The Royals started laying the groundwork for their incredible 2024 season just five days after the last one ended.
Most teams hold their organizational meetings in January, a few weeks before spring training. But J.J. Picollo, who officially took over baseball operations at the end of 2022, didn’t want to waste time. On Oct. 8, 2023, less than a week after Kansas City finished a 106-loss season, tied for the worst in franchise history, more than 200 people in the organization met in Arizona to discuss Picollo’s vision and autopsy every nook and cranny of the team.
“Basically, if we’re going to get kicked in the teeth, it was, How can we learn from this?” said second-year pitching Brian Sweeney. “How can we grow?”
Sweeney, like manager Matt Quatraro and many others in the assembled group, hadn’t yet been in the organization a full year. Picollo’s immediate priority when he was promoted was finding a manager, filling out a field staff and trying to modernize an organization that had fallen behind. Picollo winces at the term “evaluation year”, but that’s how 2023 was often viewed, both publicly and privately: as a painful period of assessment.
Before those organizational meetings, in September, Picollo and majority team owner John Sherman had met with Bobby Witt, Jr., their young superstar. Accompanied by his father, a former big-leaguer who now represents his son, they needed to do some fact finding. What was important to Witt, Jr.? How could a small market team like Kansas City keep a potential generational talent for years to come?
It was simple. Witt, Jr. — whose father had pitched in just four playoff games over 16 seasons — wanted to win. He didn’t want to be a superstar on a bad team. Sherman got the message loud and clear, greenlighting an offseason in which the Royals spent a franchise record $109.5 million dollars on eight major-league free agents. Right before spring training, they signed Witt to the longest, most lucrative contract in franchise history, an 11-year, $288.7 million deal with options to reach $377 million.
These are the new Royals. On Friday, Kansas City clinched its first playoff spot in nearly a decade, and just its third in 37 years. The team has won nearly 30 games more than it did last year, a franchise record for year-to-year improvement.
It is the first team Picollo truly engineered. The organization underwent a significant offseason reshaping before they even signed a player, hiring a new scouting director (Brian Bridges), promoting Jim Cuthbert (director of pro personnel and strategy) and Daniel Guerrero (international scouting director) and investing in new technology.
As they turned over a third of the big-league roster, the Royals also hired six people in research and development, including Pete Berryman, who travels with the team as a major-league analyst, and a new R&D director, Christine Harris.
Picollo, who hired Quatraro from the analytically-minded Rays, wanted someone who would challenge the status quo. And Quatraro and his staff — which includes bench Paul Hoover (also from the Rays) and Sweeney (Cleveland Guardians) — made it clear last season that the Royals’ analytics needed work.
“If we were going to take a big leap in that area, it wasn’t going to be a slow trickle of add two (people) this year, add two the following year,” Picollo said. “To really integrate R&D we needed to go for growth.”
In a January Zoom call, while other organizations were just starting their meetings, each Royals department presented their ideas and a plan of attack. There were new players to discuss, new data models to integrate, new technology and ideas on how to blend improved scouting and analytics. There was an unmatched fervor heading into spring training.
This is how you change a culture from the inside out. This is how the Kansas City Royals became one of baseball’s biggest surprises.
“The guys that came in said, ‘We’re done. We don’t talk about last year,’ Quatraro said. ‘We’re here to win.’ And that was their objective right from the get go.”
While he’s struggled on the field this season, reliever Will Smith turned out to be a vital part of the team’s offseason and clubhouse culture. (Nic Antaya / Getty Images)
On December 11, the Royals signed free-agent pitcher Will Smith for the backend of their bullpen. Smith has famously been on the roster of the last three World Series champions with the Texas Rangers, Houston Astros and Atlanta Braves.
Smith wanted closing chances, and the Royals offered that opportunity. He also wanted to go for a fourth straight trophy.
“Who else are you going after?” was one of the first things the left-hander asked the Royals front office.
Smith, list in hand, started working the phone lines and selling other players on Picollo’s vision. One who got the pitch was starter Seth Lugo, who signed a two-year deal with a player option worth $45 million three days after Smith. Once they signed Lugo, who the front office had targeted because he threw strikes and would give them some veteran presence, adding starter Michael Wacha made a lot of sense. Lugo had already been in Wacha’s ear.
“I said hey, let’s go to Kansas City,” Lugo said, ‘Let’s do it.”
Wacha, another strike thrower, signed a two-year, $32 million deal on Dec. 18. Witt, Jr., who had gotten his first long-term contract offer from the Royals around that time, hadn’t signed yet but was committed: he was still making calls to potential free agents.
Smith, though, was especially relentless in his recruiting.
“I wish I could tell you that it was some stroke of genius,” Picollo said of signing Smith early enough for him to recruit for the team. “It was not.”
Smith, who has struggled to stay healthy and productive, is still crucial to the Royals even while on the injured list. He will pump guys up, or assure the young group that things will be OK, using a blend of sarcasm and brutal honesty. After the Royals stopped a seven-game losing streak in D.C. on Tuesday, a skid that put their playoff hopes in a precarious position, the 35-year-old addressed the elephant in the room, yelling, “We finally got one!”
Fellow new additions Hunter Renfroe and Adam Frazier have also received rave reviews for their roles on and off the field. Frazier was someone Royals scouts kept saying would perfectly fit their team; the worry was playing time. Picollo wondered: Would he agree to a part-time role? Frazier, part of an Orioles team swept out of the first round last year, wasn’t concerned. If he was playing well, the at-bats would be there, he told Picollo. He wanted to win.
No one in the Royals dugout embodies that sentiment more than veteran catcher and team captain Salvador Pérez, who walked into Quatraro’s office after first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino went down with a broken thumb at the end of August to offer to play more at first. Nevermind that Pérez, with 13 years behind home plate, had another All-Star season and has made significant strides in pitch framing this year. Pérez just wanted to know: Would it help the team?
“Salvy is very selfless. He grew up in an environment that he always won in the minors, then won a World Series (with the Royals in 2015),” said assistant GM Scott Sharp. “Winning is what energizes him. He never wants to take a day or an at-bat off, and that permeates.”
How do these Royals win? Pitching and defense. And it’s often the pitchers who provide the most impressive glovework.
Picollo’s top priority was to upgrade the starting pitching staff, and getting all-around athletes was important. Defense was a big area of emphasis in the October organizational meetings.
This spring, looking for a way to break up the monotony and reluctance often associated with pitchers’ fielding practice, Kansas City’s coaches developed a game. Pitchers were ranked daily and could improve their score with throws, catches, and difficult plays. Fielding errors resulted in small fines. Competition was fierce. The pot at the end of spring training went to the winner, Lugo, who gave it to the team’s clubbies.
Entering Friday, Kansas City’s pitchers boast 23 defensive runs saved, 10 more than the next closest team in baseball (Baltimore has 13.) Royals pitchers have more defensive runs saved as a unit than 15 teams’ entire defensive total. Lugo — who loves PFP work — has five defensive runs saved this season, as does Wacha. The competition is ongoing.
Even in-season, the Royals have incentivized PFP, work that often goes by the wayside once the season starts.
“We take their running out,” Sweeney said. “They don’t have to condition if they do the PFP. By making it important, the guys respond.”
It’s not just the pitching staff who can field well. The Royals’ defense is stellar, a mixture of the players they acquired and better information for defensive alignments and positioning. They entered Friday with the top defensive FanGraphs WAR and top outs above average (which measures range) in baseball. Couple that with a vastly improved starting rotation and a lineup whose strikeout percentage is the second-lowest in baseball, another intentional focal point, and you get the Royals’ recipe for success.
Kansas City starters entered Friday with 16.5 WAR (tied for 1st in MLB), 898 innings pitched (2nd) and a 3.57 ERA (3nd). They have the lowest home run to fly ball ratio in baseball, and the second-best rate of homers per nine innings (0.95).
“If we can keep the opponent to less than three runs, logically we should win that game,” Picollo said.
Three of the Royals’ top four contributors by WAR are pitchers: Lugo, Cole Ragans (who Picollo traded for midway through 2023) and Wacha. It’s a good pitching staff, often made great by the guys behind them. Shortstop Witt, Jr. — who could exceed 10 WAR this season — provides strong middle-of-the-field defense with centerfielder Kyle Isbel (who also has five DRS) and the catching tandem of Perez and Freddy Fermin.
The Royals team, for all their organizational changes, will always hammer the fundamentals: defense, running the bases — which is practiced daily at every level — and throwing strikes. Lugo and Wacha attack the zone and often will tell the younger arms to do the same. Sweeny’s mantra – get ahead early – perfectly fits their acquisitions.
Kauffman Stadium, the Royals home park, is too spacious to rely on guys who just hit home runs. For the Royals to win, they don’t need nine power hitters. They need balls in play, which they create at a better clip than anyone in baseball except the San Diego Padres. The little things, the details emphasized since October, are always showing up.
“We are constantly talking about, ‘How do we stay in motion?” Sharp said. “How do we apply pressure?”
Bobby Witt Jr.’s stellar play at shortstop has contributed to the Royals’ successful emphasis on defense. (Randy Litzinger / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
The Royals, unsure when they aggressively upgraded this winter how long they’d have Witt Jr., did exactly what they told the 24-year-old they would: Try to win.
And he’s rewarded them with one of the most impressive seasons in franchise history, with 32 homers, 45 doubles, 109 RBIs and a .332 batting average through 159 games. Witt, Jr. is the first player in baseball history to post back-to-back 30 home runs and 30 steal seasons at the age of 24. He would be the favorite for the AL MVP award if not for Yankees slugger Aaron Judge’s monster year — though you would never know it from spending a few days in the clubhouse.
“He’s the master of deflecting praise,” Sharp said. “He’s learned so much from Salvy. It’s all about the team.”
This year’s Royals team has undergone several iterations. They didn’t just add players this offseason, but again at the trade deadline and then last month on the waiver wire. They don’t play the same nine guys every night, not being a superstar-laden club.
Quatraro mixes and matches, each night a game of chess for a group of position players that uses a lot of matchups and pinch hitters. He’s relished the extra information and addition of Berryman. Sometimes Quatraro will make a move and Picollo will wonder, what the heck is he doing? But the Royals executive vice president has always tried to empower the people under him to make decisions. And, more often than not, those decisions have worked out. The Royals have been willing to push the envelope.
“How do you build sustained success and really try to turn something around really quickly? I’m going to take some risks,” said Picollo, who this summer made in-season trades for starter Michael Lorenzen, relievers Hunter Harvey and Lucas Erceg and infielder Paul DeJong. “Once the team started to respond, you don’t stop there, you keep pushing. … They earned the right for us to go out and get more. That’s the way I look at it and I hope it’s the way I look at it for however many years I do this job.”
The Royals believe their future is bright, that in two years the lineup will mature — both from current players improving and prospects moving up from the farm system – and not necessitate such an influx of free agents. That they’ll keep refining their data models and pushing to innovate in every area: scouting, development and R&D. They also are aware that windows close, injuries happen and any time you get to October, the opportunity can’t be wasted.
“I hope I represent this the right way. This game is about these players,” Picollo said. “They dedicated their entire careers to being the best in the world. Nobody wants to go through a year where you lose 100 games. I feel like there’s an obligation to the team and the fans to try as hard as you can to win.”
(Top photo of Salvador Pérez and Bobby Witt, Jr.: Jason Miller / Getty Images)
