Will I Be Able To Count On You?

...or is your love in vain?
(From "Is Your Love In Vain," Street Legal)

Is the Royals' offense sustainable?

At the beginning of this season, I think most Royals fans felt pretty good about the team's pitching. Sure, no one was happy with the presence of Horacio Ramirez and Sidney Ponson in the rotation, and most fans were wary of Kyle Farnsworth in the bullpen and the middle relief in general. But with Gil Meche and Zack Greinke at the top of the rotation and the hope that last September's Kyle Davies would show up this season, plus Joakim Soria and Juan Cruz at the back of the bullpen, there were reasons to believe the pitching could keep the Royals in the race.

That meant the pressure was on the offense to improve from last year. In 2008, the Royals finished 12th in the 14-team American League in runs scored, 12th in on-base percentage, 12th in slugging percentage and 13th in home runs. Dayton Moore gave up two solid relief pitchers to add centerfielder Coco Crisp and first baseman Mike Jacobs, hoping the former would be an improvement in the leadoff spot and the latter would add some slugging ability. There was some skepticism as to how improved the offense would be, since Jacobs only had a .299 OBP last year, about the same as noted free-swinger Jose Guillen's .300.

The Royals are 25 games into 2009. That's still a small sample size, I think. But I also think we can draw some conclusions. Or at least look at the numbers and see if there are any reasons to be optimistic about the offense.

In those 25 games, the Royals have scored 119 runs. True, about a third of that has come in the last 5 games (41 runs). But teams will have good and bad offensive stretches, just like individual players. These will even out over six months. In the first five games of the year, the Royals only scored eight runs. But 49 runs in 10 games sounds a lot better.

Anyway, the Royals are now averaging 4.76 runs per game. The league average is 5.13 runs per game, so the Royals are about 7% below average.

In 2008, the Royals scored 691 runs, an average of 4.27 per game. The league average was 4.78 runs per game, so the Royals were about 11% below average. So the Royals are doing better so far this year. Also note that the Royals are almost at last year's league average.

When I noticed that, I wondered how this year's league average compared with recent years. The answer is, so far scoring in the AL is up. Way up. AL teams are averaging 5.13 runs per game this season, an increase of 7% so far. Going back to 2000, the AL has scored 4.92 runs per game on average. Last year was the lowest RPG number since 2005. It's probably still too early to say that this year's scoring increase is permanent or what the causes may be. But it does look like the Royals still have work to do; I don't think that's a surprise to anyone.

On the other hand, the Royals have only allowed 101 runs so far (thank you, Zack Greinke!). Thus, their expected win-loss record, using the Bill James Pythagorean theorem, is 15-
10. So the Royals really haven't been a fluke. So far, they really have been a .560 win percentage team. By the way, that would be 91 wins over a full season. I don't believe the Royals are that good, especially since I don't expect the pitching to stay this good. But there are reasons to expect the offense to improve; the question is whether that will offset the pitching staff's theoretical dropoff.

Right now, the two best OPS (on-base pct. plus slugging pct.) numbers on the Royals belong to Willie Bloomquist (1.020) and Alberto Callaspo (1.001). A 1.000 OPS is considered tremendous; last year, Albert Pujols led baseball with a 1.114 OPS. Obviously, Bloomquist and Callaspo are not Pujols and are not going to sustain this for an entire year. But to me, the exciting news there is that the players the Royals are counting on to carry the offense are not the ones playing way over their heads.

Mike Aviles led the team with an .833 OPS last year; this year he's at .539. Now, it's doubtful Aviles will be as good as he was last year, but I do not believe he is this bad of a hitter. By comparison, Joey Gathright's OPS last year was .584, and he had no power whatsoever.

David DeJesus was second on the team last year at .818. This year, he's at .663. In four of the five years DeJesus has been a regular, his OPS has been above .763. I expect he will improve as well.

And so it goes. Alex Gordon had a .783 OPS last year; he was only at .507 when he got hurt. I would expect improvement there. Jacobs has a career .813 OPS; he's at .742 right now. Billy Butler has a career .752 OPS; he's at .731 right now. I think Butler has even more room for improvement--he's only 23 and should be on the upswing.

Sure, some of the important Royal hitters are doing better than you would expect--Jose Guillen and Mark Teahen, to name two. The funny thing is that Guillen hasn't even really had one of his hot streaks yet. Due to his injury, he's only played in 12 games and may just be getting back in the groove (he hit two homers last Monday and one Sunday). Guillen's average, OBP and slugging percentage are all up from last year.

One thing that has helped Guillen and the entire Royals offense is an increase in walks. KC had a pitiful walk total of 392 last year; that was last in the league by a wide margin. Enter Coco Crisp. He already has 17 walks after only drawing 35 in 118 games last year. Butler has 12 walks after getting 33 last year in 124 games. Might an understanding of the strike zone be the last step before he starts to hit at a level the Royals expect? Teahen has 10 walks compared with 46 last year in 149 games. Even better, his strikeout rate is down--he's on pace to K 90 times after 131 last year. Even free swingers like Jacobs and Guillen are on pace to have better walk totals than they did last year. As a team, the Royals have 86 walks: that's a pace for 557, which would have put them seventh in the league last year. Seventh is where they are so far this year.

It will be interesting to see if the improved plate discipline continues. I don't know if it's the work of new hitting coach Kevin Seitzer or what, but it is a good sign so far. And I think it will be a good indicator of the Royals' chances to show continued offensive improvement. In turn, that offensive improvement is what they will need to stay in the race all year. The pitching is good enough to win; the offense looks like it can be.

New Morning, New Morning

...on this new morning with you.
(From "New Morning," New Morning)

Well, I didn't intend to take a whole month off, but I ended up doing so. Of course, nothing much was happening in Royal land, and while the start of spring training is exciting to baseball geeks like me, it's not usually filled with newsworthy happenings. But now the calendar has turned to March, and things are starting to get interesting. A few thoughts on spring training so far...

• I was hoping to post something once the Royals signed Orlando Hudson, but it was such a downer when he ended up with the Dodgers, I couldn't bring myself to write about it. He would have solved the Royals' second base problem, which I believe is the team's biggest concern right now. I don't know if the Mark Teahen Second Base Experiment is over, but the early returns were not encouraging. Two errors in his first game at second, plus another double play he could have turned but didn't. And now he leaves for the World Baseball Classic (Go Team Canada, eh!), where he will probably play third base. The Royals are obviously not sold on Alberto Callaspo, since they never would have tried Teahen at second if they thought they had a starter there. My biggest fear is that Willie Bloomquist's grit and hustle will so impress Trey Hillman that "Bloomie" will be run out there 120 times at 2B this year, and his .234 average won't get him out of the lineup. The Royals are not good enough as a team offensively to be below-average anywhere on the field. You'd think the experience of having Tony Pena Jr. sinking the Royals' offense last year would have taught Hillman something. I don't expect Bloomquist to be TPJ bad, but he will in all likelihood be a drag on KC's offense.
• Speaking of offense, I spent some time recently playing with the Lineup Analysis tool at baseballmusings.com (http://www.baseballmusings.com/cgi-bin/LineupAnalysis.py). Using last year's numbers and putting Teahen at 2B, the site predicted this lineup would score 4.98 runs/game: DeJesus, Aviles, Butler, Jacobs, Gordon, Olivo, Guillen, Teahen, Crisp. Since the AL average was 4.78 R/G last year, that's a good sign. It has this lineup scoring 5.06 R/G: DeJesus, Aviles, Crisp, Jacobs, Gordon, Olivo, Guillen, Butler, Bloomquist. Now, you and I both know that a lineup with Jose Guillen batting seventh is a lineup that's going to create an angry, sulking Jose Guillen. Also, Trey Hillman is highly unlikely to bat Butler eighth or Gordon fifth. So I plugged in what I think will be the lineup: Crisp, Aviles, DeJesus, Guillen, Jacobs, Gordon, Butler, Olivo, Bloomquist. That gives the Royals 4.96 R/G.
• That makes me cautiously optimistic for 2009. Most projections I've seen have the Royals winning about 75 games again. But they also show the AL Central to be a tightly bunched division. Right now, I'd say every team can make a case for why they can win it, even the Royals. Here's my case: that 4.96 R/G on offense and the fact the Royals allowed 4.82 R/G last year. I think Brian Bannister will bounce back from his nightmarish 2008 and that should make KC's pitching a bit better. Say that offensive projection holds up (sure, some of those players' numbers will go down, but younger players like Gordon and Butler should improve). Then say KC's runs allowed goes down to 4.75 per game. That translates to 803 runs scored for the season against 770 allowed. Using the Bill James pythagorean winning percentage, that projects to an 84-78 record. I don't think the Royals will be that good, but the difference between 78-84 and 84-78 is slim. It's not hard to believe that if Gordon and/or Butler come into their own, this could be an interesting summer. Remember, the Royals aren't chasing 95-win juggernauts like Boston and Tampa Bay.
• I like the Juan Cruz signing. A lot. A guy who throws hard, gets strikeouts and doesn't give up homers. That last part is what distinguishes him from Kyle Farnsworth, who hopefully now will be pitching 6th or 7th innings, not the 8th. This is the kind of move Dayton Moore has excelled at since becoming GM: finding the power arm for the bullpen and signing them to a relatively inexpensive contract. Suddenly a bullpen of Doug Waechter, Farnsworth, Cruz, Ron Mahay, Jimmy Gobble and Joakim Soria looks pretty good. Waechter and the Farns can cover the middle innings, Gobble can face lefties in key spots (and ONLY lefties), Mahay can work the 7th, Cruz the 8th and Soria can slam the door in the 9th.
• One final thing: this story in today's Star about a survey saying the Royals rank dead last among MLB teams in popularity in their market. I have an opinion on this survey: pure crap. A sample size of 200? Seems rather small to me, although I admittedly am not a marketing person. I really question the survey since it ranks the Chiefs 25th of 32 NFL teams. Despite two solid years of crappy football, the Chiefs still draw a lot of interest (check out their TV ratings sometime). And I believe KC still cares a lot about the Royals. I was around in 2003 when the team's hot start led to a summer-long pennant race. People talked about them all summer. I am waiting and hoping for another summer like that soon.

Too Much Of Nothing

...can make a man feel ill at ease.
(From "Too Much Of Nothing," The Basement Tapes)

This is what it's like to be a Royals fan. For years, you put up with the worst baseball imaginable from a major-league franchise. All the while, you curse the big payroll teams for simply buying the most expensive players and never going through the pain of a losing season, but you do have to acknowledge that your team is run by clueless morons.

Then one day, new leadership comes in. Finally, the team looks like it has a plan. The payroll increases, the spending on scouting and draft picks increases, some of the promising young players are signed to longer deals. The team rips through the final month of the season with an 18-8 record, climbing out of last place for the first time in 5 years. As the offseason starts, the team has a wishlist of free agents that are actually intriguing. You start to dream a little: "Rafael Furcal would look great in blue! He can lead off, he walks and steals bases. And we'd be moving a shortstop to play second--what a great defense we will have!" Or maybe: "Well, Furcal might be a little expensive, but Orlando Hudson is a good solid second baseman. And Mike Aviles looked good at shortstop last year, we don't have to move him to second." Or even: "Boy, Pat Burrell would fix up this offense! And we'd never have to watch Jose Guillen play outfield again!"

But, of course, reality sets in. The Yankees spend roughly $87 billion on players. And after trading for a first baseman when they already have three players at that spot, and trading for another outfielder, and worst of all, signing an overpriced mediocre reliever, the Royals decide they don't have any money left. So instead of getting Furcal or Hudson or someone else with above-average ability to play second or short, the Royals come up with Plan B.

Willie Bloomquist.

Perhaps that was really Plan Q.

I just can't get excited about this signing. At least it's only $1.5 million a year, but still...when fans are expecting a Rafael Furcal or an Orlando Hudson and instead get the second coming of Keith Miller (seriously, check baseball-reference's similar batters), it's rather frustrating. Somehow, a competition for the starting second base job between Alberto Callaspo and Bloomquist just isn't that exciting.

To be fair, there are some good things about Bloomquist. He's cheap, as I mentioned. He can play any spot on the field (he has played everywhere except pitcher and catcher in his career). His SB/CS ratio is very good: 71/16. His addition likely is officially the end of Tony Pena Jr.'s time in KC. He did post an OBP of .377 last year, a slight upgrade from Pena's .189 mark. He's never played more than 102 games in a season, so his legs should be fresher than most guys' when the heat of August rolls around. And, much to The Amazing Michelle's chagrin, I can now make the same stupid Army of Darkness "This is my...BLOOMQUIST!" joke I have loved so much since he joined the league, even though it's really not very funny. Hey, I'm not a writer for 30 Rock, what do you want from me?

(Side note: Tina Fey, if you're reading this, I would LOVE to be a writer for 30 Rock. Call me!)

Where was I? Oh yeah, trying to convince myself to be excited about the 2009 season. One thing I know after all these years of being a Royals fan, once spring training starts in a few weeks, it will be a lot easier to get excited. But for now, this has been a disappointing offseason. Which is all part of being a Royals fan.