You might remember this much-maligned post that tried to take a very early stab at how the Royals might do next season.  At the time, I estimated that the Royals offense would cumulatively be about 46 runs above average, and people basically thought I was some combination of crazy, stupid, and blindly optimistic.  

Well, today the Bill James projections were posted on Fangraphs, and if you add up the wRAA of the 9 projected starters (Perez, Butler, Hosmer, Gio, Escobar, Moose, Frenchy, Cain, Gordon), you get a whopping 96.3 runs above average.  Check out the projections for free on the players' Fangraphs pages.  Items like Hosmer's projected .293/.362/.494 are pretty fun.

I'm not a paying subscriber, so I can't download the spreadsheet to see how this ranks in the AL, but last year, 96.3 wRAA would have been just 5 runs behind the Tigers offense, good for 5th in the Majors.  It would also represent a 50 run improvement over the 2011 Royals offensive output, despite significant projected regression from Alex Gordon and Jeff Francoeur.  

It should be noted that the Bill James projections have a reputation for being more optimistic than other leading projections systems, but I don't have the data as to how warranted that reputation really is.  

Once the roster settles and more of the projections are published, it will be easier to get a handle on where the Royals stand for next season.  But this first data point lends support to my expectation that the projections will look rosier than many in the Royals Review community are currently expecting.

The Royals offense is pretty good at scoring runs.  The Royals are 6th in the AL in runs scored (behind big slugging teams like Boston, New York, Texas and Toronto) and 2nd in the AL Central behind only Detroit.  In fact, the Royals have scored only 17 fewer runs than the Tigers this season when averages to about a tenth of a run per game in difference between the offenses.  Based on these numbers, you might think that the Royals offense is almost as good as the Tigers offense.  You'd be wrong.

It turns out that for winning baseball games, the distribution of how you score your runs is almost as important as the total number of runs you score.  The Royals offense is built around good hitters like Billy Butler, Alex Gordon and Eric Hosmer who generate lots of singles, doubles and walks.  The Royals talent matches the Seitzer hitting profile almost perfectly--they hit for average, they show patience at the plate, and they leg out doubles and triples when they pop a ball into the gap.  This approach has put them 6th in the league in runs scored despite inexperience and a tiny payroll, but because they don't hit home runs, they need to luck into multiple good outcomes in an inning to plate runners.  When the hits clump together, they score runs in bunches, but when lady luck spreads her wealth throughout a game, the Royals struggle to score at all.

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The Royals crappy record and seemingly improved play inspired me to put together a couple tables to try to figure out how competitive they are heading into 2012.  My methods were rough by any standards, so I'll just post the tables, explain my feeble methods and duck.  The many shortcomings will be obvious.  It was just a fun exercise to get a vague sense of where the Royals stand, so feel free to blast away at any of my numbers.  I won't take it personally.

If you take the age-adjusted offensive numbers with those pitching numbers, you come up with a team that should win about 84.9 games.  For fun, if you replace Bruce Chen with Edwin Jackson, you get 86.9 wins.

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I've been thinking about putting together a series about how the Royals can catch up to the other teams in the AL Central and make the playoffs in 2012, so the first thing I wanted to do was see how close the Royals are.  In doing so, I discovered something that really surprised me:

The best run differential in the AL Central is Detroit's -4 mark.  The Royals are third in the division at -49, a mere 45 runs behind the Tigers. 

Naturally, I wanted to get a sense for how the Royals could close that gap, and the first place I looked was the starting rotation.  I figured I'd start by looking at the luck-neutral metrics for our current starters, and then I'd take out the crappiest starter and plug in someone good like CJ Wilson or Edwin Jackson and say, "Look!  This is how close we could be if we just made a big FA signing!"

Well, it turns out I never made it that far because I made a second discovery that really surprised me:

80% of the gap in run differential between the Royals and the Tigers disappears when you neutralize luck in the Royals starting rotation. 

For my luck-neutral pitching metric, I chose SIERA.  For those who aren't familiar with SIERA, it gives you a sense of what a pitcher's ERA should be if they had neutral luck with BABIP and HR/FB.  In this sense, it's very similar to xFIP, but it gives pitchers who miss a lot of bats or induce a lot of groundballs or flyballs credit for being hard to square up, and slightly lowers their expected BABIP.  It's actually slightly harder on most of the Royals starters than is xFIP.

Then I calculated how many more or fewer earned runs each pitcher would have given up were their ERA equal to their SIERA.  Here's what I found:

In other words, if these Royals starters had had neutral luck this year, they would have given up about 39 fewer runs combined, pulling them almost even with the division-leading Tigers in run differential.

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After Dutton's report that the Royals have a 100-150 AB goal for Giavotella this year, the promotion heat has cranked up yet another notch.  They've all but told us that Giavotella will be promoted by September, so what possible purpose could delaying another week or 2 serve?  

I don't know the answer to that, but what I do know is that I'll be checking Dutton's twitter daily for news of a promotion until it happens.  Really, the declaration that the promotion will come soon sets a sort of fun stage, building anticipation.  Without the Dutton report, Giavotella Day would have been a welcome relief to the futile Chris Getz Experiment, but with the added anticipation, Giavotella Day might nearly rival the excitement of Hosmas.  I'm pretty sure it will beat Moustakukah.  

So to bide our time until that Joyous Day arrives:

I must admit I've grown a little annoyed with the Francoeur bashing that's spread like wildfire as we approached and passed the trade deadline.  People are acting like he's a worthless player that got hot in April and whose true talent is a no-walk hacker that sells out for RBI without helping the team.  

I get it.  People formed their opinions on Francoeur when 'The Natural' crapped out with the Braves, and they lined up around the block to crack jokes when the young Jedi was finally reunited with his Darth Vader, Dayton Moore.  But as amusing as that narrative has been for many, it ignores a critical fact:  

Jeff Francoeur is actually good.

Now, I know what you're thinking--"Oh My God!  Small sample size!  Why don't you look at more than his fluky 2011 campaign, you moran!"  And to this, I'd counter, "Why don't you take 2011 into consideration at all?"

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Much has been made over Aaron Crow's possession or lack of a third pitch that he can use against lefties and how the quality of this third pitch might affect his chances of a successful transition to the rotation. 

Crow has a hard sinking fastball and an excellent slider, and against right-handed hitters, he throws these two pitches almost exclusively.  And to say it has worked would be an understatement--this combination makes him more or less Death itself against right-handed hitters. 

Right-handed hitters have struck out out 27.9% of the time against Crow, and when they do manage to make contact, they've feably chopped the ball into the dirt an unreal 65.1% of the time.  As those who have read Fangraph's series on SIERA will know, when a pitcher gets high strikeout rates or high groundball rates, it means that batters are struggling to square up balls, and high rates in either category will correlate with low BABIPS.  Crow has been dominant in both K% and GB% against righties, so as we might expect, right-handed hitters are batting only .206 on balls in play with a nearly comical 9.5% line drive rate. 

Right-handed hitters have been TPJ on a cold stretch against Aaron Crow.  Crow's relationship with batters that stand on the left side of the plate, however, has been another story. 

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Despite a sense around here that the Royals have no rotation for next year, some recent developments--the acquisition and success of Paulino and indications from the FO that Crow will be a starter--have given Royals fans a pretty good idea of the shape of the 2012 rotation.  

t least to start 2012, the following are likely to be in the rotation:

Felipe Paulino

Danny Duffy

Luke Hochevar

Aaron Crow

Barring injury, Paulino, Duffy and Hochevar are almost locks to make the rotation, and I'd give Crow at least a 75% likelihood.  There's an off chance that the Royals find 2 more starters they like better than Crow and don't give Crow a full shot, and there's a similarly small chance that Crow bombs so hard in spring training that they give up on him early.

So how does that rotation core look in terms of contending in 2012?  

I think Paulino and Duffy will be above-average starters in 2012 while Hochevar and Crow will likely be somewhere below average.  Meanwhile, the offense should be above-average to good (it's roughly average right now, and with every single contributor being 27 or younger, you'd expect a little improvement across the board) and the bullpen will be good.  

If you could add an ace-caliber pitcher to the rotation, the group looks very competitive.  I'd be fine with Paulino as our #2, Duffy as our #3, and Hochevar/Crow rounding out the back of the rotation.  But if you throw Chen in there instead, the rotation is again weighted toward the back end.  

So my question is:  how good of a pitcher would the Royals have to add to these four starters in order to have a good shot at winning the AL Central?

Every page you load on RR for the last month automatically uploads about 3-5 minutes of random sports highlights video, sometimes more if multiple ad sections load videos. Every time you click between stories, posts, links or refresh, that's another 5 minutes of video that you download.

A lot of people like to browse RR during breaks at work, but the amount of bandwidth these ads suck up makes that impossible for anyone whose workplace monitors bandwidth allocation.

My office condones text, audio and very limited video use during breaks, but I can't check RR anymore because if I take a few minutes to click the main page, a fanpost and a link, I've now downloaded 20 minutes of streaming video. That won't fly at my office. I've been a pretty active member of the community here, but I'll have to check out unless the ads are changed or there's a switch added to prevent the automatic download of the sports highlight videos.

Sorry for using this space to lodge a complaint, but I do think these videos are costing the site traffic.  A 15 second ad download is one thing, but 4 minute video loads that you can't prevent doesn't make sense.

It seems to me that there's a general sense around this community that the farm system was over-hyped last off-season and has disappointed.  Let's take a quick look at RR's Top 10 and how they've moved their status as prospects with their performance so far this season.

1. Wil Myers-C/OF -- Hasn't played much, but no long-term injuries.  Unchanged.

2. Eric Hosmer-1B -- Went from great AA prospect to very good MLB player almost instantly.  Big upgrade.

3. Mike Moustakas-3B -- Started slow, but numbers up to .280/.350./.500.  Good player playing well.  Unchanged.

4. Mike Montgomery-LHP  -- Has had control problems, but reports are that he still projects well.  Downgrade.

5. John Lamb--LHP -- Tommy John.  Downgrade.

6. Chris Dwyer--LHP  -- Can't throw strikes or get outs.  Still throws hard but has history of control problems.  Big downgrade.

7. Dan Duffy-LHP -- Lights out in AAA and throwing 95 MPH in Big Leagues.  Big upgrade.

8. Jake Odorizzi-RHP -- Terror of the Midwest League with 12.73 K/9 against 2.31 BB/9.  Upgrade.

9. Christian Colon-SS/2B -- Can't hit.  Big downgrade.

10. Aaron Crow-RHP  -- Went from unable to get minor league hitters out to Major League closer with sub-2.00 ERA.  Future as a starter in doubt, whether as a starter or reliever, his future seems brighter by far than it did a last fall.  Big upgrade.

So that's 3 big upgrades, 1 upgrade, 2 unchanged, 2 downgrades, and 2 big downgrades.  Of the Top 10, 4 have done better than I'd expected, 4 have look worse, and 2 haven't moved much.   Against (my) expectations, this year has actually been pretty fair.  But there are more than 10 prospects worth discussing, and I expect many will disagree with my characterizations above.  Discuss!

Whether the Royals can realistically hope to contend this year has become a hotly debated topic with the promotion of Eric Hosmer.  It seems that the general consensus of the Royals saber community is that the team, simply put, is not anywhere close to contention.  Neyer says he can't see the Royals topping the mid-70's in the win column, Scott has made it abundantly clear that he thinks the team has no shot, BP's playoff odds calculator pegs the Royals for 70 wins and a 1% shot at the playoffs, and this article at beyondtheboxscore.com suggests the Royals have been lucky to win as many games as they have so far.

Of all the respected writers I've seen give opinions on the topic, only the eternally optimistic Rany has given the Royals a puncher's chance in the division.  Obviously, I'm siding with Rany here, and my reasoning is pretty simple: the Royals offense is a lot better than it's being credited for.

To start, the Royals are 3rd in MLB in wOBA and lead the league in runs scored.  They're hitting for average, they're walking, they're hitting doubles, they're stealing bases at a high rate of success, and they're peppering in the occasional home run.  The BP playoff calculator cited above that pegs the Royals for 70 wins is using woefully outdated PECOTA projections for the Royals and for the league in general.  To reach 70 wins, the system relies on projections setting the Royals offensive slash lines to be .264/.327/.392--projected numbers that haven't been updated since March 30. Meanwhile, the Royals have hit .272/.338/.434 so far and are further upgrading their offense by replacing Kila with Hosmer.  

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This isn't a real post so much as it is a conversation topic and a request for someone more capable to dig a little deeper.

Just before the start of the regular season, Jeff wrote up a profile of Alex Gordon's career hitting tendencies.  There are reports that Gordon worked all off-season on recreating his swing to be more level and hopefully make more contact.  It's really early still, but with the reports that he's changed his swing, the different looking results, and the appearance that it might look a little different to the untrained eye, it might be worth updating that profile and comparing this season's results to his career profile.

Just looking at fangraphs, Gordon's K% is down to 20% from a career average of 25%.  If that's sustainable, I'm guessing it would add about 15-20 points to Gordon's batting average, making him a .265 to .280 hitter.  With his power and walks, it seems cutting his K% to 20% would make him a much improved player.

Diving a little deeper, his contact rate is at 80.6% compared to his career rate of 76.4%.  Given the small sample size, I'm not sure if that's statistically significant yet, but it's at least interesting.  The contact figure that most jumps of the page is his 67.7% contact rate on swings at balls outside the strike zone.  His career rate is 54.6%.  Presumably, a lot (a majority?) of Gordon's strikeouts are on missed swings at balls out of the zone, so if that improvement is sustainable, it would go a long way in reducing Gordon's K%.  Even in a small sample, I'd be surprised if that 13% jump isn't statistically significant.  I'd also love to see those contact rates broken out by splits against lefties, against whom Gordon has particularly struggled to make contact in his career. 

Maybe I'm fishing for any signs of life from Gordon, but the improved early contact rates look promising.

The MLB team is still boring.

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Even ignoring concerns about the future, it has become increasingly clear that the present Royals team would be better on the field with Guillen, Ankiel and Podsednik removed from the roster.   We have every reason to believe that, given adequate playing time, Gordon, Kila and Maier are capable of outperforming their aging counterparts on the field for the remainder of the season.  

The Royals, being the next-level thinkers that they are, realize that while cutting the aging scrubs and playing the younger guys right away would make the team better now and in the future, following the dictates of common sense would take away all of the fun guess-work for the fans.  To keep the fans intellectually invested, they've instead chosen to punt a few wins here, and delay the development of a few young players there to give us an opportunity to take part in a low*-stakes game of chance!  The name of the game is to guess how long each pointless veteran will remain on the roster blocking the path of a clearly superior younger player!

*zero

Please note that pointless veterans may be removed from the active roster by any number of means--trade, waived, outright release, or even season-ending injury.  The idea is just to guess when they will play their last game in a Royals uniform.  

Edit:  this post needed a poll.  The Royals must surely keep at least one of Guillen, Podsednik and Ankiel, or risk losing the critical intrigue of the Pointless Veteran Guessing Game.  Purging two from the roster, tho painful, would be fair game.  So the poll question will be:

What are people's thoughts on Alex's first 7 games in Omaha?  His position switch seems to have been going okay--reports haven't been glowing, but they've suggested he'll handle LF fine.  Offensively, I'm not sure whether the results have been positive or negative.  When Gordon was sent down, Moore and Hillman talked about him needing to get his timing back at the plate after missing all of spring training.  Well, their concerns about his timing seem to have basis in fact; in his the 26 ABs Gordon's accumulated so far, he's struck out a ridiculous 10 times.  That's the negative, but it's only half the story.  With a K% near 40%, it's typically hard to do anything offensively, but somehow, Gordon's overcome the strikeouts to punch up a .269/.387/.654 line for a 1.041 OPS. 

So should we be encouraged or discouraged so far?  In a very small sample size, it's such a weird data collection that you can really go either way.  Personally, I'm leaning more toward the concerned end of the spectrum.  He's only put the ball in play 16 times, and out of those, 3 of them left the ballpark for HR's.  With 3 of his 7 hits being HR's, they're not only boosting his slugging percentage, but they're also a core component of his BA and OBP.  Sure, you have to like the power, but there's no way he'll keep up that kind of HR rate, so he's going to have to figure out how to essentially halve his K%.  Hopefully, he just needs another week or two to regain his Timing, but until then, I'll be paying close attention to his K%.

Well, this team sucks, it's weirdly really old and unexciting, and even Greinke isn't as fun to watch because the team refuses to give him any help.  In short, it's clear even at the start of May that this season is every bit as lost as we thought it would be.  So instead of banging our heads against the wall about management continuing to defy common sense again and again, let's take a chance to talk about how 2011 looks like it might shake out.

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Is anyone else impressed with Getz so far?  I was pretty unexcited when the Royals acquired him (although I thought it was a good move since Teahen's usefulness with the Royals was clearly expiring) but looking again now, I think he may have been a really good pick-up.  Getz walks a good amount (projected 8% of his PA's this year which is a TON for a Royal), and he hit .299 and .302 in 2007 and 2008 in the minors.  His BA dropped down to .260 in 2009, his MLB rookie year, but his BB% and K% were pretty decent and only took small steps back from his minor league numbers.  If he can cut down on a few strikeouts and bring his BABIP back up closer to where it was in the minors, he could consistently be a .350 OBP guy.  He also had 25 SB's against only 2 CS's last year.  While an above-average OBP and good baserunning won't make him an All-Star, it would certainly make him a valuable player at 2B, and would seem to make the Teahen trade a great success when factoring in player value, salary and service time.   Is anyone else finding themselves warming up to Getz?