Lineup construction is one of those things that is probably too over-emphasized. The difference between a perfectly optimized lineup and what would be a, like, purposefully unoptimized one is less than you would think.
But lineups get scrutiny because they are something that you can change. Major League Baseball managers can’t magically force their players to do better (we all know that it’s only the angels in the outfield that can perform those particular miracles). You know what big league managers can do,
though? Change stuff up, especially if it’s not going well.
And golly gee willikers, the Kansas City Royals are not doing well. They’re in a sad race with the Colorado Rockies, Los Angeles Angels, and Detroit Tigers to be the worst team in baseball. Thankfully, the team is sort of kind of no longer totally bleeding out – Kansas City has played .500 ball the month of June, which is the best you could reasonably expect from this club.
Prior to that, the Royals had perfected the art of losing a lot of games in a lot of different and exciting ways, but primarily through what I will now call “losing zen.” Kansas City could have done a lot of different things, especially in late May when the New York Yankees came into town to powerwash Kauffman Stadium’s concrete cancer facade.
Instead, the Royals kept at it, Charlie Brown-style, rolling out what functionally amounted to the aforementioned purposefully unoptimized lineup. See, the Royals had two players with some of the lowest on base percentages in baseball – Vinnie Pasquantino and Salvador Perez. Up until about a week ago, the Royals sandwiched both hitters together in the three and four spots in the lineup, right after the Maikel Garcia/Bobby Witt Jr. on base machine duo and right before Jac Caglianone and Carter Jensen’s power.
The result was a hell of a lot of absolute nothing. As of the time of this article’s posting, Salvy and Vinnie have combined for 58 total runs batted in across 577 plate appearances. Witt, who has hit immediately before them and is primarily reliant on them to drive him in, is one of 26 batters with an on base percentage north of .360 and at least 300 plate appearances; despite having by far the highest stolen base total of that group and therefore being in scoring position an awful lot, he has scored the third-fewest runs out of that group.
It’s definitely true that Salvy and Vinnie are important to the team’s offense and have proven their worth in the past. It is also definitely true that they are not physically affixed to the third and fourth spots in the lineup. But losing zen prevailed, and they remained in the key spots, and the results were predictable.
Fortunately, Royals fans have finally gotten a glimpse of what the top half of the lineup could have looked like for over a month if someone, anyone, had swallowed their pride enough to initiate some change. On June 14, with Vinnie hitting the injured list, the top of the lineup went Jensen-Witt-Caglianone-Garia. And in the third inning, something strange happened: the middle of the lineup did something, with Cags and Garcia notching key hits.
The very next day, Caglianone had a pair of hits (including a double) and Garcia had a pair of RBIs on an opposite-field single despite being down in the count 1-2.
To be fair to Vinnie, the bigger key was moving Salvy, who at this point in his career is an out-making machine, further and further lower in the lineup. It’s worked: since June 9–when the Royals bumped Salvy to the fifth spot in the lineup for only the second time all year, two games before Salvy was bumped to the sixth spot in the lineup for the first time all year–the Royals have averaged 5.1 runs a game. That’s more than the league average of 4.47 and over a full run more than their mark on the year.
What makes this so hair-pullingly frustrating is that of course moving down two on base black holes down in the order would help the team score runs! Go figure! A month ago, when the Royals still had a little playoff hopes, this change might have jumpstarted the offense. At the very least, it certainly would have signaled that the Royals acknowledged that they weren’t meeting expectations and open to trying stuff out. Losing zen won out, though, and here we are.
The other frustrating thing about this is that the Royals are not doing this by choice. Vinnie’s injury forced the Royals to use someone else in the third spot in the lineup. When Vinnie is back, I think we all know what will probably happen.
But whatever, I guess. No amount of lineup change can fix the Swiss cheese bullpen or soothe the left arms of Kris Bubic and Cole Ragans. The difference between being on a 100-loss pace and a 90-loss pace is mostly just a few spots in the 2027 draft. Still, it would have been nice to see some gumption before the season had rattled apart like a poorly built Ikea chair.
