Keep an eye on Joey Wiemer this year

An intriguing power/speed hitter

The Kansas City Royals are mostly running it back next year. Their makeup will be similar: through pitching strength, the singular talent of Bobby Witt Jr., and enough competence elsewhere on the diamond, Kansas City will be consistently competitive and try to keep games to a low score.

“Enough competence elsewhere on the diamond” will be hard to come by, however. Yes, you can probably rely on Salvador Perez, Jonathan India, and Vinnie Pasquantino to be reasonably productive at the plate, and you can rely on Kyle Isbel to provide great defense in center field. Beyond that, there are question marks everywhere.

Some good news is that the Royals will have a lot of plate appearances to give to other, hopefully better players. Last year, the Royals gave Nelson Velazquez, Adam Frazier, Garrett Hampson, Paul DeJong, Tommy Pham, and Yuli Gurriel just over 1,000 plate appearances, and of the 21 Royals who had at least one plate appearance, nine are no longer with the organization.

Now, a good chunk of those 1,000 lost PAs will ideally go to Vinnie and India, but not all will. Some will go to a backup outfielder. Enter: Joey Wiemer. Wiemer is the sort of player that in past seasons would be expected to start in center field all year because no one better was around. The Royals, however, are good, and so Wiemer will likely be a bench guy and may even start the season in Triple-A Omaha.

But the Royals acquired Wiemer for a reason, and that reason is that, even though Wiemer has underwhelmed the last few seasons, he was a Top 100 prospect as recently as 2023. Here’s what Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin had to say about Wiemer in the Fangraphs Top 100 prospect list in February 2023:

Wiemer is a power/speed freak who might bust or be a power-hitting anomaly. Wiemer has a rare size/athleticism combination and wields an elaborate swing that produces huge pull-side power. He crushes mistakes, and has 48 career bombs in about a season-and-a-half’s worth of pro games. While his peak exit velocities have long been tops among his peers, college and pro, he didn’t really start launching homers until after he was drafted, when it appears his swing and approach changed. Constant max-effort hacking often leads to lots of strikeouts, but Wiemer had mostly kept his Ks in check until 2022, when he punched out 30% of the time at Double-A Biloxi. His strikeout rate improved upon promotion to Triple-A, albeit in a smaller sample.

Look under the hood and there is cause for concern. Wiemer often swings inside pitches on the outer third of the strike zone, and his in-zone swing and miss rates are on par with the bottom handful of big league outfielders who saw at least 300 PA in 2022, among names like Joey Gallo and Christopher Morel. While not quite as mountainous as skill set-cousins Gallo or Jorge Soler, Wiemer’s size and physicality set him apart from other players, even big leaguers, and he seems likely to get to power in big league games by virtue of how much raw thump he has. He projects as a slugging five- or six-hole hitter in a typical contending lineup, with contact issues that will create some whiff-prone stretches and significant year-to-year variance.

Royals fans, I’m sure you also have picked up on a few key phrases like “power/speed freak,” “max-effort hacking,” and “elaborate swing” and have rightfully drawn comparisons from the 6’4”, 220ish lb Wiemer to the other prominent 6’4”, 220ish lb Royals outfielder in recent memory, Bubba Starling.

While broad strokes comparisons are reasonable, Wiemer has been significantly better at realizing his potential in the minors than Starling. Put it this way: when Wiemer encountered Triple-A for the first time in his age-23 season, he slashed .287/.368/.520 for a wRC+ of 132. When Starling encountered Triple-A for the first time in his age-23 season, he slashed .181/.213/.265 for a wRC+ of 21.

The swing-and-miss part of Wiemer’s game has really been present in his big league career—he’s struck out 28.5% of the time in 438 plate appearances over the last two years. The power, however, is also there, as his 13 home runs and 19 doubles indicate. You can see the extension and torque he can generate in the below video of Wiemer’s longest MLB home run from June 2023.

Additionally, Wiemer is a great defender. He’s an excellent runner who reacts quickly, takes good routes, and has the arm strength and accuracy to throw out runners. That gives him a baseline value that players like MJ Melendez just don’t have.

So, how could the Royals acquire him as a secondary piece in the Brady Singer/India trade? Well, it’s pretty simple: the chances of Wiemer putting it all together to become an effective player are rather slim. He just turned 26, and his Triple-A numbers the last two seasons have been underwhelming. There are just a lot of athletic freaks out there who never quite put it together because hitting is very hard.

Wiemer could nevertheless make an impact on the team, and frankly it’s way more interesting to see a guy like him try to smash a dong rather than seeing guys like Hampson or Frazier do whatever it is they excel at. If Wiemer ever takes another step, he might be the Royals’ best outfielder this year. Depressing? Yeah. Intriguing? Absolutely.