Like many Kansas City Royals fans, if our comment section can be used as a barometer
, I was fairly confused when the Royals brought up Michael Massey for John Rave. It’s not that Rave particularly deserved to stay up; he had looked better post All-Star break after his sojourn to Florida, but also the outfielder had gone through a cold stretch and just generally looks like he’s overmatched more often than not at the major league level.For as bad as Rave has been at the plate this season, Massey has been worse.
He returned to the majors this week sporting a .479 OPS, a cool 75% below league average over his 209 plate appearances. That means the Royals got better production out of Massey at the plate than MJ Melendez (.321 OPS), but worse than Hunter Renfroe (.483 OPS) . The fact that all three of three of them started on Opening Day helps explain why the Royals offense struggled so mightily to start the year. I assumed we wouldn’t see any of them again this season, but clearly the Royals still believe in Massey as a player despite his horrible start to the year.
I was also confused by the reporting that Massey had been playing in the outfield for the Omaha Storm Chasers, and would play left field when he came back to the big league club. The Royals had tried both Massey and Jonathan India in the outfield during Spring Training, but chose Massey as the primary second baseman before he was injured and had India try his hand at left field and third base. As best as I could tell, the Royals liked Massey’s defense at second base better than India’s, and didn’t want to sacrifice up the middle defense. Certainly an understandable choice; Massey is an above average fielder at second base while India is a below average fielder.
So to have Massey play outfield now after having him be the primary second baseman to start the year didn’t make a lot of sense to me, and Massey felt a little redundant as a player. Adam Frazier hits left handed and can play second base and outfield, while Randal Grichuk and Mike Yastrzemski have made a good platoon pairing, so all of the lineup spots had better options than earlier this year. If you made me pick one player to have moving forward in a vacuum, I would pick Massey over Rave, but I figured with the Royals still needing more outfield help than infield help, Rave would make more sense on the roster.
Yet I’ve been impressed watching him play left field this week. He looks good out there, and already looks more comfortable than India ever did. He had a nice play in the first inning of Wednesday’s curb-stomping of the White Sox, chasing down a Kyle Teel line drive:
Massey also had a good sliding catch in his first game back on Monday that was both just a nice catch and took a good read to get to the ball in time:
Although we are looking at extremely small sample sizes here, particularly for defensive data, the statistics do back up what the eye test tells us; that Massey is a better defender in left field than India. We are only talking about 20 balls hit Massey’s way, but Statcast says he has a 100% success rate on those balls, and it would expect a 98% rate. India, meanwhile had a 77% success rate on defense compared to an 86% expected success rate in left. India just looked like an infielder masquerading as an outfielder, while if you told me that Massey came up as an outfielder and I didn’t know who he was than I would believe you; he just looks smooth.
On one level, I’m happy for Massey that so far he’s taking to the outfield well and he can pull something positive away from this terrible season. More defensive flexibility can only help his career. I’ll be disappointed if the Royals just hand him a starting job next season barring some Wittian September hitting run, but he could certainly slot into the Adam Frazier role of a left handed bench bat who can play both second base and outfield and get plenty of at-bats that way. The Royals seem to think highly of Massey, and I’ve only read good things about his clubhouse presence, which matters more if you are going to be in more of a bench role. He still will have to prove that the start of the year is a terrible slump and bounce back to the 2024 version of Massey at the plate, but I think the Royals want to give him that chance.
Watching Massey out in left field does make me question why the Royals tried India out there at all. It’s very clear after watching just one series of Massey in left field that he can handle the position and it didn’t take much time to see that India could not. The Royals also talked about Massey playing outfield in order to help his back issues last offseason. That talking point seemed to go away when the plan was India in the outfield, but has now returned, particularly after Massey had more back issues in the beginning of August.
Like I stated earlier, I think the Royals were trying to hide the worse defender in a corner outfield spot, which makes some sense. Years of watching Alex Gordon, however, illustrated how much value good left field defense in Kauffman Stadium can provide, so anywhere you can get competent defense has worth. India, however, was brought into solve the leadoff hitter problem from last year, so not moving him around on defense and having him focus on offense could have had theoretical benefits.
Would India be enjoying a better year at the plate if the Royals didn’t bounce him around the outfield and third base before moving him back to his most comfortable position? It’s impossible to know, and India actually has his highest wRC+ in his small sample in left field, which doesn’t support the argument I’m gesturing towards. India’s worst wRC+ is when he’s been at third base, and his second base wRC+ is higher than if you put third base and left field together. This simply could be a matter of when India was playing those positions; he struggled more at the beginning of the year and that just happened to be when he was bouncing around on defense, and those two facts are not related. There could be another variable that has some explanatory power, like India moving down in the lineup, that is concurrent with the difference in hitting when India was playing on the left side of the diamond.
Still, when I think about all the things India was juggling, new team, new city, full time role as a leadoff hitter on a team with real expectations, I think taking something off his plate such as new defensive position would have been a wise choice. Based on what we’ve seen, I imagine the Royals front office and coaching staff could tell who was the better defender in left between Massey and India. They made an informed and defensible choice, but one with the benefit of hindsight I think we can see was not the best choice they could have made to start the season with the puzzle they were trying to figure out between India, Massey and Maikel Garcia. It was also not a crazy thought to think that Massey in left, Garcia at third and India at second would be the best choice on Opening Day; that was my preferred lineup and I know others thought the same, so this outcome was at least foreseeable by people with less information than the Royals were working with.
Ultimately, where Massey and India best fit in the lineup is not likely to cost the Royals a playoff spot one way or another, or I have no way of being able to prove that the butterfly effect of switching this decision to start the year makes a difference. Still, this is almost certainly not the last time the Royals are going to move players into different defensive positions, like they’ve done with Jac Caglianone. Next time that we see them move someone like India and it doesn’t look like a good fit, I’m going to be much quicker in calling for a change. I’m sure Massey has not mastered all the nuances of outfield, but after one series I think we can see that he’s more comfortable out there and can actually help the Royals overall lineup make more sense if he can play (and hit) in left field.
