Royals reuinte with a reliever

Free agent lefty Will Smith returns to Kansas City on a one year deal intended to shore up the bullpen

While the baseball world was distracted tracking private jets out of Orange County and getting scooped by a player and his agent on Instagram, the Royals made a stealth free agent signing of their own on Sunday.

No, they’re not spending $700 million on a free agent. Hell, that’s a crazy decision when you think about it. Do you want a designated hitter/pitcher type or do you want a Ballpark Village? Sorry. Got distracted there for a moment.

The Royals spent 0.7 percent of Ohtanhi Dollars to secure the services of left-handed reliever Will Smith for one year. If the math is a stretch, that amounts to $5 million.

Smith, as you’ll remember, started his big league career in Kansas City with the Royals back in 2012. If you really want to jump into the Wayback Machine, the Royals acquired Smith in July of 2010 along with Sean O’Sullivan in exchange for Alberto Callaspo. Smith began his career with the Royals as a starter but shifted to the bullpen in 2013 and immediately established value as a lefty reliever, striking out 43 in 33 innings while walking just seven.

The Royals flipped Smith to Milwaukee that winter for Nori Aoki. (I mention Smith’s travels only to underscore the movement of players to ultimately build a contender. And because those names—Aoki at least—are fun to remember.)

It was in Milwaukee that Smith truly established himself as a reliever of both consistency and quality.

Smith is a fastball/slider pitcher and it’s anyone’s guess as to which pitch he will feature more in a given season. The fastball comes in around 92 MPH and that’s been consistent throughout his career. His slider is a weapon, featuring an elite chase rate.  It’s a premium offering. In fact, Smith’s Run Value per 100 on his slider was 3.9 last year, making it the sixth-most valuable slider. (Second was Cole Ragans at 4.4) Opponents hit just .120 against the Smith slider, with a paltry .213 slugging percentage.

Overall, Smith features an above-average chase rate, and above-average whiff rate and throws a first-pitch strike about 65 percent of the time, well above the league average of around 60 percent. Plenty of that is due to his slider. Here’s Smith getting some random ballplayer who just signed a $700 million contract to whiff on the pitch in a matchup last season.

Smith’s ERA last year was a gaudy 4.40, but I would discourage you from reading too much into that. He had an expected ERA of 3.28 and a FIP of 3.36. His strand rate last year was an abysmal 56 percent, well off his career average of 73 percent. I think we can safely say that that’s an outlier. If the strand rate normalizes, Smith will finish close to the FIP and xERA he posted last year. I’d be willing to wager that happens.

If there’s a red flag in Smith’s stats, it would be a strikeout rate that tumbled to a career-low last year (discounting his first season in Kansas City when he was a starter) at 8.6 K/9. While his whiff rate was in the 69th percentile last year, it was still a down year by Smith’s lofty standards. That’s something that may not correct as he will turn 35 around the All-Star break next year.

In his younger days, Smith was much more of a ground ball pitcher. These days, the balls are going in the air. If you’d like to imagine how that relates to Statcast, in 2015 (the first season with available data) Smith’s average launch angle against was 12 degrees, which resulted in a 48 percent ground ball rate. In 2023, the average hitter had a 20-degree launch angle when putting the ball in play against Smith. That translated to a 31 percent ground ball rate, good only for the fourth percentile of pitchers.

That’s not a welcoming trend for any pitcher, but it can be made more palatable by changing their home address to One Royal Way. According to StatCast, over the last three seasons, Kauffman Stadium is the 25th most difficult park to hit a home run. It’s a good place to hit. It’s just not a good place to hit home runs. If a flyball pitcher is looking for a new home, you can’t do much better than The K. He’ll just need to avoid those gaps.

It’s fun to note that Smith has played for the last three World Championship teams, winning rings with the Braves in ‘21, the Astros in 2022 and the Rangers last October. Although he didn’t join the postseason roster for the Astros until the World Series and didn’t pitch in that series, it still counts. He also didn’t have the best time in the Rangers’ ALCS win over those Astros and then in the World Series against the Diamondbacks. But flags fly forever and in Smith’s case, a ring is a ring is a ring.

In a position known for volatility in extremis, Smith has been remarkably consistent over the years. He’s as reliable as a left-handed reliever you can find. I generally dislike throwing free agent money at a reliever, but at one year and $5 million, Smith is a worthy addition to the Royals bullpen and very much feels like an Aroldis Chapman-like signing. If Smith is in Kansas City beyond the trade deadline, that’s because the improbable has happened and the Royals are in the thick of the AL Central. The more likely outcome is Smith will be flipped to a contender. If JJ Picollo and staff can spin him into a Cole Ragans or Nelson Velázquez type addition as they did with Chapman and Jose Cuas—no small feat—this qualifies as a great signing. Smith will undoubtedly get the opportunity to close out games in Kansas City, so he will get plenty of exposure. He could be in demand at the deadline.

Another under-the-radar type of move the Royals need to be making as they try to dig out of their not-rebuild. Up next: addressing the starting pitching.