The Royals Run Prevention Deserves More Praise
After two games, the runaway narrative of the 2015 World Series is the success of the Royals contact offense; they just keep swinging at and hitting everything in sight, even against pitchers who are used to blowing opponents away. From the fifth inning on last night, most of Fox’s broadcast consisted of heaping praise on the Royals “relentless” offense, and pleading with baseball to build line-ups more like this one.
The Royals line-up is fun to watch, and it is nice to see a team put the ball in play as often as the Royals do, but I’d like to point out the following set of facts. Note that we’re using R/PA instead of R/G in the runs column to account for the extra inning contests that make per plate appearance a better denominator than per game.
| KC Offense | BA | OBP | SLG | R/PA |
| Regular Season | 0.269 | 0.322 | 0.412 | 0.12 |
| Postseason | 0.269 | 0.327 | 0.440 | 0.15 |
| World Series | 0.253 | 0.323 | 0.398 | 0.12 |
| KC Opponents | BA | OBP | SLG | R/PA |
| Regular Season | 0.249 | 0.314 | 0.396 | 0.10 |
| Postseason | 0.220 | 0.299 | 0.368 | 0.11 |
| World Series | 0.165 | 0.230 | 0.203 | 0.06 |
During the postseason, the Royals offense has hit a little bit better than they did during the regular season, which is a remarkable achievement given the quality of pitching they’ve faced. October is a low run-scoring environment, so for them to basically sustain their regular season levels of hitting is a notable achievement.
But look at what the Royals pitchers and defenders have done to opposing offenses, especially in this series. The Mets have a .433 OPS after the first two games in Kansas City. They’ve scored five runs in 23 innings. They have one extra one base hit. Even the rallies they have managed were based on walks and bloopers, as the Royals pitching staff has rarely had to work out of jams.
The contact-hitting-versus-dominating-pitching narrative is an easy one, especially when Jacob deGrom and Matt Harvey combine for four strikeouts between them. But the Royals are up 2-0 more because of their run prevention, which has been remarkably good in the first two games. If the Royals were striking out left and right, they’d probably still be up 2-0, given how effectively KC has shut down New York’s offense.
There’s nothing wrong with giving credit to the Royals hitters; guys like Alcides Escobar really are having remarkable Octobers. But let’s not overlook the job the Royals run prevention unit is doing; they’re the ones really dominating the Mets so far.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Good article Dave. It’s also consistency of defense – Cespedes made a gaffe game 1 and then a spectacular play game 2. Flores made both types of plays last night in the late innings. You rarely see the Royals make a defensive gaffe, Hosmer Game 1 was about the only one in 13 games postseason.
The play Escobar made charging that slow grounder in the 8th last night was incredible. But when does he flub routine ones?
This is a great compliment to Tony’s article. The run scoring has happened in fun ways in the playoffs, but the story of the Royals the last two games (and the last two years) is the preventing of runs being scored by the other guys.
Thanks!
You’re welcome, just happened to be reading some baseball stuff on the travel day this afternoon and saw both of these at about the same time. I have enjoyed very much the Mets-Cubs and now Mets-Royals matchups as the Cubs and Royals presented such outlier approaches this year to go up against the almost cliched dream of young SP dominance thrown out there by the Mets.
And even up 2-0, the Royals are just one CG shutout by Syndergaard away from feeling pretty nervous about that rotation.
People have been telling you this in your chats for MONTHS and you laughed at them.
I’m surprised you didn’t use ALL CAPS. Seriously bitch, go away.
This is why the starting pitching mismatch is regularly mis-evaluated. KCs starting pitchers benefit significantly from their defense. KCs starting pitchers are mediocre at best, but in front of that defense they are much better.