Kansas City Royals: 3 underrated trades to improve rotation

2. Tyler Beede

Tyler Beede is another guy that could likely use a change of scenery and the Kansas City Royals could swoop in to grab him at the right time. Especially considering that it looks like the San Francisco Giants will be headed into a full rebuild this offseason with the likely departures of key members like Madison Bumgarner, Will Smith, and potentially Brandon Crawford.

Beede was the Giants’ 14th overall pick in the 2014 MLB draft and made just 2 starts last season for the team. He posted an 8.22 ERA in those starts but that’s far too small of a sample size. This year, the 26-year old made 22 starts for the team and posted a 5-10 record with a 5.08 ERA. He struck out 113 batters in 117.0 innings but allowed 22 home runs and 46 walks.

A closer look at his numbers indicates that batters were able to square him up pretty good this season with an average exit velocity of 90.8 mph and a hard-hit rate of 43.7 percent, both in the bottom 4 percent of the league.

Beede features a wicked curveball that induced a 51 percent whiff rate and 0.151 opponents’ batting average. The problem was his fastball, which batters teed off for 16 home runs and a 0.495 slugging percentage. His other plus pitch is the changeup which had 10 percent more vertical drop than the league average but yielded a 0.289 batting average. Both his changeup and slider had whiff rates of 37 and 38 percent, respectively, but batters struck the ball well when they made contact.

He’s still a young guy and this would be a perfect time for the Royals to buy low while the Giants may be potentially open to moving everyone this offseason. The nice thing about Beede is that he is under team control through the 2024 season as well.