Earlier today, in my chat, I noticed in the queue a bizarre question about the Royals and playing video games. It got my attention and I ran a quick Google search, but I couldn’t find anything so I moved on without issuing an answer. Then, when I was all finished, I happened upon this article from Andy McCullough, and he explained what the commenter had been referring to. A quick excerpt:

When Kuntz walked inside the room, he saw a scene that had become all too familiar in recent weeks: a collection of Royals with their heads down, eyes locked on their iPads. The game was called “Clash of Clans,” and for a period of time this summer, its excessive usage by members of this club exasperated the coaching staff.

After some talks and some meetings, the Royals found themselves re-focused. They sought fewer diversions and more productive off-field activity, and as you understand, the Royals’ season turned around near the middle. Using the convenient All-Star break split, the first-half Royals were 48-46, and the second-half Royals were 41-27. The first-half Royals were 12th in baseball in WAR, and the second-half Royals were fourth. This says nothing about the eight straight playoff wins; this just touches on how the Royals reached the tournament in the first place. There’s something that seems like it clicked.

And this is one of the reasons I’m not so concerned about a wild-card team like the Royals potentially winning the World Series. So you only want good teams to be eligible for the championship. The Royals, early on, weren’t so good. But they’ve been real good for months. Arguably — very arguably — they’ve been the best team in the American League for months. Doesn’t that make them deserving potential champs? It’s been a remarkable year for Kansas City, given the midseason turnaround, and I thought it could be useful to see what drove the change in fortunes.

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Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating this offseason a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2014-15 free-agent market.

Below are links to ballots for another collection of starting pitchers — generally speaking, a healthier sort of starting pitcher than which appeared in yesterday’s edition of this same thing.

Other Players: Nori Aoki / Brett Anderson / Chad Billingsley / Emilio Bonifacio / A.J. Burnett / Billy Butler / Asdrubal Cabrera / Melky Cabrera / Nelson Cruz / Michael Cuddyer / Gavin Floyd / Jason Hammel / Chase Headley / Torii Hunter / Adam LaRoche / Jed Lowrie / Nick Markakis / Russell Martin / Victor Martinez / Kendrys Morales / Michael Morse / Aramis Ramirez / Hanley Ramirez / Colby Rasmus / Mark Reynolds / Alex Rios / Pablo Sandoval / Ichiro Suzuki / Chris Young (OF)/ Delmon Young.

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After several days hiatus due to the brevity of the two League Championship Series, baseball returns on Tuesday night with Game One of the World Series. This won’t be the first Series matchup of wild card teams, but it will be the first showdown between non division winners who both won fewer than 90 regular season games. While this Series might lack team and individual excellence compared to many past matchups, it does promise to be quite competitive. Instead of breaking down individual player matchups, let’s take a different tack and examine the venues in which the games will be played – Kauffman Stadium and AT&T Park – to get a feel for the context that will surround the Royals and Giants over the next week or so. Read the rest of this entry »

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We — and I suppose by “we,” I do mean “the people I enjoy on Twitter” — have gotten a lot of joke mileage this postseason thanks just to a few never-ending items that have been pounded into the ground by baseball media and observers. I’m talking about things like Ernie Johnson’s complete lack of emotion, the eternal Viagra ad, TBS insisting on trying to make “shutdown innings” a thing, and so on.

Included among that has been that every single time James Shields‘ name is mentioned, he’s referred to as “Big Game James,” as though it’s his legal name. Shields is a very good pitcher, but he’s picked up a certain reputation for doing well in big spots entirely because of a rhyming sound his name makes. If only he’d gone with “Jim Shields,” right?

The gag there is obvious. “Big Game James” hasn’t actually come up that big at all in the postseason. For his career, he’s got a 5.19 ERA in nine starts. Five times, he’s allowed four runs or fewer, which is great, but four of those times came way back during Tampa Bay’s 2008 run to the World Series, which is not. Between 2008 and 2014, his postseason experience consisted of being hit hard by Texas twice, allowing a combined 11 earned runs across an ALDS start in 2010 and another in 2011.

This year, he’s made three starts, and while the Royals have of course won all three, it hasn’t necessarily been thanks to him. In the wild card game, he allowed four runs and nine baserunners in five innings, including leaving a meatball of a changeup for Brandon Moss to drive out of the park. (Though Ned Yost was later crushed for his decisions in that game, the mistake was bringing in Yordano Ventura, not deciding that Shields was done.) Against the Angels in the ALDS, he was better, allowing two earned runs in six innings, though he again allowed nine baserunners, along with solo homers to Mike Trout & Albert Pujols. And in Game 1 of the ALCS against Baltimore, he allowed 11 baserunners and four runs, helping to turn what had been a 4-0 lead into a game the Royals had to win on 10th inning Alex Gordon & Mike Moustakas homers.

The Royals have been winning in ways we might not have expected, but “having your best starter underperform” isn’t exactly a welcome part of that menu. So, as Shields prepares to throw the first pitch of the World Series against Gregor Blanco and the Giants tonight, is there anything we can draw from his postseason struggles? Anything the Giants might want to keep in mind? Read the rest of this entry »

Hello there, Royals pitchers! Congratulations on reaching this point — you’ve done many proud. No matter what happens, your 2014 season has been a screaming success. The Royals are back on the baseball map nationally and, more importantly, locally. But of course you’re not done yet, as there’s one remaining step in the staircase: Looming in front of you are the San Francisco Giants. You’ll face many different Giants hitters; among them will be Pablo Sandoval. In case you’ve never seen him before, you’re in for an experience. I’d like to show you something. Actually, I’d like to show you two somethings. Here’s one of them:

• Pablo Sandoval: 45% out-of-zone swing rate
• Matt Carpenter: 46.8% in-zone swing rate

You’re going to face Sandoval; it could’ve been you would’ve faced Carpenter. Sandoval swings at about as many balls as Carpenter does strikes. For the sake of some perspective:

• Pablo Sandoval: 45% out-of-zone swing rate
• Salvador Perez: 44.1% out-of-zone swing rate

So that’s how aggressive this Sandoval character is. Now, you might be wondering, “Does that mean he’s as easy to get out sometimes as Salvy?” No, this Sandoval guy is a unique sort of challenge. To prepare you for the challenge to come, I’m going to provide you with some strategy tips. How should you pitch to Pablo Sandoval, if you want to get him out? Pay careful attention to my advice.

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The World Series starts tonight, and if you’ve spent any time reading the internet over the last 24 hours, you’ve probably been inundated with preview articles. If you haven’t been, I’m particularly fond of this one from Jonah Keri and Ben Lindbergh at Grantland, mostly because it includes this fantastic image.

The rest of the preview is great too, which isn’t surprising, because Jonah and Ben do fantastic work on a regular basis. That preview is also annoying, as they stole a number of ideas I was going to spotlight in this post, which is why I stole their awesome outfield defense graph and put it in this one. But rather than cry over they-beat-me-to-it milk, we’ll just pivot and tackle the two World Series teams position by position. Forecasts are based on the 2015 Steamer projections found here on the site, and are based on an entire season’s worth of production.

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Ben and Sam talk to McCovey Chronicles author Grant Brisbee about the World Series and the Giants’ recent run.

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Episode 497
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he discusses the World Series and especially the Royals part of it.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 41 min play time.)

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