Hunter Dozier a man without a position

Will he even need a glove in 2022?

The Royals have a decision to make when it comes to Hunter Dozier. It’s not the typical decision we generally ruminate on over the normal baseball offseason. Then again, this baseball offseason is anything but normal.

On the surface, it would seem as though the decision has already been made. Dozier signed a contract extension ahead of the 2021 season and is, as President Dayton Moore told the Athletic last October, “…a foundational piece for our organization.” Yet as I mentioned, the decision they have to address isn’t as straightforward as whether or not he will be with the team on Opening Day in 2022, whenever that is. With his contract and given how the Royals front office thinks of Dozier, that question has been answered. He’s on this team.

Where will he play?

Here’s a fun fact about Hunter Dozier in 2021: He played in a career-high 144 games and accumulated 543 plate appearances, which was the second-most in his career. (He had 586 PAs in his breakout season of 2019.) He was in the lineup a ton for the Royals.

Here’s another fun fact about Hunter Dozier in 2021: He made 52 starts at third, 50 starts in right, 13 starts in left, 12 starts at first and 10 as the designated hitter. According to the crack staff at the Royals media relations department, Dozier was only the second player in major league history to have 10 or more starts in a single season at those five specific positions. In major league history!

What these fun facts tell us is that to start, the Royals really do believe in and want Dozier in the lineup as much as possible. They also tell us they have no idea where to play him when he’s in the lineup.

Of course, we can’t prophesize about Dozier’s future without first revisiting the most recent past. The 2021 season was an absolutely miserable experience for Dozier. It began with the sixteenth pitch he saw of the new season.

Innocuous enough. A ground ball in the hole between short and third. It scored a run and was a fielder’s choice. The clip doesn’t stay with the action, but this was the final frame.

The position of his right hand is kind of strange, isn’t it? Dozier was pulled from the game when the Royals took the field for defense in the next inning and it was announced he suffered a right thumb contusion. Dozier sat a few games before returning to action in Cleveland. He went 0-4. He went 0-3 the next night in Chicago and then 0-2 two days later. He sat when the Royals returned home to face the Angels and then went 0-3 the next night. Overall, it was an 0-16 stretch to open the season.

That wasn’t even his worst 0-fer in 2021. On May 5 against Cleveland, he homered in his first plate appearance. From there, though, he went 0-31. It was while running to first on a foul pop that was the 31st at bat in that stretch where he collided with White Sox first baseman Jose Abreu and sustained a concussion. (It stretched to 0-32 when he returned.)

At that point, Dozier was hitting .139/.202/.339 in 124 plate appearances. Yet when he returned from his concussion, he was in the lineup, mostly in right field. Every day. Dozier bottomed out in late June. After taking the collar in four at bats in the series finale in Texas, he was hitting .155/.226/.324.

As Dozier continued to play through his thumb injury, it led to a breakdown in his swing. In 2019, he had been successful in spraying the ball to all fields. Over the first couple of months of 2021, he didn’t go to the opposite field at all.

This is his spray chart from the start of the season to June 6. He had only one hit to the right of dead center and even then, it was just barely.

Dozier ultimately got his mojo back in the batter’s box. A brutal three-month stretch to open the year made it impossible to pull his numbers back to any level of respectability, but once his thumb was fully healed, Dozier did shorten his swing and saw some positive results. He started spraying the ball to all fields. This is his chart from June 7 onwards.

Much more balanced. And much more like what we saw in 2019.

From July 1 to the end of the season, Dozier hit .261/.331/.448 in 305 plate appearances. It was a respectable finish to what had been an abysmal start. To break it down further, July was very good, August was a revisit to his brutal first half of the season and September was exceptional.

I’m almost 750 words into this newsletter and I’ve barely touched on the question posed at the lede of where Dozier will play. As I wrote at the beginning, the fact the Royals stayed with him throughout his ups and downs (along with his contract) means the organization is committed to Dozier. I think that’s important to note. He’s not going anywhere.

So now, about that defense…

At times in 2021, Dozier played four different positions in the field, and none of them well. He was worth -6 Outs Above Average in right field and -8 OAA at third. In left, he was at -1 OAA. He actually generated a positive number at first, checking in with a 2 OAA. The numbers from The Fielding Bible are just as grim, with Dozier recording a whopping -21 Defensive Runs Saved between third and right. He was worth 0 DRS in the over 200 innings he played between first and left.

Combine everything together and Dozier finished 2021 with a -0.2 fWAR. He was one of only four players with a negative fWAR and…OH MY GOD!!!

Miguel Cabrera — -0.7 fWAR
Carlos Santana — -0.3 fWAR
Jorge Soler — -0.2 fWAR
Hunter Dozier — -0.2 fWAR

You could probably safely assume third base is out as an option for Dozier. The Royals have a glut of possibilities on the left side of the infield, including Adalberto Mondesi or everybody’s top prospect Bobby Witt Jr. as choices at the hot corner. It seems the Royals have never been enamored with Dozier at third anyway. He’s been deployed there mostly when the Royals don’t have any other options for the spot. As the defensive metrics tell us, it’s with good reason.

Right field would be the same. Baseball Savant graded Dozier’s jumps in the outfield as the worst in baseball. His feet per jump was likewise the worst among qualified outfielders. Would the Royals allow Dozier to be a placeholder in right? One figures that once Witt arrives in Kansas City, the odds are the Royals will slide Merrifield to right. (I’m still trying to figure out how the Royals gave Ryan O’Hearn the third-most innings in right field last summer. It’s not surprising their right field defense was the worst in the AL in 2021.)

Left field, of course, belongs to Andrew Benintendi.

First base, which was probably Dozier’s best position in 2021, figures to be the domain of Santana. Santana, as you will undoubtedly recall, had his own injury issues in the season’s second half which, like Dozier, ultimately served to torpedo his offensive numbers and his fWAR. Besides, Santana is only keeping the position warm until Nick Pratto arrives.

By process of elimination, along with, you know, actually watching the games and how Dozier plays defense, it appears his best position would be designated hitter. It’s not sexy, but it’s necessary. And it’s not a criticism of his glove work…it’s simply fact. He’s not a good defender, but his bat carries some potential.

Even on a team that will enter the season with modest expectations like the Royals, they need to cultivate the future which means playing the right players in the correct positions. Besides, this is a team that places a high value on outfield defense. While Merrifield in right wouldn’t be a Gold Glove candidate, he would certainly represent a defensive upgrade from the three-headed defensive monster that was Dozier/Soler/O’Hearn.

Dozier turned 30 last season. It’s entirely possible (or likely, even) that his 2019 season will be the pinnacle of his career. He has three years left on his contract at a minium of $21.75 million. The Royals will have to find a spot for him in the lineup and they will have to hope that, with a healthy thumb and a swing reminiscent of that ‘19 season, he will be a net positive in 2022 and beyond.