How patient should the Royals be with MJ Melendez?

Now in his third season, the young slugger has yet to turn the corner.

The Royals have an outfield problem. Collectively, their outfielders are hitting .199/.257/.316 with just 11 home runs in 501 plate appearances. Their 61 wRC+ is the worst among all MLB outfields by a large margin.

There is plenty of blame to share for the offensive woes in the outfield. Hunter Renfroe has been a disaster just six weeks into a two-year, $13 million deal. But the size of that contract almost certainly ensures the Royals won’t cut ties with him over his slow start. Kyle Isbel has failed to hit much, but has been one of the best defensive outfielders in baseball. Nelson Velázquez has had a power outage after an impressive final two months last season, and could find himself demoted soon.

But one of the outfielders the Royals were really counting on to hit this year is MJ Melendez. And while he has made some significant strides defensively, his offense has failed to turn the corner, and has actually regressed this year. His 56 wRC+ is seventh-worst in baseball for players with at least 130 plate appearances, and he is in a horrific slump, hitting just .118 with no home runs and just one walk over his last 22 games.

Last year, analytical types could point to his hard-hit rates and his exit velocities and argue he was just running into bad luck. But nearly all of Melendez’s underlying metrics have declined this year. His exit velocity is down. His barrel percentage is down. His hard-hit rate is significantly down. He’s swinging more, missing more, and striking out more.

At the very least, Melendez seems due for a demotion to allow him to fix his swing and get a mental reset. But as we continue into his third season in the big leagues, we have to begin questioning whether MJ Melendez is really part of the future of this franchise.

Melendez had a very up-and-down minor league career. He was a promising second-round pick out of high school in 2017, and hit well in his first two seasons. But his season in Wilmington in 2019 was a disaster. He returned as an offensive force, leading the minors with 41 home runs in 2021, with much of the credit going to then-minor league hitting coordinator Alec Zumwalt, who now serves as Royals hitting coach.

He made his MLB debut in 2022, and while he hit just .217, his 18 home runs, 12.4 percent walk rate and 98 wRC+ for a catcher seemed very promising. He didn’t improve at the plate last year, although he had to deal with a transition to the outfield. His walk rate declined, his strikeout rate increased, and his offensive numbers that were fine for a catcher were well below average for an outfielder.

With Melendez under the tutelage of Zumwalt at the big league level for a second season, this was meant to be the year where he unlocked his potential. Instead, the potential remains in the vault. How long can the Royals afford to wait for him?

Out of 148 qualified hitters since 2022, Melendez ranks 141st in wRC+ and 145th in fWAR. Melendez now has 1,275 plate appearances over 317 career MLB games. Other Royals players had things figured out by the time they reached this point in their career. Bobby Witt Jr. was already on his way to stardom. Salvador Perez had already enjoyed a .300 season and Billy Butler and Eric Hosmer were on their way to a .300 season by the time they hit the 317 career-games threshold. Even Alex Gordon, who had a disappointing start to his career, had better numbers at this point than Melendez.

The argument for patience would be Mike Moustakas, who floundered for his first four seasons and was even demoted mid-season in 2014. He rewarded the Royals for their patience by becoming an All-Star and earning MVP votes in 2015, and eventually setting the club single-season home run record.

J.J. Picollo may not have the same kind of patience that Dayton Moore had. He has a team that finds itself in contention a quarter of the way into the season. With the offense in dire need of help in the outfield, the Royals may not be able to wait for Melendez to figure things out.

Melendez’s most similar batter through age 24, according to Baseball Reference, is Howard Johnson, a home run champ with the Mets. But it took a trade from the Tigers for him to become an All-Star. The Royals don’t need to get rid of Melendez at this point - he has options and perhaps he can figure things out as Moustakas did in 2014. But the Royals are no longer in evaluation mode. Players need to produce. And time is running out on MJ Melendez.