Nobody expected J.J. Picollo to turn the Kansas City Royals around this quickly. However, in Picollo’s second season as vice president and general manager of the Royals, the club appears to be back-sliding.
It’s not just the 23-58 record, good for last place in the weak AL Central, and on track to be 19 games worse than the not-very-good 65-97 record of 2022. That was Picollo’s introductory season in Kansas City.
The problem is that at the season’s 81-game mark, the overall impact of Picollo’s personnel decisions has actually hurt, not helped, the Royals.
Grading the Kansas City Royals at the midway point of the 2023 season
What follows is a mid-term assessment of Picollo’s personnel decisions since the conclusion of the 2022 World Series with a particular focus on the extent to which those decisions have helped or hindered the Royals’ performance.
The standard of measurement is Wins Above Average (WAA), a variant of Wins Above Replacement (WAR). For this purpose, WAA is preferable because unlike WAR, it is zero-based. That means the sum of all the decisions made by Picollo impacting the 2023 team gives at least a good estimate of the number of games those moves have improved (or worsened) the team’s status this season.
A team’s front office impacts that team’s standing in five ways. Those five are:
1. By the impact of players it acquires from other teams via trade, purchase or waiver claim.
2. By the impact of players it surrenders to other teams in those same transactions.
3. By the impact of players it signs at free agency or extends.
4. By the impact of players it loses to free agency or releases.
5. By the impact of players it promotes from its own farm system.
Here’s how Picollo stacks up by those five yardsticks.