Tag Archives: Kansas City Royals

July 26, 2015

Cueto Traded

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The Royals finish a deal with the Reds for Johnny Cueto:

News broke late Saturday evening that the Reds and Royals had nearly struck a deal, and the news even traveled all the way to the visiting bullpen in Coors Field where Cueto was warming up for his scheduled start against the Colorado Rockies. That PR fiasco was slightly averted when the deal fell through due to the medicals on one of the prospects Kansas City was set to include, but fortunately for both sides, the depth in the KC farm system is such that it appears the Reds were able to find another suitable, high-caliber prospect in which they had significant interest.

Be it Sean Manaea or Kyle Zimmer – or even Brandon Finnegan – it does appear that the headline prospect Cincinnati will receive in return will be a pitcher, but that doesn’t seem to be their lone return. Rumors have swirled that Bubba Starling may also be part of the deal, in which case the Reds would be adding a long-promising OF to the return.

Stay tuned as details emerge. This move counters the Astros move for Scott Kazmir as the Royals set themselves up for a World Series win. Cueto not only replace the injured Jason Vargas, he greatly improves on that pitcher.

July 24, 2015 July 22, 2015

Cole Versus the Pen

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Jason Vargas left the Pirates game against the Royals early Tuesday night with an elbow injury. That left the Kansas City bullpen to battle one of the best pitchers in the NL Gerrit Cole. The Royals pen was up to the task, keeping the Pirates scoreless until the ninth. The group struck out 10 and walked two in 7 2/3 innings as Kansas City won 3-1.

On the other side, did the Pirates leave Cole in too long? He was working efficiently, under 100 pitches going into the eighth. He had a shutout intact. He was facing the bottom of the Royals lineup for the third time. He would have gotten the first two batters out, except for a Neil Walker error. After that, three runs scored.

Both teams have excellent bullpens. It’s tough to pull Gerrit in that situation, but once he allowed the first single and was in trouble, a fresh arm might have done the trick. Instead, Cole allows three runs, two earned, and takes the loss.

July 21, 2015

In Play Scoring

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The Pirates beat the Royals 10-7 Monday night as the teams combined for 31 hits, seven doubles, two triples and three home runs. It was a return to the 1990s. The Pirates had the game in hand early, but the Royals kept battling back to keep it close.

One of the interesting features of the game was that the Royals struck out just twice against A.J. Burnett, the only two Royals Ks in the game. This Royals offense reminds me of the 2002 Angels. The don’t walk and they don’t strike out, with the fewest in the AL in both categories. They have the second highest team BABIP in the league, so all those balls in play produce a lot of hits. It’s an effective offense, especially against teams with poor fielders.

July 15, 2015

AL Central Review

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The AL Central turned out to be quite a surprising division. The best team in the league resides here, and it’s the Royals, not the Tigers. Kansas City leads the division by 4 1/2 games, and at this point there is little competition for the division title.

Royals

The Royals have all the makings of a great team. They rank fourth in the AL in runs scored per game at 4.52 R/G, and first in the AL in runs allowed per game, 3.69 RA/G. They are good against teams with records of at least .500 (24-19) and kill the others (28-15).

My impression of the team coming into the season was one that overachieved in 2014, and that would cause them to slide in 2015. Instead, they built on that success, especially the hitters.

Drilling down a bit, the Royals have an advantage at the start and end of innings. With no one on or out, Royals pitchers allow a .216/.278/.374 slash line. They have allowed 22 home runs, but those were all solo shots. With two out and men in scoring position, they allow a .179/.271/262 slash line. The Royals defensively are good at not starting trouble, and getting out of the trouble when it occurs.

The batters do well in those situations. With none on or out, they hit .270/.319/.391 with 13 homers. With two out and RISP, they hit .295/.365/.459. They get an offensive sequence started earlier than their opponents, and they keep it rolling.

On top of all that, they are the best defensive team in the the AL in terms of UZR per 150. That allows the pitchers to post one of the lowest strike out rates in the league without getting hurt. At this point in the season, it will be tough to keep them out of the playoffs.

Twins

The Twins are pretty much an average team. They score 4.30 runs per game, just a bit above the 4.23 runs per game league average. They allow 4.04 runs per game, just below the 4.13 league average. Their UZR per 150 sits at 3.3, seventh out of 15 teams. They’re a little above average in these areas, which leads to a winning record.

The team, however, really shouldn’t be outscoring their opponents. The Twins are hitting .254/.307/.400 while the Twins pitchers allow a .269/.319/.417 line. On top of that, opponents are much better at stealing that the Twins. Minnesota base runners were successful 44 times in 75 attempts, 58.7%. Opponents stole 52 bases in 67 attempts, 77.6%. There’s nothing in the overall stat lines that indicate the Twins should be winning.

The Twins are doing well due to situational hitting. Batters post a .283/.350/.442 slash line with runners in scoring position, pitchers allow a .258/.336/.388 slash line in the same situation. It’s enough to make the difference between winning and losing.

One sign that the Twins might not regress to runs more in line with their overall numbers is that Joe Mauer is starting to pick up. Over his last 25 games Mauer posted numbers much more in line with his career standards. A second half like that would give the offense a very nice boost.

Tigers

I’ve long considered Dave Dombrowski one of the smartest general managers in baseball, but he made a huge mistake in extending the contracts of two players with no need. Both Justin Verlander and Miguel Cabrera signed contract extensions with two year left on good deals, and with injuries suffered by both players, those contracts seem excessive. If the team let Verlander play out his contract, the Tigers could have used that money to keep Max Scherzer. If they had let the Cabrera contract play out, they might have realized that he was not going into his 30s a healthy player, and signed him to a shorter term deal to keep him in uniform.

The money in those two contracts, with the players missing large swaths of the season, makes it difficult for the Tigers to correct mid-course. The offense was good in first half, third in the American League with 4.52 runs per game. It’s tough to believe they and maintain that without Cabrera.

The pitching, without a good Verlander, ranks poorly. They allowed 4.69 runs per game, second highest in the AL. A staff that was known for blowing away batters is striking out just 7.0 per nine innings, fourth lowest in the AL. Things seem to be getting worse, with a 6.16 team ERA in July.

The plan was to get Michael Ilitch a World Series trophy. Dombrowski will need to rebuild the team quickly for that to happen. I expect the Tigers to be sellers at the trade deadline, and they probably won’t make the playoffs this season.

Indians

The Indians offense appears to be trying to prove that a team can walk too much. The Indians lead the AL with 309 walks, helping them to a good .320 OBP. The problem is they don’t hit. Their 728 hits is the fourth lowest total in the AL. They also don’t hit many home runs, which would move some of those walkers home. Their 71 HR represents the third lowest total in the AL. (Despite all the walks, only 49 of their 71 homers came with men on base.) Put that all together and they score just 3.94 runs per game, fourth lowest in the AL.

With that kind of offense, the team needs good pitching and defense. They allow 4.16 runs per game just a bit above league average. That’s odd, too. They strikeout batters at the highest rate in the league, and their FIP is the lowest in the league. If they were posting the lowest ERA in the league, they might be on the winning side of .500 and in the race.

It’s a conundrum. The team shows good selectivity at the plate, but they don’t score. The pitchers blow away batters, but they don’t prevent runs. Maybe the team needs the equivalent of Joe Carter and Tommy John on the roster. I would not be surprised to see a break out in the second half, but it could also be that abilities of the players don’t mesh well with each other.

White Sox

The White Sox played seven games better than their Pythagorean projection and are still 11 games out. This is a poor team that, hard to believe, benefited from a great deal of luck so far in 2015.

The offense is dreadful, scoring just 3.40 runs per game, worst in the AL. With a .241/.294/.355 slash line, they hit the trifecta of not hitting for average, not getting on base, and not hitting for power. The same group of players owns the worst UZR/150 in the league as well. They can neither hit nor field. Nor can they run stealing just 28 bases in 51 attempts. Ugh.

The pitching isn’t that bad, but with all the balls finding holes in the defense, the White Sox ERA is well above their ERA, just like in Cleveland. The team is a hot mess that is not easily going to be fixed at the trade deadline. A winter of work that appeared to improve the team goes down the drain.

Outlook

The Tigers look like toast, the White Sox probably get worse, and the Twins are playing above their heads. Even if Cleveland can turn their strengths into runs and run prevention, 11 games is a long way to go to catch a good Royals team. I won’t be surprised if the order of finish is KC, Cleveland, Minnesota, Detroit, and Chicago, with all those teams well behind the Royals.

July 12, 2015

Slugfest of the Day

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The Blue Jays and Royals played an old-fashioned slugfest Sunday afternoon. The took and early 6-0 lead, extended it to 7-0, then blew that in one inning as the Blue Jays scored eight runs in the top of the sixth. The Royals scored three in the bottom of the inning to take a 10-8 lead, but blew that as well. Finally, Paulo Orlando‘s solo home run in the bottom of the eighth iced the 11-10 Royals win.

This was the tenth game this season with at least 21 runs scored. The highest scoring game of the season occured on April 21, when Cincinnati beat Milwaukee 16-10. There have been 14 games with at least 20 runs scored, and as you can imagine, that level is quite lower than in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Games where teams combined for at least 20 runs, 1998-2015. (30 Team Era)
Season 20 Run Games
1998 78
1999 107
2000 116
2001 69
2002 59
2003 58
2004 70
2005 69
2006 74
2007 63
2008 67
2009 59
2010 53
2011 41
2012 46
2013 33
2014 24
2015 13

The 2015 season projects to about 25 games of 20 runs or more.

July 9, 2015

Good Afternoon for the Yankees

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The Yankees beat the Athletics 6-2 Thursday afternoon as Masahiro Tanaka walked one and struck out six in 7 2/3 innings. The strikeouts came late, however, as Tanaka struck out the last two batters he faced to bring his total to six.

The Yankees extended their lead in the AL EAst as both Toronto and Tampa Bay fell. Jeff Samardzija pitched a four-hit shutout, the White Sox beating the Blue Jays 2-0. The Royals scored eight runs despite the loss of Alex Gordon to beat the Royals by five. With Boston and Baltimore idle, the Yankees lead the AL East by three games over the second place Orioles and by 5 1/2 games over last place Boston. The worst they can do is go into the All-Star break tied for first.

July 8, 2015

Cooperative Voting

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It appears the Royals and Cardinals fans are cooperating to elect two more Missouri players to the All-Star Game.

“While the Royals-Cardinals rivalry is among the best in the game, we are proud to join forces to urge fans to send a clear message that we are teams united in our commitment to ensure that the best players take the field for the All-Star Game,” said Royals president Dan Glass and Cardinals president William DeWitt III said in a joint statement.

With both teams well represented at the game already, why do they even have players on the ballot?

July 7, 2015

Slammin’ Season for the Royals

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The Royals continue to have a season where everything goes right. Ned Yost pulls an Earl Weaver and starts his backups in game one, hoping to get luck in the first game and then have his top lineup for the night cap. They did get lucky in game one as Paulo Orlando hit a walk-off grand slam for a 9-5 Royals win over the Rays. Coming in the ninth, it also caused the team to avoid extra innings.

Paulo is a first-year rookie, and that was his second home run in the majors. In the minors, his power came from his speed, as he hit 172 doubles and 63 triples in 4230 plate appearances. He did hit 65 home runs, just beating out his triples total. I suspect that in the ninth, most thought he was more likely to win the game by beating out an infield grounder.

July 5, 2015

Royals Outvoted

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The Royals ended up putting four players on the American League All-Star team:

Outfielders Alex Gordon and Lorenzo Cain join Alcides Escobar (shortstop) and Salvador Perez (catcher) as Royals reps for this year’s All-Star Game. Much was said of the potential ballot-stuffing being done by Kansas City fans, but ultimately only four players from the AL Central leaders made it to the starting lineup. Long a doormat in the AL, the Royals have more starters this season than in the previous 25 years combined.

It seems the Royals fans voted early and often, but ran out of steam at the end.

Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Josh Donaldson set a new record for all-time single-season voting with over 14 million total votes cast. Washington Nationals star Bryce Harper led all National League selections by garnering 13.9 million votes.

I can’t argue with either of those as a top vote getter. Miguel Cabrera and Giancarlo Stanton both were voted onto their league’s teams, but won’t play due to injury. I’m not sure which team I like better. Gordon, Cain, and Mike Trout gives the AL a strong outfield. The infields look pretty even. Nice to see singles hitters Dee Gordon and Jose Altuve facing off at second base. We’ll see how the rest of the players shake out.

July 1, 2015

Keuchel on Top

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Dallas Keuchel won his tenth game of the season with eight shutout innings against the Royals Tuesday night, striking out seven. That propels him past Chris Archer in Tom Tango Cy Young Tracker points. That was the sixth time this season he pitched at least six innings of shutout ball, and now owns a 17 inning scoreless streak. Houston will go for a sweep of the Royals Wednesday night after winning on Tuesday 4-0.

June 19, 2015

Too Legit to Quit

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MLB says that the voting for the Royals is valid, as they routinely throw out ballots suspected of being bogus:

Somehow, wires got crossed on Friday. Headlines popped up across the Internet, “MLB cancels over 60 million All-Star votes,” wrote one website. That was one of many.

And that was true, Bob Bowman, Major League Baseball’s president of business and media, confirmed to The Star on Friday. Baseball invalidates about 20 percent of the votes every year, and more than 300 million votes have been cast this year, the first in which the balloting is being conducted entirely online at MLB.com using email addresses.

“But no vote is being counted that was invalidated,” Bowman said.

Baseball tosses out votes from multiple email accounts using the same IP address and also cancels votes from an email account where the address might have changed by a letter.

My idea to prevent this in the future would be to have 31 precincts. When you go on to vote the first time, you would either indicate your favorite team, or indicate you would be an at large voter. The vote for each precinct would then be used as a ranked list, and the 31 precincts would be combined into a Borda count (think MVP ballot). Then fans can vote in their favorite players all they want, but no one group of fans can dominate the vote. They would be just one vote in 31. The consensus second choice would likely win (Or in the case of outfielders, the consensus top three). The vote isn’t taken away from the fans, but it would be difficult for one set of fans to dominate the vote.

May 1, 2015

Royals Flush

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The Royals blew out division rival Detroit Thursday night, winning the game 8-1. The significant thing to me is that Alex Gordon moved to the lead-off slot. That gives the Royals a line where the 1-4 batters all own OBPs over .400. In fact, the lineup used in Thursday’s game is pretty close to what the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) would construct. The one through four hitters reached base eight times by a hit or a walk, scored four runs and drove in five. The Royals take over first place in the AL Central with the win.

April 28, 2015

More for Moose

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Mike Moustakas picked up two more hits Tuesday night as the Royals pounded the Indians 11-5. To follow up on his hitting against the shift, Moustakas pulled one single on the infield, and the other he went the other way to left. He was one of five Royals hitters to collect multiple hits in the game. Mike now owns a .346/.418/.519 slash line.

April 26, 2015 April 25, 2015

Lots of Suspensions

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The Royals and White Sox saw a number of suspensions come down today:

For the Royals, pitcher Yordano Ventura received a seven-game suspension; pitcher Edinson Volquez a five-game suspension; outfielder Lorenzo Cain a two-game suspension; and pitcher Kelvin Herrera a two-game suspension. Royals manager Ned Yost indicated that his players would appeal.

…

For the White Sox, pitchers Chris Sale and Jeff Samardzija got five-game suspensions. Chicago catcher Tyler Flowers was not suspended but was fined an undisclosed amount, as were the players who got suspended.

White Sox general manager Rick Hahn said both Sale and Samardzija will appeal and make their scheduled starts next week in Baltimore.

Good. No reason to let this sort of thing get out of hand.

April 25, 2015 April 24, 2015

Emotional Pitcher

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Yordano Ventura talks about controlling his emotions after the Royals win 3-2 over the White Sox in 13 innings:

“The last three outings, my emotions have spilled over and gotten the better of me,” Ventura said. “I’m an emotional pitcher, but I need to work on controlling them. I want to do that, I certainly want to avoid the results, games ending the way [the past three] have. I want to use the emotions to pitch well, but not go over the top and have these kinds of incidents.”

But Ventura is also picking up a reputation for losing his cool on the field, and now perhaps, unavoidably, it’s on his mind.

“Yeah, I’ve thought about that, and some of my actions are certainly putting me in a less-than-favorable light, as well as the team,” Ventura said. “That’s important to me, and I need to work on it and be better.”

Ned Yost went on to say that opponents are trying to exploit this, to get Ventura out of the game.

By they way, I never thought the Royals would be the most bad ass team of 2015.

April 23, 2015

Trouble Follows the Royals

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After a rough series with Oakland, the Royals seem to keep the trouble going in Chicago:

Nerves appeared to be on edge after the White Sox’s Jose Abreu was hit in the left elbow by a Yordano Ventura pitch in the fourth inning, and the Royals’ Mike Moustakas was hit in the upper right arm by a Chris Sale pitch one inning later. Both benches were warned after Moustakas was hit.

But things didn’t get ugly until Adam Eaton hit a comebacker at Ventura in the seventh inning. Television replays appeared to show that Ventura barked an expletive at Eaton before throwing to first base for the out.

Both Eaton and Ventura were quickly restrained by umpires, but once both teams gathered on the infield, punches began flying. Jeff Samardzija lost his footing at one point in the fracas, with a dogpile quickly forming near the first-base bag.

The White Sox saw Sale and Samardzija get tossed, while the Royals lost Ventura, Lorenzo Cain and Edinson Volquez.

Abreu was Ventura’s third hit batter this season in four games. He’s walked six in 22 innings, so he’s hardly wild. The teams are going to the eleventh inning tied at two.

April 15, 2015

Hitting Royals

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Pitches hit Royals batters 12 times this season, one of them sending Alex Rios to the disabled list. Interestingly, the Royals don’t seem to think they are being head hunted:

Gordon and third baseman Mike Moustakas led the club with four hit-by-pitches heading into Wednesday night. Both are left-handed pitchers who can wield power if pitches are out over the plate. General manager Dayton Moore also speculated the proliferation of plunkings stemmed from pitchers trying to combat the bevy of Kansas City base runners.

“I think team’s are trying to pitch us inside,” Moore said. “There’s a lot of slide-stepping going on. A lot of guys are using the slide-step to try to control the running game. When that happens, pitchers tend to miss arm side.

“I don’t think anybody is necessarily throwing at us intentionally. They’re just trying to make pitches. It’s just one of those deals right now.”

Royals pitcher Danny Duffy gives us his take on missing inside:

“It’s something that’s hard to speak on, because it’s got to be policed,” Duffy said. “In the same breath, I’ve had my fair share of misses up and in, too, that I didn’t mean to throw up and in. You want to go in off the plate, you want to utilize that part of the plate, and if a ball takes off on you, it’s hard to sit there and defend it. Because you want to act like you meant to throw it there, regardless of where it went.”

So if players believe a pitcher is throwing at them, it may be because the pitcher doesn’t want the batter to think a spot was missed!

At the game between the Nationals and Red Sox, I saw five hit batters. Two of them were so low that they would have hit the dirt if they had not hit the batter. On top of that, all seemed to occur in situations where it was ludicrous to try to hit a batter. All of them just looked like pitches that got away.

April 14, 2015

The Kansas City Streaks

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The Oakland Athletics signed Billy Butler over the winter with hopes that his poor season in 2014 was bad luck, and that he would regress to his mean. So far, Butler has done that and more, one of three players to start the season with an eight game hitting streak. Butler is doing it all right now, as three of his twelve hits went for extra bases, and he also drew three walks. Nori Aoki, another part of the 2014 who made his way to the Bay area, also owns an eight-game hitting streak.

The Royals, however, are not missing either player. Of the seven players with seven game hitting streaks, four of them are Royals. Kendrys Morales, the batter who replaced Butler, is posting better numbers than the former designated hitter. Morales, Lorenzo Cain, Salvador Perez, and Alcides Escobar combined to score 29 runs and drive in 27, with 16 extra-base hits and 12 walks. The Royals scored 52 runs so far to lead the AL.

Division titles are sometimes won in April. Plenty of teams have faded from starts like this, and these four hitters will come back to earth at some point. The team made it easier for themselves the rest of the way, however. They only need to play a few games over .500 the rest of the way to stay in contention for a playoff slot.

April 12, 2015

The Power of the Crown

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The Royals beat the Angels 6-4 Saturday evening, hitting two home runs to bring their season total to eight. That is currently second in the American League. They drew four walks, giving them 15 on the season, right in the middle of the pack. The Royals finished last in both those categories in 2014. This was a team tried to eek out enough runs to win with great pitching.

I don’t know if this will hold over the season. The young players on the team are a little more mature this season. Maybe they finally figured out the offensive part of the game. Five games do not make a season, but right now the Royals are doing everything right offensively, and they are hanging with the Tigers at 5-0.

April 9, 2015 April 6, 2015

These are Not Your AL Champion Royals

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The Royals position players get the win as the White Sox fall on opening day 10-1. The Royals were last in the majors in home runs hit in 2014, but smacked two today. The team was also last in walks, but drew five today. The bullpen was known for striking out batters, but they recorded one in three innings, while Yordano Ventura picked up two. The fielders scooped up everything, the White Sox getting just four hits on 25 balls in play. Their only run came on a homer by Jose Abreu. If the Royals offense is finding their stride, they will surprise me as they compete in the AL Central.

April 3, 2015

2015 AL Central Preview

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The division previews continue with the AL Central. I try to get a handle on the wins for the core of the team. That includes the starting position players, the starting rotation, and the closer. I use a combination of the STATS, Inc. depth charts and the CBSSports depth charts, along with news stories to determine those groups. For wins, I use FanGraphs WAR from 2014, making conservative guesses for players not in the majors in 2014. As a rule of thumb, add 50 to the core WAR to get to a season win level. You can see the spreadsheet with the data here.

Detroit Tigers

  • Position Player WAR: 24.7
  • Pitcher Total: 14.4
  • Core Total: 39.1

Like the Knights of the Round Table, The Tigers position player remain formidable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfGpVcdqeS0

The may be a few chinks in the armor, however. Both Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez are coming off injuries that limited their spring appearances, and they are at an age when they are more likely to decline than improve. Jose Iglesias returns to the lineup, and his defense might make up for any offensive decline by the two big guns. I’ll be interested to see if J.D. Martinez can repeat his 2014 season, of if he was simply a batter in his prime getting seen for the first time. The 24.7 number looks good to me for this group.

The pitching looks a bit weaker than in the past, however, David Price should give them some stability, but the departure of Max Scherzer and the injuries to Justin Verlander leave the rotation less deep. The pitching staff is solid, but no longer over-powering top to bottom.

The Tigers should still be the favorites to win the division, but they have come back a bit to the competition.

Kansas City Royals

  • Position Player WAR: 17.5
  • Pitcher Total: 10.8
  • Core Total: 28.3

Do the Royals really expect to reach the playoffs again on the strength of their bullpen? In 2007, the Indians had two lights out set-up men that got the game to an okay closer. The next year, they went to serviceable and bad. Relief pitching is by definition a small sample size game. It’s easy to be great one year and terrible the next.

That’s why a team needs a good core. The Royals were weak last season at first base and designated hitter. Those are two positions where there should be abundant talent. (Remember the story of Scott Hatteberg?) Instead, the Royal leave Eric Hosmer in place and sign Kendrys Morales, who posted a -1.8 WAR as a designated hitter! I just don’t understand how they go about building a team. Winning the AL pennant and playing the Giants tough in the World Series should have given them enough money to advance the team a bit, rather than essentially standing pat. With the three other teams in the division getting better, the Royals will have a very tough time making the playoffs again.

Cleveland Indians

  • Position Player WAR: 21.4
  • Pitcher Total: 15.1
  • Core Total: 36.5

Note that unlike the Royals, the Indians did something about their first base problem. With Nick Swisher playing poorly and still injured, Cleveland picked up Brandon Moss. Moss doesn’t hit for a high average, but he gets on base and hits for power. So Swisher’s -1.6 WAR from 2014 gets replaced with Moss’s 2.5 and the Indians potentially get better by four wins!

The team does need to have Corey Kluber repeat his Cy Young season, but they managed to surround him with a solid rotation. The Indians are in a good position to give the Tigers a run for their money.

Chicago White Sox

  • Position Player WAR: 17.7
  • Pitcher Total: 16.5
  • Core Total: 34.2

The White Sox come into the season with the highest pitcher core WAR in the division. Chris Sale, Carlos Quintana, and Jeff Samardzija give them the potential for three aces. The is upside from John Danks as well.

The offense needed improvement, and Adam LaRoche and Melky Cabrera should give them a boost. True rookie Micah Johnson takes over at second, and he should be an improvement over Gordon Beckham. They don’t look as competitive as the Indians, but a little good luck will bring them close.

Minnesota Twins

  • Position Player WAR: 17.5
  • Pitcher Total: 13.0
  • Core Total: 30.5

The Twins are right with White Sox in terms of position players, but need to get better on the pitching side. The offense offers some upside potential. Joe Mauer can hit better than he did in 2014. Kennys Vargas has the potential to be a two WAR DH. I think Torii Hunter is done, but he may have a final hurrah in his original major league city. I see the 17.5 position player WAR as a floor, not a ceiling for this team.

The pitchers the team added to the rotation are solid, but not outstanding. They’ll need the offense to improve to score enough runs to keep them in games, but the Twins are definitely moving in the right direction.

Probability of winning the division:

I think this will be a good three-way race, and possibly a four-way race if things go right for the Twins.

  • Detroit Tigers: 40%
  • Cleveland Indians: 20%
  • Chicago White Sox: 18%
  • Minnesota Twins: 14%
  • Kansas City Royals: 8%

I will be very surprised if the Royals make the playoffs this season.

March 23, 2015

Team Offense, Kansas City Royals

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The 2015 series on team offense continues with the Kansas City Royals. The Royals finished fourteenth in the majors and ninth in the the American League in 2014 with 4.02 runs scored per game.

I could not find updated lineups at CBSSports.com, so I am going to use a combination of RotoChamp and USA Today. In this case, I’m going with the USA Today lineup as it looks much closer to what the Royals are using in spring training. That Ned Yost lineup is plugged into the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) using Musings Marcels as the batter projections. That information produces the following results:

Best lineup: 4.39 runs per game
Probable lineup: 4.35
Worst lineup: 4.20
Regressed lineup: 4.07

I like that the Royals take advantage of Alex Gordon‘s OBP by batting him second. The LAT does put Alcides Escobar in front of Gordon, but 9-1 instead of 1-2. The LAT and the Royals agree on three slots. Both have Lorenzo Cain batting third, Kendrys Morales batting sixth, and Mike Moustakas batting eighth. The main difference between Yost and the LAT is where to bat Alex Rios, the LAT liking him higher in the order.

The Royals do have a number of okay OBP, low slugging players, so most reasonable lineups work well. A number of hitters can be easily moved around without hurting the offense much, which means the manager can make hitters happy by batting them where they feel comfortable. Don’t look for a huge improvement in run scoring this season.

You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet.

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Previous posts in this series:

February 11, 2015

Changes, Kansas City Royals

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With major league teams going through trading frenzies this off-season, Baseball Musings takes a look at the players added by each team this off-season, continuing with the defending AL champions, the Kansas City Royals. The Royals brought in the following players from other organizations:

The Royals did more replacement than improvement. Edinson Volquez slides into the James Shields slot in the rotation. Kendrys Morales takes the Billy Butler role of designated hitter who can’t hit as well as one at the position should. The most interesting pickup was Kris Medlen, who had a great season in 2013, they lost a year to Tommy John surgery. He has the potential to improve the rotation, along with the maturation of Yordano Ventura.

The Royals basically stood pat. That’s probably not the best move for a team that was not near the best record in the league. They could easily slide five games from where they finished last season, and something as simple as signing a legitimate designated hitter could have helped quite a bit.

January 7, 2015

Rany was Wrong

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Rany on the Royals issues a mea culpa.

So I’ve cast my decision. If I’m wrong, I fully expect and welcome those of you who disagree with me now to rub it in my face. (After all, I’m sure I’ll do the same in reverse if I’m right.) Just know that if I’m wrong, no one will be happier to bear those criticisms and eat some crow as I will be.

I’ll even write these words right now, in the hopes that I can cut-and-paste them in ten months and say them with conviction:

“Dear Dayton Moore: I was wrong. You were right. You made the biggest gamble of your career last December, and I savaged you at the time, and it turns out your decision was brilliant. I was a fool. Please forgive me.

– Rany Jazayerli.”

Rany then lists the reasons he was wrong about his criticism of the Wil Myers trade. He gives eight reasons, but I would add one more:

9) Sometimes teams on the edge just get lucky.

The Royals were not a great team. They were a team with all the right junk in all the right places, and in 2014 that was enough to get them into the playoffs, where they played like the 1998 Yankees until they ran into Madison Bumgarner.

Dayton Moore got them good enough with the trade that a little luck went a long way. That’s half the job of being a decent GM.

December 17, 2014

Volquez to the Royals

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The Pirates revive another career and send a pitcher to another big contract:

Edinson Volquez, a 31-year old right-hander who went 13-7 with a 3.04 ERA in 31 starts for the Pirates in 2014, has reached an agreement on a two-year, $20 million free-agent contract with the Royals, according to reports by CBSSports.com’s Jon Heyman and Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal.

Royals general manager Dayton Moore was unavailable for comment, but an agreement would wipe out any chance of James Shields returning. Shields, the Royals’ top starter over the past two seasons, was expected to be priced out of their market, but Moore said Tuesday that the team was still looking to add an arm.

Volquez is two years younger than Shields, but Shields was the better pitcher in 2014. Still, the Royals save a lot of money over competing for James on the free agent market.

October 30, 2014

Thoughts On the World Series

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I did not find this a terribly compelling World Series. Most of the games were lopsided, and even the close games held little drama. That may be the result of having two low win teams in the World Series. Each team exploited the flaws of the other, and neither had the depth to cover their weaknesses when they reared their ugly heads.

Madison Bumgarner won the MVP. He went 2-0 with a save pitched 21 innings, allowed nine hits, one run, one walk, and struck out 17. He did not have his full velocity Wednesday night, but he was able to get the Royals to chase high fastballs, and they could not handle them.

It strikes me that Bumgarner did not really pitch under duress in the series. The Royals only had nine PA against him with runners in scoring position, and the best they could do was a walk. In game seven, it almost seemed like Bumgarner was in their heads, and if he threw the ball 75 MPH down the middle of the plate, the Royals would not have hit it.

I also wonder how many pitchers can come back on two days rest. Maybe teams could go to three man rotations, with starters going just five innings. This is a check mark in that direction. We will see if his October workload has any long-term effects on Madison.

As for game seven, I see that Jeremy Affeldt got the win. For some unknown reason, Fox announced that the official scorer said that Madison Bumgarner would get the win. While he certainly deserved it, there wasn’t a choice. Hudson did not leave the game with the lead, so whoever was on the mound when the Giants took the lead would get the win. Bumgarner did get a save, and that’s pretty cool I don’t believe there have been very many five inning saves in the history of baseball. I count 11 in the regular season since the save rule went into effect in 1969, the last on 9/3/2002.

I must admit that when the ball rolled pasted Gregor Blanco and Juan Perez slipped trying to pick it up at the fence, I thought Gordon was going to score.

The ball got by the defensive specialist anyway and rolled all the way to the wall. As left fielder Juan Perez bobbled it at the track, Gordon raced to third, where coach Mike Jirschele put up a stop sign that he might live to regret. Gordon had a chance to score and tie the game.

Kauffman Stadium is one of the best parks for legging out long extra base hits, or in this case a botched ball. It would have been a much more dramatic end to the World Series if Gordon is out at the plate. The teams had been aggressive on the base paths all night, and they picked the wrong time to be conservative. The early hit by pitch Salvador Perez took proved costly, as he could not use his legs to drive the ball after that, and he did his best Carl Yastrzemski impression to pop out to end the game.

As for the Giants dynasty, I’d be more impressed if they had been a better team overall during the last five years. They certainly don’t compare to the 1996-2000 Yankees, who not only won four World Series, but dominated the regular season as well. Still very few teams have won three championships in a five year period. The Giants play well enough to make the playoffs, and then they exploit the weaknesses of their opponents. That may be a bit of luck, but Bruce Bochy seems to be good at executing that strategy.