If you had one shot or one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment, would you capture it or just let it slip?
I’ve been intrigued by Drew Waters the player and his skillset since the Kansas City Royals traded the 35th pick in the 2022 draft to acquire him. Waters was considered a Top 100 prospect from 2019-2021, and even though his prospect star had dimmed by the time the Royals acquired him, I’ve found it easy to envision and dream about the type of player Waters could become if he puts it all together at the major league level. The 26 year-old is a switch-hitting outfielder with enough pop to not get the bat knocked out of his hand, along with some solid plate discipline. He’s a good athlete; Statcast had his sprint speed in the 84th percentile in 2023 and 69th percentile in 2024. He’s also a good enough outfield defender that the Royals are willing to play him in center field in the spacious outfield that is Kauffman Stadium. He’s probably a below average center fielder, but an above average corner outfielder, which the Royals happen to be in short supply of right now.
Despite all the positives you can talk yourself into with Waters, I didn’t blame the Royals at all when they started this season with Jonathan India trying his hand in left field, along with seeing if M.J. Melendez’s new swing would work and if Hunter Renfroe had anything left to give against left-handed pitching. That’s because Waters has simply not made enough contact at the major league level to indicate that he can hang with MLB level pitching. His career K% in the majors is 33.1%, with league average during that time 22.6%. His strikeout rate is high despite him posting an above average walk rate during his time with the Royals, which indicates that he has good strike zone recognition. So what’s going on with that high strikeout rate?
Waters is the anti-Maikel Garcia; he hasn’t made enough contact with the baseball. One of the main reasons why I wasn’t willing to give up on Garcia yet is because he makes a lot of contact with the baseball, which is one of the hardest things to do as a hitter. It’s pretty intuitive; if you have enough hand-eye and quick twitch ability to consistently make contact with major league pitching, than you do contain the right set of physical skills to turn into a quality major league hitter. You need more than just the ability to make contact to be a successful major league hitter, but if you were forced to look at just one stat to judge how successful a hitter will be, you can do a lot worse than contact percentage.
Unfortunately for Waters, his biggest area of weakness has been making enough contact. His career MLB contact percentage is 70.2%, while the MLB average during that time is 76.4%. He has made below average contact both on pitches inside the strike zone and on pitches outside the strike zone. The below average contact rate on pitches inside the zone in particular is a bad sign; you need to be able to punish strikes as a hitter, but you can’t do damage with a pitch that you don’t hit.
Like many hitters who end up with the Quadruple-A label, Waters can punish a fastball but has really struggled against breaking pitches. Waters’ only real chance at showing what he can do in the majors came in 2023, and he hit fastballs well, posting a .302 batting average with a .504 slugging percentage. He also wasn’t horrible against what Statcast qualifies as offspeed pitches (mainly changeups and splitfingers) during that season. Pretty much all hitters are worse against non-fastballs, but Waters showed enough life against offspeed pitches as to not look totally lost out there.
Against breaking pitches (slider, curve, sweeper, etc.), the outfielder really struggled, posting a putrid .153 batting average with a .235 slugging, good for a .218 wOBA. That’s just really bad all around. Again, nobody expects someone to be a .300/.400/.500 hitter against curveballs and sliders, those are pitches that you prefer to fight off, let go for a ball and live to face another pitch. But the reality of being a modern major leaguer is that you are going to see a lot of breaking pitches, and you have to be able to occasionally get hits against good pitches and punish hanging breaking balls.
For comparison, I went and looked at qualified players from last season who were around league average as hitters, which I think all of us would take from Waters this season if he could do it. Dansby Swanson looked similar to Waters’ profile – good plate discipline, above average strikeout rate, okay power but nothing crazy. Swanson had a 99 wRC+ last season; nothing special and a down year overall for him, but would be good progress for Waters and would earn him real playing time in the Royals outfield. Swanson had a .207 batting average with a .324 slugging against breaking balls, good for a .258 wOBA. As overall stats those aren’t good, but compared to Waters, you can see that Swanson can handle breaking pitches just enough to not get completely exposed against a good curveball or slider, which lets him survive against major league pitching.
Waters has nothing left to prove against AAA pitching – he posted a .290/.379/.494 line last year, and his strikeout rate was 26.5%. He was off to an even better start this year. If the switch-hitter could keep his strikeout rate at 26.5% in the majors, which would still be above average but no longer horribly so, he likely would make enough contact to rack up real playing time with the Royals. He also isn’t going to face the type of breaking stuff in AAA that he will see in MLB, so he needs to face pitchers in the majors to show if he’s made any improvements against high quality curveballs and sliders. In his first game at the K in 2025, he struck out twice, but did have a key single in the Royals 7th inning rally.
The catch is Drew Waters doesn’t even have to be great to earn some real playing time. He is a better defender in the corners than Melendez and Renfroe; I would feel much better about Garcia playing center field against lefties knowing that Waters would be in right. Melendez looks completely lost at the plate right now with a wRC+ of 10, while Renfroe may have doubled Melendez with a 20 wRC+, that’s not something that you brag about. India, to my amateur eyes, has looked much more comfortable at third base than in left field, so even if Melendez or Renfore magically turns things around, or if the Royals decide it’s Jac Caglianone time, there still could be a corner outfield spot up for grabs.
The Royals have postseason aspirations, and don’t have unlimited time to wait for someone to take hold of the corner outfield spots. Melendez and Renfroe have looked so bad that even just basic competence from Waters will likely earn him more playing time and a chance to figure out his trouble with the curve. With Mark Canha on the IL, this is Waters’ moment to grab a corner outfield spot and make it his. I don’t know if I’m optimistic that he will do it, but I’m ready to see someone else get a shot in the outfield.