Reviews, Previews, and Ranks: Kansas City Royals
Introduction & Glossary Post Here
The Royals had another bad year, winning just 65 games. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a handful of interesting players for fantasy purposes here, so let’s get into it.
Pitchers
Brady Singer
Singer was borderline great in 2022, which maybe you missed!
24 GS, 3.23 ERA, 1.14 WHIP, 24.2% K%, 5.6% BB%
31.2% CSW%, 10.1% SwStr%, 8.2% Brl%, .299 xwOBA
A few things stand out
→ The 5.6 BB% is awesome, and his 18.6% K-BB% was 32nd-best in the league among pitchers with 20+ starts
→ The 10.1% SwStr% is very low (12.1% league average)
Singer’s 21.0% called strike rate was the second-highest in the league. The rest of that top five:
Adam Wainwright 21.1%
Brady Singer 21.0%
Sonny Gray 20.2%
Rich Hill 20.2%
Joe Musgrove 19.8%
I believe called strike rate to be more subject to randomness as compared to swinging-strike rate, but if we look at the top five from 2021 we see a similar list:
Adam Wainwright 21.6%
Rich Hill 20.5%
Dylan Bundy 20.4%
Brady Singer 20.0%
Lance McCullers Jr. 19.8%
So I suppose that would be a vote in his favor, we could reasonably expect Singer to go for a high called strike rate again. Other 2021 → 2022 comparisons
K%: 22.4% → 24.2%
BB%: 8.9% → 5.6%
SwStr%: 11.1% → 10.1%
CSW%: 31.0% → 31.2%
GB%: 50.9% → 49.4%
We are looking at a guy with a strikeout rate hovering around average, but a walk rate that entered elite status in 2022. Here’s the arsenal breakdown:
Here we can see why the SwStr% is so low - he throws the sinker 54% of the time and gets a below-average SwStr% with it (the league average is 7.0% for sinkers).
His whiffs come on the slider, which is a good pitch and had good numbers again in 2022 - but yeah, this wouldn’t seem like a guy who can do much better than a 24% strikeout rate - although we should mention that he’s just 26 years old.
As is the case with most younger pitchers who don’t get a ton of strikeouts, Singer was inconsistent in 2022.
Here are the pitch fx, although there’s not a ton to see.
He is 6’5’’ so he gets a lot of extension on these pitches, and his fastballs have a lot of spin - but the movement numbers are middling. Not sure how to interpret this - maybe you could say he has fastball upside with his height, he could maybe work on the four-seamer and throw it more next year which could help to up the SwStr% (fewer sinkers almost always means more whiffs) - so there’s that little angle to consider.
All-in-all, I think Singer is fine. I imagine he’ll be pretty cheap, but I don’t imagine he has a ton of upside. He will be more of a “long list” guy for me, I think.
Comps/RankArounds: Ken Waldichuk
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