Reader Mailbag, Vol. 1

Nick Loftin's hot start in Omaha, 3 favorite evaluation tools and KC's catching depth

Photo courtesy of AP/Paul Sancya

It may not be the dream start, but 27 games into the season, the Royals are 13-14 and coming to life after an early offensive drought. We’ve seen a buzzkill of an Opening Day, an exciting 3-1 series win over the division rival Twins, a disastrous 2-8 road trip, a much-needed sweep of the Rockies and, now, Kansas City is riding a five-game win streak with two remaining in a six-game homestand.

This stretch of baseball included ship-steadying performances from the starting rotation, primarily productive work from the key parts of the bullpen, a few TOOTBLANs¹ and the lineup coming alive against Colorado.

Anyway, you hear what I care about multiple times per week — let’s get to your thoughts and questions instead.

Quick aside before we get started: Sincerely, sincerely, sincerely, thank you for subscribing, following on socials and sending in your questions. I never dreamed I’d get to share my thoughts with more than 1,000 Royals fans combined between Substack, X and Bluesky just a few months into this venture.

You rule. (And if the feeling is mutual, I do hope you’ll share Royals Data Dugout with a friend.)

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Via @LukeRaleyFan on X

Loftin’s been a buzzy name on Royals Twitter/X. Entering play on Thursday, he was getting on base in Triple-A at an elite clip (.485 OBP) through his always-patient approach at the dish.

But my opinion of Loftin hasn’t changed. His ceiling at the Big League level is a bottom-third of the order regular — he just doesn’t hit the ball with enough authority to be much more than that. He’s a fine defender at a few positions, too, but not anywhere close to an elite glove.

Yes, the approach can play… to an extent. Give him 600 plate appearances and I fear he’d be exposed by Major League pitchers who just pound him with strikes and force him to put the ball in play.

Is he a little better than his career .229/.307/.295 slash? Maybe. Could he be the last man on the bench for a playoff-caliber team? Probably! Loftin is good organizational depth thanks to his versatility and the fact he could work a walk (hello, Cavan Biggio) but I’m not clamoring for him to get another call-up.

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Via @PetsandPucks on X

I’m going to assume saying “wins” here is cheating. (Also, make sure you’re subscribed to Jeff’s Diamond Chronicles newsletter!)

Instead, I’ll look at this through the lens of being blind to all other statistics, and wanting to evaluate the team as best as possible with just three metrics, which ones are the most insightful?

Hitting: On-base percentage. Yeah, the data nerd is tracing his roots back to Moneyball. If I can look at one stat only for hitters, show me how often they aren’t making outs.

Pitching: K-BB%. The correct answer here is probably ERA or FIP, but I wanted to get a little creative after taking the low-hanging fruit on the hitting side. When evaluating pitchers, K-BB% is one of the first things I look at since we get a two-for-one peek at their ability to generate strikeouts without doling out free passes.

Defense: Outs Above Average. This is, by far, my least confident answer. I think we have a long way to go analytically when it comes to grading defense, and you can see it in how noisy these metrics are, particularly in small samples. Just take Bobby Witt Jr. for example: He’s at +3 in Outs Above Average (Statcast) and -2 in Defensive Runs Saved (Fielding Bible). By one metric, he’s the eight-best defensive shortstop in MLB; by the other, he’s 62nd.

I’m just glad I answered this question in the light of the morning. Imagining having only three baseball stats to look at right before bed would’ve been instant nightmare fuel.

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Via Substack Subscriber @Stanton1

If you missed this article on MLB.com, it’s worth checking out. As Stanton alludes in his question, the gist is that a survey of a few baseball ops leaders concluded they’d prefer to build their teams around star catchers for a few reasons, primarily, they’re hard to find and even harder to pay for in free agency since most of them don’t age well.

I’ll let you form your own opinion on the article’s conclusions while I focus on Stanton’s takeaway and Royals-centric question regarding Freddy Fermin and maximizing their catching depth.

First, Fermin: Maybe I’m off-base here but I think a lot of Kansas Citians mistakenly envision him as a younger catcher since he’s only in his third full Big League season. Reality is, the guy turns 30 in less than a month. He’s almost certainly reached his peak as a fine backup backstop, one who’s filled a valuable role for an organization with an aging star in Salvy who needs to DH 80-100 times to save his legs.

No one is or ever will bang down the door for Fermin. He’s worth more to the Royals than he is to 29 other teams.

As far as “maximizing their return” on their top three minor league catchers — I assume Stanton is referring to Blake Mitchell, Carter Jensen and Ramon Ramirez — there’s still plenty of time for that to play out.

Mitchell is 20, in High-A and injured; Jensen is 21, striking out at a 32% clip and athletic enough to potentially play an outfield corner; Ramirez is 19 and there’s already been chatter about him moving off the position so his bat could potentially play up elsewhere (third base?). I don’t say these things to take digs at a few of Kansas City’s top prospects — I’m a huge Jensen fan, actually — but rather to make the point that we’re a long way from knowing what these guys are worth and how they’d fit on a Major League roster.

Remember, most players — and catchers in particular — aren’t breaking into the Bigs at 21 like Perez did so long ago. Having depth at that position is a feature, not a bug, and I don’t think we should be in a rush to move this guy or that guy. More often than not, these types of logjams sort themselves out.

1. Thrown Out On The Basepaths Like A Nincompoop