Kansas City Royals: Hunter Dozier Is 6-Years in the Making

It has been a long road for Hunter Dozier. From the first-round pick to post-hype prospect, but now the Kansas City Royals corner man is looking his best ever.

The Kansas City Royals drafted Hunter Dozier as a shortstop with the 8th overall pick back in 2013 out of Stephen F. Austin, with the expectation he could move quickly and become an impact bat.

In 2013, the Royals finished above .500 and would go on to make two World Series appearances, winning one in 2015.  But Dozier never made an impact on either of those teams as he was struggling in AA striking out a ton and having an overall wRC+ of 78.

Not what you want from a first rounder let alone a college draftee.  Dozier would eventually make it to The Show in 2016 and struggle. Then, he was sent back to the minor leagues.

He finally emerged from the minors for good in 2018 playing 102 games but being worth an abysmal -0.8 Wins Above Replacement (WAR).

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This isn’t meant to bash Dozier or to belittle the path he has taken to get to now. Instead, it’s a reminder that baseball is incredibly hard and progress is rarely linear.

Dozier, now 27, is finally performing at the big league level like the Kansas City Royals expected him to. The most exciting part of the season for Dozier and Royals fans alike might have been his walk-off laser against the Indians the other day.  The usual small sample caveats apply to Dozier as it does to any analysis right now, but there are encouraging signs that Dozier could be emerging.

So far this year, Dozier’s triple slash line is .300/.379/.580, good for a 155 wRC+ through nearly 60 plate appearances.  It’s still early, but that mark has Dozier as a top 45 hitter in baseball, tied with Marcell Ozuna and Paul DeJong.

Sometimes, early breakouts are easy to dismiss as smoke and mirrors because of unsustainable BABIP, holes in opponents defense, or just good luck.  Dozier, however, is showing signs that his improvement is real and he could by the dynamo hitter the Royals expected when they first drafted him.

Looking at Dozier’s Statcast profile provides more reason for optimism.

First of all, he is hitting the crap out of the ball with an average exit velocity of 94.1. That puts him in the same neighborhood as elite hitters like Mike Trout and J.D. Martinez, which is a good start for any hitter.

Next, Dozier is ranking in the 95th Percentile for expected slugging percentage (xSLG) at .649.  xSLG is a good metric to use because it focuses on the expected value of a batted ball instead of what actually happened, so it tells us Dozier’s hot start is more legitimate based on how he strikes the ball.

The other part about xSLG is that sprint speed is incorporated into the metric.  You might not think of 6’4″, 220 pound 3B Hunter Dozier as a speedster, especially when the Royals feature Billy Hamilton and Terrance Gore, but what if I told you that Dozier can run as fast as Lorenzo Cain?  Well, Dozier and Cain can both book it at 28.6 feet/second, which helps Dozier take extra bases.

In addition to mashing at the plate, Dozier is also showing improved plate discipline.  In 2018, Dozier struck out 28% of the time and walked 6%, which helped contribute to a batting line that was 20% below league average.

The culprit behind all those strikeouts was an out of zone swing rate of 35.6% and an overall swing rate of 50%.  Now though, Dozier is showing a much more viable 17% K rate and 10% BB rate on the heels of huge improvement in his plate discipline numbers.  Dozier is chasing out-of-the zone much less, 22%, and swinging less, 37.6%.  This refined approach at the plate is allowing Dozier to hunt for his pitch and do more damage when he does swing.

Many folks like to say “Its April” when it comes to player and team performance early in the season.  While that may be true, Hunter Dozier is playing the best he has in his career.

Are some parts of his performance unsustainable? Absolutely.  But Dozier is showing real improvement at plate discipline while hitting the ball as hard as he ever has in his career.

If he can settle in as an above average hitting 3B, who is neutral or slightly better with the glove, then the Royals will be thrilled to have another building block to go with Whit Merrifield.

Six years after being drafted Dozier is showing the promise he had when the Kansas City Royals drafted him.  Dozier is proof that improvement in baseball is never linear and you can never fully write somebody off.