{"id":620574,"date":"2026-03-12T18:46:28","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T18:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/620574\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T18:46:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T18:46:28","slug":"royals-reacts-survey-out-of-left-field-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/620574\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals Reacts Survey: Out of left field"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\">Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the MLB. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Royals fans and fans across the country. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smartsurvey.co.uk\/s\/0DWS6R\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Sign up here;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Sign up here&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Sign up here<\/a> to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Spring Training is rapidly drawing to a close, and while the Royals have a variety of much more interesting options for their outfield than they had at this time last year, they don\u2019t appear to have any clear frontrunners.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Lane Thomas was the first offseason addition, but he profiles as more of a weak-side platoon hitter and pinch hitter than a starting outfielder. Additionally, he was hurt most of last year, and he has not had a particularly good Spring Training, striking out in more than half of his plate appearances so far.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Isaac Collins was acquired next, via trade with the Milwaukee Brewers, and immediately assumed the de facto starting left field role after finishing fourth in NL Rookie of the Year voting last year. Unfortunately, his batted ball metrics were subpar last year, which already gave cause for concern about his ability to replicate his rookie season, but now he has gotten a late start to Spring Training and has struck out more than 40% of the time since he started playing. Neither he nor Thomas are chasing all that much, but they\u2019re both only swinging at about half the pitches they see in the strike zone, far below the league average.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The Royals signed Starling Marte to fill out the bench last week, but he might be the most interesting option they have in left field, considering we at least haven\u2019t seen him fail yet. But there\u2019s a little more than a week of Spring Training left, and we haven\u2019t seen him take the field yet. It\u2019s hard to imagine he\u2019s going to be 100% up to speed when the season starts at this pace.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Michael Massey could be an option, but he\u2019s battling another leg injury. Jonathan India is only playing at second this year. Other potential candidates would seem to include Kameron Misner, John Rave, Drew Waters, Tyler Tolbert, and Nick Loftin. Who you got?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the MLB. Throughout the year we ask questions&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620575,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[146,5,3401,4362,16152,2161,1382,936,2123,55,2596,2595,3540,2128,59,4,15108,11152,1185,252,151,1420,4073,13490,73662,1907,4820],"class_list":["post-620574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-kansas-city-royals","tag-arizona","tag-baseball","tag-drew-waters","tag-isaac-collins","tag-john-rave","tag-jonathan-india","tag-kameron-misner","tag-kansas","tag-kansas-city","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-kansascity","tag-kansascityroyals","tag-lane-thomas","tag-michael-massey","tag-milwaukee-brewers","tag-mlb","tag-nick-loftin","tag-pinch-hitter","tag-plate-appearances","tag-royals","tag-spring-training","tag-starling-marte","tag-surprise","tag-surprise-stadium","tag-team-cuba","tag-tyler-tolbert","tag-world-baseball-classic"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116217694599030450","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}