The Royals need more out of Vinnie

He’s got the talent, let’s see the results

The Kansas City Royals currently hold a playoff spot in the Year of Our Lord 2024, and are on pace to win more than 90 games. Should they do so, they’ll smash the big league record for biggest year-over-year win total improvement. They are a good team, though recent play has showed that they are also a flawed team.

It’s easiest to see the flaws of a team at the bottom of the roster. In the Royals’ case, the clear flaws exist in the bullpen and in the outfield. Per Fangraphs’ version of Wins Above Replacement, Kansas City has the third-worst outfield in baseball and are in the bottom third of the league in reliever WAR.

But one other flaw this year has manifested in a place where the Royals thought they might have a strength: first base. As a first baseman, Vinnie Pasquantino—one of the Royals’ young stars and one of the most joyfully magnetic personalities in the clubhouse—ranks 22nd in wRC+ out of 34 first basemen with at least 100 plate appearances at the position.

After the Royals played their first 10 games of the year, I wrote about a few things that stuck out. One of them was that we might have to revise down expectations for Vinnie. At the time, he was going through it with a .121/.216/.121 triple slash. I wrote:

Vinnie’s 2023 ended due to shoulder surgery, which likely affected him beforehand. And it’s April now—players better than Vinnie have struggled in colder weather over a longer period of time before, and players better than Vinnie have initially struggled after missing a big chunk of time due to injury.

But I and a lot of other people have assumed he’s just going to be really good, and the fact of the matter is that he has not been on the strugglebus for a full calendar year. Maybe he’s not a 130 wRC+ true talent level player. Maybe he’s only a 110 to 115 wRC+ true talent player. We haven’t seen 2022 Vinnie for a while, is all I’m saying, and the longer it goes on the more we have to temper expectations.

It is now the middle of June and Vinnie’s slash has risen to a much more respectable .239/.313/.429. But it’s necessarily respectable by itself; it’s just better than hitting .121. And as I noted at the beginning of the season, one of the reasons why I was spooked was because last year’s campaign wasn’t great for Vinnie either.

Pasquatch has now accumulated over 500 PAs over the last two seasons where he has posted a triple slash of .243/.319/.433. That’s good for a wRC+ of 104. Overall, that’s above average. But Vinnie doesn’t just play baseball—he plays first base, where the bar for hitting is way higher. Over the last two years, the median first base production is at a 104 wRC+.

There are reasons to think positively here. First, Vinnie isn’t pulling, like, a Dom Smith (or a Nick Pratto) and hitting 20% below league average. He’s still hitting for power and getting on base a little. Second, Vinnie has turned himself into a legitimately good defensive first baseman, which helps when he’s in a slump. He’s been incredibly reliable out there.

Finally, and most importantly, his batted ball data suggest he’s just been really unlucky. Vinnie’s expected weighted on base average this year is .365, which is .45 points higher than his actual. There’s a lot of red on his Baseball Savant page, and Vinnie is still making good swing decisions.

It’s just...last year his xwOBA was also way higher than his wOBA, and he’s already one of the slowest runners in the league. At some point, you have to wonder if he’s just a player who is not going to ever reach what his swing results say that he should, because last year the same thing happened.

Kansas City is just really thin on top-end talent. They have some good talent for the first time in a long time, headlined by the phenom of Bobby Witt Jr. Unfortunately, MJ Melendez and Michael Massey and Kyle Isbel have had limited impact this year for varying reasons, Maikel Garcia has plateaued offensively, and Salvador Perez can’t continue to be the worldkiller he is right now. The Royals need more out of Vinnie. Maybe it’s as simple as those hits just starting to fall. But it’s going to be hard to reach the playoffs without him turning it up a little.