Last year, Vinnie Pasquantino started slowly and then eventually came around to put together a solid year. The hope was that this year, Vinnie would pick up where he left off and skip the “started slowly” part.
That did not happen. Vinnie started slowly and then he got hurt, putting an unfortunate middle step in this little dance. Fortunately, the last part has also happened, and Vinnie has put together a rather monstrous .292/.367/.611 line with nine home runs in the 31 games since he came back for good
on August 17.
But baseball is not about 30-game chunks. The Major League Baseball season is 162 games. What you do over those 162 games matters, and if Vinnie is going to struggle for large parts of the early season, that is just going to hurt his overall value. Add that to the fact that the Royals have Jac Caglianone playing out of position in right field to accommodate Vinnie and taking into account Vinnie’s rising salary, there’s reason to wonder what the best solution is for first base.
The good news is that the perfect solution for first base is right in front of the Royals’ noses and wouldn’t require any personnel changes. The bad news is that there is no way they’d do it.
Let’s cut right to the chase: the Royals should do a good old-fashioned platoon at first base next year. For those of you who might not know, a platoon is using two different players at a given position depending on whether the opposing starting pitcher is right-handed or left-handed.
Why do platoons work? That’s a difficult question, one that I asked a bunch of Royals players about earlier this year without getting a definitive answer. But platoons do work; the data on that is clear, and depending on what data you’re looking at there’s often a 30 to 80 point gap, on average, between hitting same-handed and opposite-handed pitching.
However, some players have much larger platoon splits, and Vinnie is one of them. This year, even with his slow start, he’s hit .267/.356/.458 against right-handed pitching—good for a 125 wRC+. Against lefties, he’s only hit .203/.269/.322, good for a 63 wRC+. Over the last three years, Vinnie has only had a 68 wRC+ against lefties; in his career, he’s hit lefties worse than righties every year but his short rookie season.
Of course, left-handed pitching exists, and is about 30% of all total innings in the league. Ideally, the Royals would have some other right-handed first baseman, preferably one with a large and opposite split of his own.
Enter one Salvador Perez, who is hitting .266/.314/.418 slash against left-handed pitching this year and has a .213/.254/.355 slash against right-handed pitching. That 97 wRC+ against lefties is not the greatest, of course, but it’s significantly better than Vinnie’s 63 wRC+ against lefties. In Salvy’s long career, he has hit lefties better than righties, too (although the split isn’t quite as egregious as Vinnie’s).
The Royals would get better performance out of first base, maybe even significantly better performance out of first base, by therefore using Vinnie against righties and Salvy against lefties. Salvy’s days as an effective everyday or even backup catcher are behind him. This year, he has only caught in 44 of the 149 games he’s played (and zero since August 11). He’s not getting any younger.
But while I can write about this all I want, it is abundantly clear that the Royals will not consider this. Throughout this season, the Royals have insisted Vinnie to be a core player. They’ve got his marketing and brand nailed down, and he’s a fan favorite. Meanwhile, Salvy is a Kansas City legend who the Royals are providing whatever playing time he wants even though his production outside of the odd home run has essentially stopped. To platoon Salvy and shift him out of the catcher spot? Never gonna happen.
Still, I think it’s worth talking about because these are the types of difficult decisions teams have to make to try to win baseball games. The stats don’t support both Salvy and Vinnie playing everyday against both left- and right-handed pitchers. The team’s results don’t support it, either.
To put it another way: if the Royals don’t have the budget (in prospects or free agent dollars) to get a new first baseman, aren’t willing to part with Vinnie or Salvy (or both) in a trade to make room for Jac, and aren’t willing to try something like this to squeeze the most value out of their roster, something has to give. This season, that has been “winning baseball games.” Hopefully next year will be different.
