Royals fans must be hesitant about getting too enamored in utility man’s historic run

The Kansas City Royals have brought fans to heights they’ve yet too see this season in the past two games. Following a 15-1 beatdown of the Philadelphia Phillies on Monday, the Royals opened their midweek series versus the Mets with a thrilling 16-12 victory. That’s 31 runs in just a pair of games. At the center of it all was unlikely source in Tyler Tolbert.

Relied upon more due to injuries in the lineup, Tolbert made MLB history on Tuesday, tying the MLB record for most consecutive plate appearances with a hit at 12. After a pair of hits on Saturday, the speedster delivered back-to-back five-hit performances before his streak was finally snapped in the top of the ninth inning in Queens.

“Every at-bat, I’m just trying to do a job and execute the plan,” Tolbert said as per Bill Ladson on MLB.com. “It’s been fun.”

“It’s been a journey of a ride,” he said. “There is a lot of luck in some of those hits.”

That’s just the thing though, a lot of this seems lucky or to put it better, too good to be true. This has truly been a stretch we’ve never seen from Tolbert since he arrived in the big leagues last season.

Before this historic stretch occured, Tolbert was certainly playing like a name worthy of being sent down to the minors at a moment’s notice. In his 41 plate appearances through July 1, Tolbert was slashing just .200/.275/.200 with just a lone RBI, a 24.4% K-rate and a putrid 35 wRC+.

Add on his last 13 plate appearances in his last three games though and suddenly the script flips on it’s head entirely. Tolbert now looks like a world class hitter all of sudden with a .396/.434/.542 slash line and a 171 wRC+. That’s what happens with such a small sample size of plate appearances, one outlier stretch like this can change everything.

And his underlying metrics only prove this further. He boasts painfully low quality of contact marks with a 32.5% hard-hit rate, 5.0% barrel rate and 84.2 mph average exit velocity. This was made evident by his record-tying infield single where his speed played more of a factor than anything. He also sits below average in walk rate, whiff rate and chase rate, insinuating a lack of plate discipline.

As Jack Johnson of Locked on Royals pointed out, Tolbert may have tied the consecutive hits record with back-to-back five hit performances, but he’s also pitched twice in the past 12 days. Managers aren’t usually throwing their best offensive options out on the mound in blowouts.

Tyler Tolbert’s run has solidified that perhaps there’s a big leaguer in him after all

Now, I don’t want this article to come across as a complete hit piece against Tolbert because stretches like this may not be ones to get carried away over, but they aren’t without value. If anything, the ability to tap into nights like these only make him a more viable bench option to keep around when names like Vinnie Pasquantino, Maikel Garcia and Kyle Isbel come back from injury.

When discussing advanced metrics, while we’ve established his Baseball Savant page is nothing to behold really, there are some intriguing results that warrant sticking around on the Royals bench. We all know he’s one of the fastest names in baseball with 95th percentile sprint speed and gives off current day odes to the great Royals speedster in their World Series era, Terrance Gore.

But what’s also important to note is his expected batting average. While certainly skewed because of this run, a .282 xBA is nothing to ignore entirely. With speed like his, if he puts the ball in play, it doesn’t matter how hard it’s hit, it could very well be a base hit.

Then there’s the defense, which may not be elite anywhere, but the fact he can play any position apart from first base and catcher is incredibly valuable.

Again, perhaps Tolbert has done enough to remain a big leaguer for the foreseeable future and Royals fans can certainly be excited about the performances he’s provided in his past three games. However, reading into it too much might result in disappointment down the road. He’s a bench option at the end of the day.