Three reasons to believe in the Kansas City Royals (long-term, at least)
The Royals will not participate in the 2019 postseason. This is not controversial. This should not upset you. The Process 2.0 is only beginning.
But here’s something else: The first bit of progress is peaking its head from underground, like a strange and metaphorical groundhog. You just need to know where to look.
Adalberto Mondesi is the shortstop and he will do things this season to make the jaws of baseball lifers drop straight to the dugout floor. Ryan O’Hearn is deployed and ready to bash right-handed pitching. Kyle Zimmer is in the bullpen. Finally. Seriously.
Each represents a different and significant strength of the Royals’ baseball operations and player development. Organizations often measure themselves with individual success stories, and here are three that the men involved will take justified pride. A year or two away from genuinely expecting to compete, these are the small victories that fill an organization with hope.
Royals officials have been fairly criticized for mistakes. The top of their last decade’s worth of drafts has produced precious little. Ian Kennedy’s contract is an anvil. The 2017 trade for Ryan Buchter, Trevor Cahill and Brandon Maurer turned out to be a lemon. The progress of baseball teams — even those talented and lucky enough to make good on the promise — is never a straight line.
The Royals are pushing, and it’s far too early to say whether it will work, but much of the optimist’s outcome could be told through Mondesi, O’Hearn and Zimmer.
Mondesi is, among other things, the illustration of the Royals’ hellbent mandate on building up the middle — shortstop, center field and catcher.
Baseball is too much of a team game to say any franchise depends entirely on one player, but the Royals’ vision of the future is full of games won by Mondesi’s rare collection of talent.
He could have signed anywhere. The sons of former All-Stars do not fall through cracks, and Mondesi toured facilities throughout the industry before becoming eligible to sign in the summer of 2011. He made a handshake deal with the Royals, but before he could sign he was offered more money by a rival club.
Rene Francisco, the Royals’ assistant general manager who oversees international scouting, often doesn’t budge in these situations. He made an exception for Mondesi. The Royals matched the larger offer. They thought Mondesi was worth it.
He was not a plug-and-play star. He grew into one of the game’s fastest players, with enough power that he hit a 437-foot home run last season, but he was also an easy out. Breaking balls below the strike zone and off the plate were often rewarded with strikeouts.
Pedro Grifol is, officially, the Royals’ quality control and catching coach. In practice, he is also something like Mondesi’s personal hitting coach. Mondesi had never really game-planned a pitcher or plate appearance before. Grifol and the Royals aimed to change that last summer, concentrating primarily on getting Mondesi to stop swinging at so-called back-foot breaking balls.
It may seem like a small thing, but the Royals view this as the difference between Mondesi having a good career and a transformational one. If he succeeds, he will be the intersection of scouting, persistence, priorities and coaching.
O’Hearn is a statistical oddity. He was hitting .232 in Omaha when the Royals called him up last July. He averaged 24 home runs across the previous three minor-league seasons but possessed no overwhelming statistical case for a call-up to the big leagues. At least, not on the surface.
The Royals believed that poor batting average and mediocre slugging percentage (.391 at the call-up) were lies. Or half-truths. They thought his excellent exit velocities and hard-hit rates indicated a potential star.
In a vacuum, this specific decision was unremarkable. Everyone tracks hard-hit rates now. But in industry conversations, the Royals are often shorthanded into a bunch of backward arithmophobes.
And while it may be true that the Royals lean more traditional in baseball’s ongoing scout-stat debate, it is also true that the size of their staff is believed to be average in the game and several of their in-house analysts have turned down opportunities to leave.
The Royals are not rewriting the world of baseball analytics, and their investment in certain technology is behind the curve. But they can speak the language. If O’Hearn succeeds, he will be an example of the Royals making bets on more than traditional scouting judgments.
Zimmer might be the best story of them all. He was a converted third baseman who rose toward the top of the draft boards in 2012. This feels cruel to point out now, but at the time, the Royals felt his athleticism and late arrival to pitching might make him less prone to injury.
You know the story since. Zimmer’s baseball existence has mostly been a mind-numbing state of constant rehab at the Royals’ training complex in Arizona. He has pitched just 259 professional innings in seven seasons.
Shoulder problems, mostly. Rehab then competing then surgery. Repeat. Pain and doubt were constants. The Royals stuck with him throughout. Never wavered. Always believed.
As much as anything else, this has always been the Royals’ push. General manager Dayton Moore sees the sport through a deeply personal lens. That can be good and bad, but it’s why players often talk so glowingly of the support. And it’s why Zimmer agreed to sign back with the Royals last summer, after what amounted to an administrative release, and then take the club’s advice to train at the Driveline Baseball facility near Seattle.
Driveline provides trainers, analytics and biomechanics experts. Indians star Trevor Bauer has been Driveline’s greatest success story. But Zimmer could co-opt the title. This was the third spring training that Royals officials thought Zimmer could make the big-league team, but the first from which he emerged both healthy and effective enough for the job.
So much of his story is still to be written. The ending may not be what the Royals hope. But if he succeeds, Kyle Zimmer will be an example of the Royals’ willingness to make the game personal.
The Royals need a lot. Their lineup is shallow, their pitching staff undermanned. Their farm system doesn’t have enough. If this push clicks, more than half the current roster will have been turned over.
But the picture is being drawn. Slowly, perhaps. But in ways that make the final product imaginable.
This story was originally published March 31, 2019 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Three reasons to believe in the Kansas City Royals (long-term, at least)."