How Good Were The 2014 Royals?

The World Series is over, and though the San Francisco Giants have nailed down their third championship in the last five seasons, there is seemingly no time to savor the accomplishment. Qualifying offers are being extended, the first offseason transactions have begun to trickle across the wire, and hot stove season will soon begin in earnest. This week, however, let’s take one last look at the two World Series participants from a top-sided, macro perspective. How good were the Giants and the Royals, in various aspects of the game? Today, let’s take a look at the AL champion Royals.

The October run of the Kansas City Royals certainly ranks among the top baseball stories of 2014. They came as close as possible to being pinned by the A’s in the wild card game without actually submitting, and after completing that miracle, proceeded to not lose a game for another couple of weeks. Besides coming within one game of winning the game’s ultimate prize, they captivated the nation and gave fresh life to a long suffering fan base that desperately needed such a jolt of energy. The question must be asked, however – in the aftermath of this matchup of two sub-90 win wild card clubs, how good were the Royals?

Utilizing batted ball data, one can calculate the MLB average AVG and SLG for various exit speeds and angles. Throughout the season, I have attempted to evaluate individual players using such data, taking their actual BIP information and applying it to such averages to see how players might perform in a totally neutral environment. Today, let’s do this on a team-wide basis, and separate context from the Royals’ true offensive, pitching and defensive talent, and see whether their 89-73 record is a fair approximation of their cumulative ability.

First, let’s look at the Royals’ offense. Below is their team plate appearance frequency data:

FREQ – 2014
Royals – HIT	%	REL
K	16.3%	80
BB	6.3%	83
POP	8.5%	110
FLY	25.2%	90
LD	20.6%	99
GB	45.6%	105

We went through this same exercise with the Giants earlier this week, and the hitting frequency data told us very little. In this case, it tells us a whole lot about the Royals. They are a team of extremes – the Royals ranked dead last in the major leagues in both strikeouts and walks. Finishing dead last in walks, in particular, is pretty hard for an American League club to do since their pitchers barely come to bat all season.

So the Royals make a ton of contact. While we’ll examine the quality of said contact in the next section, the frequency data exhibits some red flags. The Royals possess a fairly extremely ground ball-centric offense, with a 105 grounder rate relative to the MLB average. Lorenzo Cain hits a ton of grounders, which isn’t a big deal because of his excellent speed, but Eric Hosmer and Billy Butler hit way too many grounders for hitters of their type, and Norichika Aoki is the most prolific grounder generator in the game on a season-to-season basis.

On top of this, the Royals pulled off the undesirable daily double of a high team popup rate to go along with a low team fly ball rate. Nearly half of their everyday position player contingent – Salvador Perez, Mike Moustakas, Omar Infante and Alcides Escobar – are big popup guys, and none possess the plus-power profile that makes such a popup tendency palatable. Their best position player – Alex Gordon – is the only Royal regular who doesn’t possess a glaring BIP frequency flaw.

The easy take for most onlookers is that the Royals possess a low risk, low reward offense, so must focus on little ball to scratch out runs. I would counter that while this is certainly a low reward offense, the overall risk is a bit higher than most think. Yes, they make tons of contact, but give up more free outs on popups than do most clubs, without the power potential that usually comes with such a tendency. Now, the real fun begins. Let’s look at the Royals’ production by BIP type to get a feel for their overall batted ball authority level:

PROD – 2014
Royals – HIT	AVG	OBP	SLG	REL PRD	ADJ PRD
FLY	0.254		0.571	73	75
LD	0.653		0.867	98	97
GB	0.254		0.280	108	94
ALL BIP	0.313		0.449	88	84
ALL PA	0.263	0.314	0.376	98	94

Ruh-roh. The clear eyecatcher on this table is the fly ball production line item. Royal hitters batted .254 AVG-.571 SLG on fly balls this season, compared to the MLB average of .275 AVG-.703 SLG. Even worse, they hit the ball so weakly in the air as a unit that context is barely a factor. Kauffman Stadium’s 2014 fly ball park factor of 81.3, as usual, ranks in the lower tier of MLB stadiums, but most of the fly balls hit by Royal hitters aren’t getting out of even the most hitter-friendly parks.

The Royals did manage to bat .254 AVG-.280 SLG on all of those grounders they hit, comfortably above the MLB average of .245 AVG-.267 SLG. This is due in large part to the club’s above average speed. On all BIP, the Royals hit a poor .313 AVG-.449 SLG, for 88 REL PRD, adjusted down to 84 for context. This is very poor batted ball authority. While their low K rate enables them to raise those marks to a 98 REL PRD and 94 ADJ PRD once K’s and BB’s added back, the Royals possess by any measure a well below average team offense.

My methods don’t fully reflect some of the club’s strengths – while their team speed is captured “out of the box” in their production data, their basestealing ability flies under this method’s radar. Some of their hitters, especially Hosmer and Cain, appear to be building to a bright future. Hosmer needs to get the ball in the air more, and Cain needs to make the swing tweaks necessary to turn some of his hard liners into hard fly balls.

On the flip side, check out Tony Pena’s career path to see what might be in store for Salvador Perez offensively, while Infante and Aoki are heartbeats away from batted ball authority levels that could render them all but unusable. On no planet is Escobar a solid leadoff option. This offense is a problem, to put it mildly, and the Royals were about as healthy as a team could be in 2014. Throw 700 or so backup player-caliber PA’s onto their 2014 record, and get back to me.

How about their pitching? Again, let’s take a peek at their plate appearance frequency and production by BIP type data to get a better feel. First, the frequency info:

FREQ – 2014
Royals – PIT	%	REL
K	19.1%	94
BB	7.2%	95
POP	9.1%	119
FLY	28.3%	101
LD	20.9%	101
GB	41.6%	96

There are some similarities between the Royals’ offensive and pitching frequencies – the Royals’ pitchers also strike out and walk their opponents at lower than MLB average rates, though the levels aren’t nearly as extreme. Their pitchers also induce popups at a much higher than average rate (119), as James Shields and especially Danny Duffy among the starters and Wade Davis and Kelvin Herrera among the relievers are most adept at generating this type of “free” out. The staff’s fly ball and liner rates track very closely to MLB averages, while they generate fewer grounders than most (96 relative to MLB average). Next, let’s examine the production by BIP type allowed by Royal pitchers, to get a sense of the contact quality they are allowing:

PROD – 2014
Royals – PIT	AVG	OBP	SLG	REL PRD	ADJ PRD	ACT ERA	CALC ERA	TRU ERA
FLY	0.245		0.630	75	84
LD	0.645		0.841	94	97
GB	0.256		0.281	112	101
ALL BIP	0.311		0.470	90	92
ALL PA	0.250	0.310	0.377	97	98	3.51	3.61	3.65

Royal pitchers allowed weaker than average fly ball contact this season, yielding a .245 AVG-.630 SLG for a 75 REL PRD, adjusted up to 84 ADJ PRD for context. The dimensions of Kauffman Stadium and the Royals’ strong outfield defense both factored into the contextual adjustment – while Royal opponents hit weaker than average fly balls in 2014, they were hit quite a bit harder than the ones hit by the Royals themselves. Royal opponents, like Royal hitters, performed better on grounders than they “should” have, hitting .256 AVG-.281 SLG for a 112 REL PRD, adjusted down to 101 for context. While the club’s infielders individually were above average, as a unit they did not substantially restrict ground ball production – perhaps infielder positioning is an area where the Royals can further improve.

All in all, Royal pitchers limited opponents to 90 REL PRD and 92 ADJ PRD on all BIP, but those figures creep up to 97 and 98, respectively, once the K’s and BB’s are added back. Their actual ERA of 3.51 climbs to a “tru” ERA of 3.65 once adjusted for context. This is only a slightly above average pitching staff on its own merits, exclusive of ballpark and team defense. This, in a season where the back of the bullpen – Davis, Herrera and Greg Holland – performed at a historic level, and the health level approached that of the Royal position players.

There are an awful lot of innings going to the likes of low-upside guys such as Jeremy Guthrie and Jason Vargas here, and in 2015, Shields’ innings may need to be replaced altogether. On the other hand, Yordano Ventura and Danny Duffy possess potentially material upside above their 2014 performance levels.

How about the defense? Again utilizing granular batted ball data, I have established a method to evaluate team defense, from a big-picture macro perspective, rather than the play-by-play micro perspective that methods such as DRS and UZR utilize. Simply compare each team’s offensive and defensive actual and projected AVG and SLG – what each team “should” have hit/allowed based on the speed/exit angle mix of all balls in play (excluding home runs), and convert those actual and projected events to run values. You are basically comparing each team’s defense to that of their opponents over 162 games. If a team’s defense was exactly as good as their opponents’ over 162 games, their team defensive multiplier would be 100. Better than average defenses have scores under 100, below average team defenses have scores over 100. How did the Royals fare in 2014?

IN-PLAY	KC
BAT ACT AVG	0.299
BAT ACT SLG	0.375
BAT PRJ AVG	0.289
BAT PRJ SLG	0.360
PIT ACT AVG	0.291
PIT ACT SLG	0.364
PIT PRJ AVG	0.288
PIT PRJ SLG	0.365
DEF MULTIPLY	96.8
—————-	———–
FLY MULTIPLY	93.3
LD MULTIPLY	96.9
GB MULTIPLY	98.6

First of all, while the Royals’ 96.8 overall defensive multiplier is comfortably above MLB average, it pales in comparison to their gaudy team UZR and DRS numbers. While those established, publicly available advanced metrics do a solid job of measuring individual player performance, I would submit that a top-sided, macro method such as mine does a quality job of evaluating team defense. In fact, in most cases, it favors clubs like the Royals, whose defensive range outshines their surehandedness. This is yet another strand of information that suggests that their run prevention performance could be even further enhanced by improved defensive positioning.

Breaking their defensive performance down by BIP type, we see that their performance on fly balls (93.3 multiplier) outshines their performance on other types. Based on what our eyes showed us this October, this should not be a surprise. Their World Series opponent, the Giants, actually had a better overall regular season defensive multiplier (95.7), driven largely by a superior 88.2 multiplier on grounders.

So what do we have in the Royals? A relatively poor offensive club, with above average team defense – though possibly not as great as suggested by other methods – and slightly above average pitching. Convert everything in the above tables to run values, apply their defensive multiplier, and do some final Pythagorean magic, and the 2014 Royals are an 80-win club, way short of their actual 89-73 mark. Calculating a team’s projected record using this method actually yields very similar results to the Pythag approach, with only a couple of clubs per season breaking materially out of their projected win total range. For the second year in a row, the Royals have broken way out to the upside.

As previously mentioned, there are some aspects of individual player/team performance that are undervalued by this method. Basestealing is one, defensive surehandedness is another, and strength of outfield throwing arms is a third. There may be others. The Royals are good at these things. Their 2014 Pythagorean record, however, was only 84-78. Even if you give them the benefit of the doubt on several fronts, my analysis suggests that this clearly is not an 89-win team, true talent wise.

All that said, the Royals now sit in a very good place. Their storybook season has rekindled the fan base, and will ignite improved revenue streams. They have a core of young, relatively affordable players in place, and should have the financial wherewithal to build around them. Shields’ and Butler’s salaries – at least temporarily – come off the books, adding further flexibility. Still, the Royals have work to do to establish themselves as perennial contenders.

Most of this work should be focused on the offensive side, where a right fielder and DH are required in the everyday lineup, while depth needs to be fortified in all areas of the roster. Most clubs needed 35-40 guys to get through 2014 – the Royals needed just 28 or so. If GM Dayton Moore and Manager Ned Yost can pull the right strings to build just an average major league offense in the near term, Royal fans won’t have to wait anywhere near 29 years for their next joyous October.