Two trips to the World Series, including a championship, finally convinced the doubters that the Kansas City Royals were an elite baseball team.
Now what are we supposed to think?
All those chalk talks from the analytics crowd that used to dismiss the Royals as a statistical aberration have come back to haunt the reigning champions.
Six weeks into the season, Kansas City are just another losing team, wallowing in third place in the American League Central behind the Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians.
Seven teams in the AL have better records.
Unlike the last two years, when their hybrid formula for success served them so surprisingly well, the champs just look awkward.
It is still early, so Kansas City have time to regroup. But it already feels like a different sort of season.
“We didn’t really deal with anything like this last year,” first baseman Eric Hosmer told the Associated Press this week. “This will be a good test for us to see what we’re made of.”
What they have been made of for two years is a bit different than other winners. They built their team around defence, contact hitting and an airtight bullpen.
The bullpen is still effective, but the starters have stopped handing them leads. Newly acquired right-hander Ian Kennedy has been reliable with a 3.25 earned run average. The holdovers – especially Yordano Ventura, Chris Young and Kris Medlen – have been terrible.
The starters lead the league in all the wrong things. Young has given up the most home runs and Ventura the most walks. Medlen’s 2.05 walks-and-hits-per-inning is the worst of any pitcher with at least six starts. Young and Medlen went on the disabled list Thursday, not entirely bad news.
The vaunted defence has dropped from third in MLB to 12th in defensive efficiency rating.
And that charming offence that built rallies around singles and clutch hitting? Not so much anymore.
While statisticians insist that getting hits with runners in scoring position is more random occurrence than specific skill, Kansas City supporters always claimed their boys’ nerves were steelier when the game was on the line.
That “skill” has left them. Last year, the Royals batted .281 with runners in scoring position. This year they are at .239.
The stat geeks are not letting up. They point out that the Royals’ negative run differential (-15) is an ominous sign that they are not even as good as their 16-18 record
No doubt, Kansas City deserved their championship and earned baseball’s respect. They are a small market team that drafted wisely, built a team to fit their ballpark and rose to the top of the baseball universe without any major, high-salaried stars.
Not that they do not have All-Stars, technically. Last spring, Kansas City fans proved adept at online voting, massively clicking away to place outfielders Lorenzo Cain and Alex Gordon, shortstop Alcides Escobar and catcher Salvador Perez in the AL starting line-up.
Whether all four players were truly the best at their positions was highly debatable, but the All-Star Game was just one more thing that went remarkably well for Kansas City in 2015.
If the happy times are going to continue, however, they will have to do it the old-fashioned way – clicking again on the field of play.
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