There’s a lot to look forward to with this team in 2023, including new leadership in the front office and the dugout. However, I think I’m most looking forward to Vincenzo abusing major league pitchers for six months. That sounds like a fine way to spend a summer.