Kansas City Royals Dynasty Sleepers, Breakouts, and Busts

Discover sleepers and breakouts from the Kansas City Royals for dynasty fantasy baseball both on the MLB and prospect side.

With dynasty season ramping up, it is time to talk about some sleepers, breakouts, and busts for each team. You can find our rankings and reports to see how we at the Dynasty Dugout value players for your dynasty leagues, but I also feel like it’s helpful to truly identify whether I believe a player can be a breakout or not. Here is where we call our shots on players, I think, require a call to action in dynasty, whether it be to buy or sell that player.

Let’s discuss some sleepers, breakouts, and busts for dynasty from the Kansas City Royals

Kansas City Royals Dynasty Sleepers, Breakouts, Busts

MLB Sleeper: Vinnie Pasquantino, 1B

I’ve been a long-time Vinnie Pasquantino enjoyer, and I think the window to buy is closing quickly. His value fell off quickly following his shoulder injury and subsequent surgical repair, partially due to his slash line tanking. It’s a bit of a mirage, however, as he was terrific through mid-May leading up to his labrum tear. The injury wasn’t abrupt — it was originally diagnosed as ‘shoulder instability’ — and my contention is that he played through it for nearly a month before he and the team acquiesced to the reality of the situation.

From opening day to May 10th, Pasquantino ran a .298/.383/.539 slash line, good for a 149 wRC+. His line cratered to .230/.320/.349 from May 10th to his eventual IL designation in June. This is the same fella who went .295/.383/.450 in 295 plate appearances the previous season and was posting stellar underlying plate discipline and batted ball data, so I feel comfortable going out on a limb and saying injury likely had something to do with his fall off.

Here’s a statistical comparison to illustrate just how good Pasquantino has been through his first 133 games:

Freddie Freeman, career: 81.5% zcon, 28.4% chase, 23.6% whiff, 11.7% barrel, 44.6% HH, 90.6 avg EV, 114.6 max EV, 14.7 LA 

Vinnie Pasquantino, career: 90.6% zcon, 29.4% chase, 16.3% whiff, 8.2% barrel, 43.8% HH, 90.3 avg EV, 112.7 max EV, 14.6 LA

Now look, I’m keenly aware that a cherry-picked comparison like this is no better than a Baseball Savant screenshot, but… those are pretty damn good numbers. He’s making ridiculous amounts of contact in the zone, hitting the hell out of the ball, and maximizing his angles.

MLB Breakout: Maikel Garcia, 3B

Garcia’s 2023 slash doesn’t necessarily make you want to fire up the trade machine or empty your pockets in FAAB – and I’m not suggesting you should – but I do think there’s a very solid all-around contributor lurking. He finished his rookie campaign with four home runs and 23 stolen bases (30 attempts) over 515 plate appearances en route to a .272/.323/.358 season.

The surface stats don’t capture how good he was at the dish. He made contact on 84% of swings in the zone, chased just 21% of pitches outside the zone, and finished 19th in all of baseball in hard-hit rate. It didn’t translate to results on the field because 48% of his batted ball events were hit on the ground, and just 4.1% of his fly balls cleared the fence, in line with the league average but wholly incongruent with his exit velocity data.

Beyond that, we’ve still seen less than a full season’s worth of plate appearances from him. His plate discipline and zone contact are already above average, which is extremely encouraging. The Royals’ lineup will ostensibly be better in 2024 with the return of Vinne Pasquantino and the addition of Hunter Renfroe. Garcia will be in the lineup every day as he’s proven himself as an elite defender at third base.

MLB Bust: Michael Wacha, SP

Wacha enjoyed his best season since 2017 in terms of WAR last year as he altered his pitch mix and kept the ball in the park a little more often than he had in years prior. The operative question is whether we’re to believe his resurgence was the result of a true skill gain and if it’s replicable in 2024, and I don’t buy that it is. The Royals paid him as though they are bullish on a repeat performance by signing him to a two-year, $32M contract.

Wacha has made a habit out of outperforming his xwOBA-against by 20 to 30 points over the last three years. What xwOBA seeks to capture is how likely a batted ball is to become a hit based on its exit velocity and launch angle, and because we know pitchers have very little control of their batted ball outcomes, it’s clear to me Wacha has been the beneficiary of good luck on balls in play. That’s a big deal for pitchers who don’t strike out as many batters (Wacha’s K% was in the 41st percentile in 2023) as there will naturally be more balls in play on a rate basis. There’s a lot of room for his results to regress.

What’s more is that Wacha’s batted ball profile is getting worse – not better – and he’s somehow getting stronger results. His groundball rate was just 35% in 2023, down from 41% in 2022 and close to 50% in 2019, and batters are doing a much better job of pulling the ball in the air against him. That it hasn't translated to gaudy results on contact is rather surprising.

Prospect Sleeper: Blake Wolters, SP

Wolters was the Royals’ second-round selection in 2023 out of Mahomet-Seymour HS in Illinois. He’s a big righty, measuring six-foot-four and 210 lbs, and has a big fastball that added a lot of velocity over the course of his senior season. It’s up to 98 mph with a ton of life at the top of the zone and grades as plus already.

He has a slider with sweep that shows promise and a changeup that will be instrumental in the development of his pitchability. He’s a high-ceiling arm, something the Royals are sorely lacking throughout their system, and he may be unfairly faded based on the lack of organizational success with this demographic in recent years.

Wolters is going behind a number of other prep right-handers and can be had for cheap in comparison. His upside rivals any high school pitcher in this class, but he’s often left out of the conversation in favor of Josh Knoth, Charlee Soto, Travis Sykora, and Zander Mueth. This isn’t my favorite cohort to target, but if you’re dead set on walking out of your FYPD with a potential blow-up arm, Wolters fits the mold.

Prospect Sleeper, part two: David Sandlin, SP

Somehow, I managed to write this entire sleeper blurb without it clicking that Sandlin is now in the Red Sox system despite focusing intently on the benefits of being in the Boston pitching development apparatus. I don’t want to delete it and have it all be for naught, so enjoy the fruits of my brainfart!

Sandlin shipped up to Boston on February 17th as the return for reliever John Schreiber in a one-for-one swap. The Royals continued in their quest to build out an effective bullpen, likely in service of trading their leverage arms to competitive teams at the deadline, while the Red Sox walked away with a high-ceiling project arm who will require some time to marinate before he’s ready for big league action.

Kansas City’s system was largely bereft of big stuff arms even before the trade. There’s an argument that Sandlin’s arsenal was the most lethal among all of their minor league arms, and he now joins a player development group that’s far more likely to capitalize on his raw ability. Craig Breslow, the new Chief Baseball Officer in Boston and former Director of Pitching for the Chicago Cubs, has prioritized shoring up the development of their pitching prospects in his first few months on the job.

Sandlin is fresh off a 2023 season that saw him toss 66.2 innings of 3.51 ERA ball with 87 strikeouts to just 16 walks. He’s a proficient (dare I say prolific) strike-thrower, landing 67% of all offerings for strikes and walking just 6.6% of batsmen faced. His fastball sits in the mid-90’s but he’s shown the ability to dial it up to 98 mph in games, though there have been reports of him up to 100 mph this off-season. He has two breaking balls, a slider and a curveball, as well as a changeup that has splitterish traits. The slider and changeup show promise, but all three of the non-fastballs need refinement. He spent time between Low-A and High-A last year and is likely to return to the latter to open 2024.

Prospect Breakout: Ramon Ramirez, C

I’m going back to the well and targeting a promising DSL standout before they head stateside. Ramirez was a bargain in the 2023 IFA class, commanding a signing bonus just north of $50K, while other high-profile names inked deals eighty or a hundred times larger. It can be difficult to parse deeper IFA targets as outlets trend toward ranking international signings based on bonus money alone, which is further exacerbated by the fact that DSL games are not televised and data can be scarce or inaccurate.

So we do the best we can with what we have. Live reports of Ramirez note projectability in his six-foot, 180 lb frame with above-average present power driven by plus bat speed. The exit velocity data we have available backs it up, too, which is important – congruence of disparate sources of information is paramount when evaluating this population. He finished his DSL season with a .344/.440/.615/1.055 line to pair with eight home runs, nine doubles, six stolen bases, and more walks than strikeouts in 41 games. We should see him at the complex to open 2024.