The Kansas City Royals succeeded last season in the face of low expectations — and, among many who appreciate advanced statistics, at least slight derision regarding the way Dayton Moore assembled his team. Contracts to middling pitchers like Jeremy Guthrie and Jason Vargas seemed unlikely to get the Royals from also-ran status. Trading away top prospect Wil Myers, even for a talented pitcher like James Shields, did not look to be enough to take the Royals over the top. So it was with this backdrop that Shields, along with the talented and young Yordano Ventura, stabilized the rotation; Wade Davis and Greg Holland anchored an incredible bullpen; and a slew of former top position prospects whose luster had worn off came together to win the Wild Card and make a run to the World Series.

Fast-forward to spring training — the Royals lost Shields and Billy Butler to free agency, and the improbable run of 2014 seemed even more unlikely to repeat itself this season. Not a single FanGraphs writer picked the Royals to make it back to the postseason. Nobody picked the Houston Astros or Texas Rangers, either, in an American League race that ran counter to predictions everywhere. The Royals had not done a whole lot to make themselves better and expecting their good fortune to continue for another year did not make for a good bet.

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When exactly was it that you realized baseball’s replay system was broken? I’m very pro-replay, but I had my suspicions regarding implementation when the system was announced. The introduction of replay should, in my opinion, represent an effort to get more calls correct, but baseball saw an opportunity to give another decision to the managers and, in doing so, create more drama, more or less copying football’s own challenge system. Even so, up until yesterday I remained pro-replay because, organizing principles aside, more of the calls were made correctly under replay than would have been without it. Then Terrance Gore stole third base.

The first six innings of yesterday’s Royals/Astros was tight. Then, in the top of the seventh with one out and the Astros holding a 3-2 lead, Sal Perez was hit by a pitch. Royals manager Ned Yost removed Gore and put in pinch-runner extraordinaire Gore. I say extraordinaire because, previously in his career, he had swiped 11 bases without getting caught (including last postseason). He promptly made it 12 of 12 by taking second base rather easily. Then, with two outs and Alex Rios batting, Gore took off for third base. Here he goes!

That’s Gore stealing third. Jason Castro’s throw arrived just ahead of Gore but it was to the foul side of the bag and, as you can see, Gore’s foot clearly got in ahead of the tag. The third base umpire agreed, calling Gore safe.

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After getting a pair of home runs and an RBI double from superstar rookie shortstop Carlos Correa, the Astros took a 6-2 lead into the top of the eighth inning. Protecting a four run lead just six outs to go, Houston had a 96.8% chance of winning, which would have put advanced them to the ALCS to await the winner of the Blue Jays/Rangers series.

Then Will Harris gave up consecutive singles to Alex Rios, Alcides Escobar, Ben Zobrist, and Lorenzo Cain, as the Royals singled their way back into the game. With the go-ahead run suddenly at the plate, the Astros turned to left-hander Tony Sipp to go after Eric Hosmer, but Hosmer continued the single streak, plating another run and keeping the bases loaded. The lead was down to 6-4 and the tying run was in scoring position, with Kendrys Morales, the team’s most productive hitter this year, stepping to the plate. The team’s chances of winning had fallen to 55.6%.

But even with the Royals roaring back and Morales a quality hitter, there was also some upside to the at-bat. Morales is a double play machine, frequently hitting ground balls with men on base, and lacking the speed to prevent the opponents from turning two on just about any ball hit on the infield. Morales hit in 24 double plays this year, fifth most in baseball, and if Sipp could just get him to keep the ball on the infield, the Astros could put the comeback to a halt in a hurry.

Sipp did his job, and Morales did exactly what the Royals did not what him to do; hit a one-hop bouncer back to the mound. But everything that happened after Morales hit the ball is a reminder of just how small the differences can be between winning and losing.

Sipp just missed fielding the ball himself, and if he had gloved it cleanly, that’s a 1-2-3 double play, cutting down both the run at the plate and Morales at first base. That would have been the most perfect outcome the Astros could have hoped for, but the ball ricocheted off Sipp’s glove and out to shortstop.

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Well, it happened again.

I don’t need to remind you what happened last September 30, because it was one of the more memorable playoff games of our era. And then Monday, the same thing and the same team repeated. Many of the specific details weren’t alike, but the feelings were all the same — a game that was effectively over, followed by a sense of witnessing the improbable. A year ago, the Royals rallied two times. Monday, they rallied just once. Yet the odds they faced at the lowest points were similar, and thus similar odds were overcome. It doesn’t take long to develop a reputation for this. Luke Gregerson must find the Royals unkillable.

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Did you hear the news? Last postseason, the Royals made quite a name for themselves. In the midst of their first playoff run in 30 years, Kansas City carved out their own brand of baseball. For the first time in a long time, “Royals baseball” meant something positive, something exciting, something worth watching. The Royals captured our hearts until the final out of Game 7, with their unique blend of speed, defense and a dominant bullpen — a postseason formula that had long lurked in the shadows of the traditional power pitching and power hitting approaches.

Did you hear the news? What’s written above still holds true, but there’s a new Royals in town. You might not have heard about them, because they haven’t yet made their feel-good World Series run that still only has something like a 1-in-3 chance of actually materializing. Also, the Old Royals are still here and they’re still quite good, and these New Royals don’t quite feel like the Old Royals, but that’s just on the surface. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that the Houston Astros are the New Royals.

Speed

The Astros are the New Royals because of their speed. Did you know the Astros had speed? I’m not even talking about Triples King, Evan Gattis. No, I’m talking about real speed. Did you know the Astros stole 121 bases this year? Most in the American League and 17 more than the Old Royals?

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Yordano Ventura wanted more movement on his pitches, so he changed his arm slot. He got more movement in some ways, and less in others. He also pitched much better after he dropped his arm slot. It’s tempting to draw a direct line from one fact to the other, but it’s not that simple. There’s at least another huge factor here, and it comes from Ventura’s (secretly) nastiest pitch.

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Zack Greinke’s changeup may only seem different this year. By the stats, it drops a bit more and it’s harder, sure. But if you ask the pitcher, the pitch itself hasn’t changed much. “I throw it more this year,” he said when I asked him what was different about it.

If the systems have the change dropping more this year — estimates run from about a half inch to an inch more drop this year over previous years — there might be something else going on. The systems might be grabbing bad changeups and classifying them as sinkers, while calling the bendier pitches changeups.

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We live in the age of multiple playoff levels and one of the results of this is we get many different playoff winners, and each playoff winner has to have a playoff winner celebration. Celebrations used to be more sedate than they are now, but things have changed since Don Larsen struck out Bill Mitchell and jogged solemnly off the mound after having thrown the first and to date only perfect game in the World Series. No big deal, really, when you think about it. Today, though, players never miss a chance to jump up and down and yell and celebrate and be happy. This being FanGraphs though, we can’t simply observe this behavior. We have to analyze it. Because we hate baseball.

Last Thursday in a match up between a team we thought might go to the post-season and a team named the Royals, the Royals beat the Mariners 10-4 to clinch their first AL Central division title ever. Seriously. The last time the Royals won a division title they were in a different division. The final out came when Kyle Seager grounded out weakly to first baseman Eric Hosmer. Here was the scene before contact.

Oops, sorry. Wrong kind of contact. Let’s try that again.

There we go.

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A funny thing about doing a job like this is that you’re expected to write all the time. Which means you’re expected to write early in seasons, and you’re expected to write analytically, and when you write analytically early in seasons, you can end up looking like a moron. Earlier this season, for example, I remember writing reasonably positive things about Carlos Peguero. And early last year, over at JABO, I wrote about how the Rockies weren’t striking out anymore. You can guess what happened to Peguero. And you can guess what happened with the Rockies. The Rockies resumed striking out. They lost lots of games.

So, this isn’t anything new, but early information can mislead. We’re always just trying to separate what’s real from what’s fake, and we tend to be too impatient about that. But every so often, you can spot something legitimate. Several months ago, also at JABO, I observed that the Royals were barely ever striking out. They were on a potentially historic pace, and it was definitely something to stay aware of. To be honest, I at some point stopped being aware of it, but then I noticed again. The season’s about over, now. The Royals are thinking about the playoffs. They’ll be taking with them one hell of a group of contact hitters.

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The current version of the Kansas City Royals are primarily known for two things: playing amazing defense and having a dominating bullpen. That combination of elite glovework and unhittable relievers carried them to the World Series a year ago, and helped them run away with the AL Central this season; they entered the month of September with 13 game lead over the second-place Twins.

But despite a pre-punched playoff ticket, September has provided plenty of reason for Kansas City fans to worry about their chances headed into October. After an 11-2 drubbing at the hands of the Mariners last night, the Royals are now just 7-13 this month, thanks to a pitching staff that apparently is coming apart at the seams. In those 20 contests, the Royals have allowed 120 runs, for an average of 6.0 runs allowed per game. Up through August 31st, they allowed just 484 runs over 130 games, or 3.8 runs allowed per game.

This month, opponents are hitting .290/.364/.474 against the Royals; only the Phillies and A’s are allowing opponents to do more damage in September. And it’s not just a couple of guys; almost the entire staff is getting lit up.

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