This Royals Defensive Wizard Is Having a Good Year at the Plate
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When thinking of Michael A. Taylor, the first thing that generally comes to mind is him being an above-average center fielder who is not great with the bat. That has changed this year, however, as Taylor is putting up career-highs in just about everything. Let's look at the basic stats to begin.
Taylor's slash line on the year is .264/.340/.385 with an OPS of .725. Looking at his best year in 2017 (.271/.320/.486), he hit for a tad more average with more power. Why is this year a career year for Taylor, then? The advanced stats tell the tale of his season.
Continuing to compare 2022 to his breakout 2017 year, if we look at walk rate and strikeout rate for both years, this season is a career-high/low in both stats (10.3 BB% and 23.7 K%). In 2017, he had more of a free-swinging model with a 6.7 BB% and a 31.7 K%. Not great, but he did have a good year in 2017 nonetheless. Let's go deeper down the analytical rabbit hole.
Comparing wRC+ from both of the aforementioned years, this year is Taylor's career-high. In 2017, his wRC+ was 104 (4% above league average), but this year he has a 108 wRC+. Is this a huge spike in production? Not really, but it's still good to see. In terms of offensive runs above average — which is batting and baserunning runs combined — Taylor is at 2.1. Admittedly, that's lower than 2017 mainly due to Taylor's BsR in 2017 being 3.1. Taking out BsR for both, though, he's been as good this year as he was in 2017, with 2.0 batting runs compared to 2.1.
This year has seen Taylor go from a borderline sure-out to a solid bottom-of-the-order bat, but there are some concerns with his approach this year. For one, in true Royals fashion, he's hitting for very little power with a .120 ISO. He only has 13 extra-base hits.
The lack of power could be due to a couple of reasons. One of them is the low hard-hit% of 31.0, which is a career-low by a good amount. Another one is his league average barrel rate of 6.5% (Taylor is typically barreling the ball 7.5% of the time). The most important reason, though, is in his batted ball profile; he isn't hitting a lot of line drives (21.9%) and his under% is at 32.9. These are the key reasons for his decline in power, but they could even out as the year continues.
Via pitch tracking, Taylor has hit fastballs well at a .304 clip while slugging them at a .446 clip. He has also hit offspeed stuff well, boasting a .300 average with a .400 SLG. The issue is that these don't tell the whole tale. Let's look at run values for specific pitches.
When it comes to any fastball, Taylor is either average or below-average with one outlier. The run value for four-seam fastballs is at negative-2, on sinkers, the value is at one and on cutters, he's at three. For context, Taylor has never been able to hit four-seam fastballs in his career; his career-high in run value is four, which isn't the best. When Taylor hits any of these pitches, it doesn't actually lead to runs even when he hits them well. That's just fine compared to his paltry negative-18 run value on four-seam fastballs last year, however.
While Taylor's bat has been good, with some flaws, his defense is still obviously the best part of his game... right? Well, there's some bad news about that. Taylor is having a career-worst season in the field. He is currently at 0 Outs Above Average (OAA) while posting a 7 DRS. He also has a fielding runs above average figure of minus-2.4. Taylor still shows glimpses that he is a good defender, but it just doesn't show in the fielding stats right now.
With the trade deadline fastly approaching and the Royals looking to sell, Taylor could net a nice package from any team that needs an outfielder who is putting together a nice year at the plate as well as being on a cheap contract for this and next season. He's been a pleasure to watch with the Royals, but don't expect him to necessarily stay around much longer.
