The Royals are in the platoon lane

It’s no secret the Royals have been shopping for outfielders this winter. They found one—well, half of one—on Thursday evening as reports are they are signing Lane Thomas to a one-year deal.

I write that Thomas is half of one outfielder the Royals are searching for because his career platoon splits are quite profound.

The right-handed hitting Thomas has done incredibly well against southpaws in his career. Hell, I’ll even say he rakes against lefties. Rakes! The wRC+ sums up the numbers nicely…Thomas is 35 percent better than the league average hitter against left-handed pitching.

The flip side of that platoon is…not so great. His career wRC+ of 84 against righties is underwhelming to say the least. On a club like the Royals where that’s been the standard in the outfield over the last couple of seasons, it’s basically unhelpful. Still, the lefty platoon split is promising and that’s why the Royals went out and got him.

Even with those extreme platoon splits, Thomas has been a full-time player. His best season came just a couple of years ago, in 2023. Playing for the Nationals, Thomas appeared in 157 games and collected 682 plate appearances. Overall, he hit .268/.315/.468 with a 109wRC+. That translated to a 2.9 fWAR.

Even in that campaign, Thomas’ splits were pronounced. He hit .331/.375/.573 with a gaudy 154 wRC+ against lefties. Thomas managed just a .242/.292/.427 mark against righties with a 92 wRC+. The dude was born to punish left-handers.

He arrives in Kansas City, late of Cleveland and a miserable 2025 season where it really didn’t matter what arm the opposing pitcher utilized. Maybe some (or most) of his struggles were due to injury. He was sidelined for a month early in the season after taking a pitch off his wrist. He last played in a game on July 4 before landing on the IL with plantar faciitis in his right foot. He underwent surgery in September and is expected to be ready for the regular season.

Defensively, Thomas can play all three outfield positions, but doesn’t play them with any kind of distinction. Statcast has his jumps and reaction times as below average on balls hit his way. He makes up for that though by running superior routes. Thomas is also quite a speedy fellow as his sprint speed is usually somewhere in the 94th percentile.

He’s generally rated as a handful of outs below average.

If you extrapolate his chances in right and center to match what he’s done in left, it appears that Thomas is a better center fielder than corner outfielder. Kind of a weird defensive profile, but I’m good to roll with the bizarre.

What JJ Picollo has done is find an incremental improvement to his currently under contstruction outfield. Thomas can platoon with Jac Cagilanone in right field. Or, he can platoon with Kyle Isbel in center, which, given the defensive metrics above, seems like that would be the ideal spot for him. He can also find some time in left, other players pending. Although Picollo has been talking about Michael Massey finding some time in left next season. Sigh.

If Thomas is strictly a platoon outfielder, I like his chances of success and the Royals will have improved their outfield. If he’s an everyday player, he’s going to need to destroy lefties like he did in 2023 to make up for his deficiencies against right-handers. That’s probably too much of an ask.

Half an outfielder down. One and a half to go.

If Thomas feels like something of a Plan B kind of signing for the Royals, that’s because their potential Plan A, Mike Yastrzemski signed with the Atlanta Braves earlier in the week. Yaz signed a two-year contract at $23 million. Ummmm…ok?

I liked Yaz on the Royals and what he brought to the team in the two months he was here. As I wrote previously, his numbers were a bit skewed by a scorching month of August and he cooled off quite a bit in September. Somehow, he parlayed that into a two-year deal for $23 million. Pardon me for writing that twice, but I still don’t believe that contract. I’m happy for Yastrzemski, but confused by what Atlanta is thinking.

The draft lottery was held at the Winter Meetings and the Royals, for the first time since the lottery started, had a winning ticket. They had just a 0.84 percent chance of landing the first pick, had the greatest odds to pick around 16th, yet pushed their way all the way to the sixth overall pick.

The last time the Royals had the sixth pick was in 2024 when they had the joint-best odds to pick first. So there’s a bit of sweet symetry for the club.

Not only should the Royals get a better player by selecting higher in the draft, they will have more money in their pool. Last year’s slot for the sixth overall pick was a cool $7,558,600. The slot for the 16th pick was $4,929,600. The slot values won’t be released for a few months, but it’s safe to assume that the Royals will net close to $2.5 million by moving up in the draft. That can be a very large deal.