After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Kansas City Royals. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta.

Batters
If the depth chart below seems to depict a more dismal situation than one might expect from a club that’s appeared in each of the last two World Series, note that it excludes at least one player (Alex Gordon) who’s been instrumental to the team’s recent success and another (Ben Zobrist) who benefited the 2015 edition of the club after arriving at the July trade deadline.

It’s not surprising, in light of Gordon and Zobrist’s respective departures, that corner outfield and second base are the team’s two weakest positions according to ZiPS. One assumes that the front office regards these as priorities for the offseason.

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Alex Gordon has been a really good, perhaps slightly underrated, player over the last five seasons for the Kansas City Royals. An untimely injury limited his role during this most recent regular season, but he was a big part of the club’s playoff runs each of the past two seasons and played a major role in Kansas City’s first World Series title in 30 years. Thanks to a team-friendly contract extension after his breakout 2011 season, the Royals have paid him just $37.5 million over the last four years, including two potential years of free agency. Although Gordon, heading into his age-32 season, is not reaching free agency at an ideal age, given his production he is still likely to receive a deal totaling around $100 million. The question for the Royals and the rest of the league is, will he be worth that kind of money into his mid-30s?

Gordon has hardly gone unnoticed as one of the best, if not the best, player on the two-time American League champion and reigning World Series titleholder. However, due to the way he’s produced his value — including above-average defense in an outfield corner — it’s possible that Gordon is slightly underrated heading into free agency. Over the last five seasons, he has been one of the very best players in baseball, as evidenced by the WAR leader chart below.

The next five players on that list are Josh Donaldson, Dustin Pedroia, Jason Heyward, Evan Longoria, and Giancarlo Stanton. Gordon has put up a well-above average 123 wRC+ during that time after struggling from 2007 to 2010 as he adjusted to major league pitching following just one full season in the minors. Alex Gordon and Jason Heyward’s name have come up together this offseason as similar players for good reason.

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In a pair of recent posts at this site, Matthew Kory has examined — first before the Royals’ great success and then also after it — has examined what sort of effect the World Series champions might have on the roster-construction philosphies of baseball’s other 29 teams. Both pieces are founded on a reasonable assumption — namely, that it’s common for franchises to imitate the process utilized by the league’s great victor, with a view to also imitating the product. The Copycat Effect, is how one might characterize this. Why felines specifically have been singled out for their mimetic inclinations, I can’t say. That the phenomenon exists seems like a reasonable possibility.

The current post resembles Kory’s own efforts in that the objective is to isolate and explore the most pronounced traits of baseball’s championship club — those traits which, were an organization tempted to emulate the champion, they would themselves identify as most important. Where it differs from Kory’s work, however, is that the intent here is to look towards the future. Instead of examing which current major-league players or teams most embody the Royals’ strengths, what I’d like to ask is which prospects do that. In other words, I’d like to ask this: which rookie-eligible players would a general manager, attempting to best imitate the Royals, set about acquiring (or keeping, as the case may be)?

That’s the guiding inquiry of the current post. How to answer it, though?

First, this way: by identifying those traits endemic to the Royals. Again, Kory’s work is helpful here. In the latter of his two posts, he identifies the traits which most distinguished Kansas City from the rest of the league: a low strikeout rate among the club’s hitters, strong baserunning, elite defensive ability, and a talented bullpen. For the purposes of this post, I’ll be ignoring pitchers. I’ll do it for a number of reasons, but largely because betting on even the near-term success of relievers is a fool’s errand. So the focus will be on hitters.

That’s the first step towards answering the question. The second: to utilize the recently published Steamer 600 projections for 2016. Here’s how I began: for all 4043 players for whom a forecast has been produced, I calculated the z-scores in each of three categories: strikeout rate (where lower is better), baserunning runs relative to average, and defensive runs (which accounts both for fielding runs and positional adjustment). I then averaged together the z-scores for each of those three categories. Reason dictates that the resulting figure should represent to what degree the relevant player might offer the skills possessed by Royals players.

Below are the top-10 rookie-eligible players by that methodology. Note that Age represents 2016 baseball age and all heading titles preceded by -z- represent z-scores.

Royals Prospects Who Aren’t Royals: Attempt No. 1

Name	Team	Pos	Age	PA	K%	BsR	Def	zK%	zBsR	zDef	Total
Willians Astudillo	PHI	C/1B	24	450	7.1%	0.1	7.5	3.1	0.2	1.2	1.5
Jose Peraza	LAN	2B	22	600	11.2%	0.9	1.9	2.3	1.5	0.3	1.4
Rossmel Perez	BAL	C	26	450	10.0%	0.1	7.5	2.5	0.2	1.2	1.3
Tomas Telis	MIA	C	25	450	12.2%	0.2	8.2	2.1	0.4	1.3	1.3
Hanser Alberto	TEX	2B	23	600	11.7%	0.4	4.7	2.2	0.7	0.8	1.2
Tyler Heineman	HOU	C	25	450	12.2%	0.1	7.5	2.1	0.2	1.2	1.2
Raywilly Gomez	LAA	C	26	450	13.3%	0.2	7.5	1.9	0.4	1.2	1.2
Benjamin Turner	SFN	C/1B	26	450	13.3%	0.2	7.5	1.9	0.4	1.2	1.2
Ramon Cabrera	CIN	C	26	450	14.2%	0.0	10.2	1.8	0.1	1.7	1.2
Alex Swim	MIN	C/OF	25	450	12.9%	0.1	7.5	2.0	0.2	1.2	1.2

So, an immediate observation: this is a list full of catchers plus also Jose Peraza and Hanser Alberto. Because catchers receive such a large positional adjustment (+7.5 runs per every 450 plate appearances), they’re inclined to gravitate towards the top of lists like this. Where projections are concerned, positional adjustments aren’t subject to regression and translation like other metrics. Strikeout rate, baserunning, fielding runs: where only minor-league data is available, Steamer is conservative — particularly so regarding the latter two variables. As such, the large catcher’s positional adjustment unduly rewards catchers. Catchers are important, but merely presenting a list of doesn’t seem entirely in keeping with our objective here. We’ll have to refine our methodology.

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The season is over. The games have been played, the asses have been crowned. That’s the end. All done.

Except of course, no, not at all. Baseball season is like outer space, or an order of breadsticks at WTF Thursday’s Neighborhoodish Restaurant. It never ends. But before we move on to the business of baseball’s business, our topic for the next [checks watch] five months, let’s look back just a tad. You’ll recall, in a bit of foreshadowing, that I graded the Royals’ division-winning celebration in September. It has been suggested by some that, now that Kansas City are champions, I should grade their World Series-winning celebration, and see how it stacks up. See if they’ve learned anything over the last month. So, rather than think too hard about a different, more original topic idea, I thought, “Yeah. Sure.” So here we are! Exciting!

We’ll start where we started last time: the beginning. Which is really the end. It’s here:

With two strikes, Wade Davis threw a fastball inside that may or may not have caught the corner. Didn’t matter. The game was already over. Wilmer Flores, already focused on his off season of deep disappointment akin to learning that WTF Thursday’s Neighborhoodish Restaurant closes at 9pm — meaning endless breadsticks are a myth — took the pitch. I’ve watched the play over and over and despite solid video evidence to the contrary I’m not convinced Flores didn’t wander back to the dugout three pitches earlier.

In any case, let’s get to the grading. You may (not) recall that the Royals’ division-winning celebration garnered 58 out of 70 possible points, or 83%. Not bad. But let’s see if the Royals can improve on that effort, or if I even remember what the categories are.

*****

Appropriate Excitement Level

Heh. Remembered that one.

Look, I really want to talk about the appropriate excitement level. I mean, heck, it’s the heading and everything. And sure, fine, the Royals were super excited. Ten points out of 10, boys. Well done. But the thing I keep noticing after Davis’ strikeout of Flores is Flores. Just watch this.

Davis throws the game’s final pitch.

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This is an oversimplification, but to be a successful starting pitcher in the current era, you have to maintain some reasonable level of effectiveness for something like 25 batters per start. If you can’t pitch into the sixth and seventh innings with regularity, you aren’t going to remain a starting pitcher for very long. In the past that number was higher and in the future it might be lower, but if you don’t have the tools to remain effective for two or three turns through the order, you’re destined for the bullpen.

Pitching is multidimensional, which means that in order to pitch well enough to remain a starter, you need some combination of skills which push you across that threshold. Command, endurance, and stuff all play into the equation. Command is the ability to throw your pitches where you want them and endurance is the ability to maintain your command and stuff over multiple repetitions. Stuff is more complicated because it is partially a measure of individual pitch quality (defined in many ways) and the number of pitches you have at your disposal.

In other words, if you have average command, decent endurance, and the world’s greatest fastball, you can probably get by if your other pitches are only okay. But you can also get by without a great fastball if your command is elite and you have three solid pitches. There’s no single path to success.

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Alex Gordon is going to be a hot commodity on the free-agent market. Little thought will be given to exercising his current 2016 option, and then he’ll be available to anyone and everyone. The FanGraphs crowd expects him to sign for something in the neighborhood of five years and $90 million, and the crowd can end up low when predicting the higher tier. Relative to other free agents, the crowd puts Gordon’s contract between Chris Davis‘ contract and Jeff Samardzija’s contract in total cost.

Maybe Dayton Moore will be the guy who gives the contract. The Royals love Gordon, as anyone would, and he’s been with the Royals his whole career, and you might’ve noticed those Royals recently winning a championship. On their side, then, there’s new extra revenue, and there’s a natural desire to keep the same core. On Gordon’s side, he could be willing to entertain a bit of a discount, to remain where he’s been. He likes the organization, and now the organization’s successful. Good reason to stay.

There’s a lot of money out there, though. This is business, and perhaps Gordon will elect to leave Kansas City on top. People are driven to pursue new, fresh opportunities. There’s a strong chance Gordon doesn’t return, is the point. Maybe it’s 40%, or maybe it’s 90%. Gordon has been an absolutely phenomenal defensive left fielder. So because this era might be about to change, I’d like to quickly review what’s been a period of team-level defensive dominance.

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I promise we’ll move on any moment now. The Royals are champions, but we’ve known that for a couple days, and fans of 29 other teams are ready to look forward. There’s talk about qualifying offers. Players declaring free agency. The offseason is beginning, and the offseason is fun to think about, because if they handle the offseason right, then your team can be the next team people don’t want to hear about anymore a few days after the World Series. If hope springs eternal in March, it begins welling up in November. Baseball’s weird calendar is already flipping.

So pretty soon we’ll talk about other stuff. Important events are right around the corner. But the World Series just ended. Like, two days ago, there was still baseball, and the Royals were as entertaining as any team I’ve seen in forever. Before I say goodbye to them, then, I want to re-visit last week’s poll. I don’t always re-visit the polls I post, but this one, I got particularly excited about. And the results didn’t let me down.

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There were two big storylines leading up to the World Series: the unrivaled ability of the Kansas City Royals to make contact on offense, and the ability of the Mets’ young power arms. The main battle of the Fall Classic, it seemed, would be between those two opposing forces, and whichever won out over the other very well might meaningfully shift the series. Now, looking back on the five games of the Royals’ 2015 Championship, something is apparent in the outcome of that much-storied battle: Mets pitchers struggled mightily to put Royals hitters away when they had two-strike counts.

We know the 2015 Royals didn’t strike out a lot: they had the lowest strikeout rate in the majors during the regular season by a wide margin (15.9%; the next-closest team was the Oakland A’s, at 18.1%). Knowing that fact, we could look at their trend of two-strike success in the World Series as a continuation of that regular-season ability. And, while we should give the Royals a lot of credit for the quality of their at-bats (we’ll see later how their ability to foul balls off contributed to what we’re discussing), Mets pitchers also showed a detrimental tendency when the count was in their favor: they threw too many pitches in the strike zone.

First, lets understand the specifics of this Royals’ plate approach. Not only did they make contact more than almost any other team in the major leagues – their 81.8% contact rate was second only to the A’s at 81.9% — but they swung at more pitches out of the strike zone than any other team. That’s the main reason they saw the lowest rate of pitches in the zone during 2015. The thought process is simple: if a team shows that it will chase pitches, why bother throwing them strikes?

Take a look at a quick summary of their major league ranks for overall contact, swings at pitches outside of the strike zone (O-Swing%), and pitches in the strike zone (Zone%) for 2015:

This is who the 2015 Royals were: the free-swinging, contact-oriented team we’ve read about for the past month. Imagining yourself as an opposing pitcher, it might make sense to approach them with some of those traits in mind: perhaps you would throw more pitches out of the zone, get them to chase as much as possible, and hope that the majority of contact they generated would be weak because of the lack of quality pitches to hit.

However, Mets pitchers had a difficult time executing that game plan effectively during the World Series. Let’s take a look at a few heat maps from Baseball Savant to get an idea of some of the issues they faced putting Royals hitters away. We’re just going to focus on counts in which the pitcher was ahead with two strikes: 0-2 and 1-2 counts. First, here’s where Mets pitchers attacked their opponents during the NLDS & NLCS vs. the World Series in 0-2/1-2 counts:

There are obviously a different number of pitches between the two images, but we can see that the NLDS and NLCS image has far more pitches out of the zone, especially low and away to right-handed hitters. This makes sense: in 0-2 and 1-2 counts, a pitcher wants to throw pitches out of the zone. They want to get hitters to chase, and they can waste pitches trying to do that because the count is in their favor. The World Series image, however, has a lot of red (meaning a higher frequency of pitches in that location) on pitches up and over the heart of the plate. This, theoretically, is not want you want to be doing in 0-2 and 1-2 counts.

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The Royals — the 2015 MLB champion Royals — were historically clutch. If you paid even any attention at all, you probably don’t learn anything from that sentence. It’s so obviously true it might as well be left unsaid, like “that pizza was delicious” or “I wish we didn’t get lost.” Being clutch became the Royals’ whole thing, all the way through erasing a ninth-inning deficit in the last game they played. But, look: I’ve got data. I’m going to give it to you. You can’t stop me from doing this. By the time you’re reading this post, it’s already done.

Somewhere around the middle of September, I wrote a post for JABO talking about how the Cardinals had been historically clutch. For the Cardinals, the strength had been run prevention, above and beyond what one would’ve expected just from their already strong overall performance. Right here, I’m going to follow a similar template, since now that everything’s over, it feels worthwhile to consider the final numbers. The Cardinals, at one point, looked like the clutchiest team in the league. They ultimately surrendered their lead. (note: pretty unclutch of them) (second note: typical Royals)

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Over the past two seasons, the Royals have gained a reputation for smart baserunning, lethal relief pitching, a contact-heavy offensive approach and excellent defense. Now that they’ve appeared in two consecutive World Series and are the reigning champions of baseball, it’s time for other teams to recognize the value in that formula and do the only thing they can: copy them! Home runs are out. Ace pitchers are out. It’s singles and relievers from here on out, folks. Or until a different team wins next season.

Copying the Royals isn’t too difficult in theory because they have such a well-defined style of play. It’s all those things I just mentioned in the first sentence. If you were watching the World Series you probably noticed how the announcers talked on and on about how the Royals never strike out, play great defense, run the bases with aplomb, and possess a bullpen full of great relievers. So now that the goal is clear, and the means are known. Who is in the best position to copy the Royals?

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