One Enduring Reason Why The Royals Are Still Playing
Much has been made of the supposed mediocrity of the two teams currently battling for the World Series championship. Not only are the San Francisco Giants and Kansas City Royals both wild card teams, they’re the first pair of Fall Classic combatants to both win fewer than 90 games in the regular season. That said, there are a number of reasons why these clubs are worthy title competitors. The core of this Giants team, after all, has won two of the past four titles. The Royals, while a very poor offensive club by postseason standards, are clearly a strong run-prevention unit — riding defense and speed and a stellar bullpen into October. Very quietly, though, there is something else that truly stands about this Royals team: the durability of their core nine position players whose names are written into the lineup almost every day.
While perusing the Royals team statistics the other day, something jumped out at me. All nine of their primary position players (including their designated hitter) had at least 500 plate appearances this season. This might seem like a fairly arbitrary cutoff, but it is a nice round number, and one that is in very close proximity to the minimum 502 required to qualify for a batting title. I also noticed there was a total of two other players who cleared even the very low 100 plate appearance barrier — one being fourth outfielder/speed merchant/guided missile Jarrod Dyson, the other being Danny Valencia, who isn’t even on the club anymore.
A quick look of the rest of the American League’s team stats made it clear the Royals are the only club even close to having all nine primary position players reach the 500 plate-appearance plateau. I decided to go back to the beginning of the DH era to see how many AL clubs that reached the postseason did the same, omitting strike-shortened seasons in 1981, 1994 and 1995. In that time frame, 119 different clubs have made the playoffs. Below you will find the regulars for the six teams that met this criteria:
| 2014 KC | 2007 BOS | 2003 BOS | 1996 TEX | 1982 CAL | 1975 OAK | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C | Perez | Varitek | Varitek | Rodriguez | Boone | Tenace |
| 1B | Hosmer | Youkilis | Millar | Clark | Carew | Rudi |
| 2B | Infante | Pedroia | Walker | McLemore | Grich | Garner |
| SS | Escobar | Lugo | Garciaparra | Elster | Foli | Campaneris |
| 3B | Moustakas | Lowell | Mueller | Palmer | DeCinces | Bando |
| LF | Gordon | Ramirez | Ramirez | Greer | Downing | Washington |
| CF | Cain | Crisp | Damon | Hamilton | Lynn | North |
| RF | Aoki | Drew | Nixon | Gonzalez | Jackson | Jackson |
| DH | Butler | Ortiz | Ortiz | Tettleton | Baylor | Williams |
| % TM PA | 84.9% | 83.8% | 84.2% | 85.6% | 86.8% | 88.3% |
| AVG AGE | 27.8 | 30.4 | 29.9 | 29.3 | 32.8 | 28.8 |
Only 5% of the AL playoff teams in the DH era had nine 500 plate-appearance players. It’s pretty eclectic group, to be sure. The 1975 Oakland A’s were coming off of three consecutive World Series championships, and tried to pull off a modified rebuild while still contending for a title, plugging rookies Phil Garner and Claudell Washington into second base and left field, respectively. Their starting nine racked up an amazing 88.3% of their total plate appearances, with no backup accumulating more than Ray Fosse’s 147 plate appearances.
The 1982 California Angels are by far the oldest of these clubs. Each regular was at least 30 years old, with an average age of 32.8. Reggie Jackson was the right fielder on both this club and on the ’75 A’s. This was one of manager Gene Mauch’s many near-misses, along with the 1964 Phillies and 1986 Angels and predictably, this over-the-hill gang that backslid significantly to 70 wins in 1983.
The 1996 Texas Rangers were an offensive-oriented club, perhaps the polar opposite of the 2014 Royals. They are probably the most unlikely collection of players on this list: Kevin Elster, Dean Palmer, Juan Gonzalez and even Will Clark and Rusty Greer aren’t names you’re often going to see associated with the word “durability.” For this one season, however, they all stayed healthy. This may have been a byproduct of their era.
Next are the 2003 Boston Red Sox, which got Aaron Booned out of the playoffs, only to have their day in the sun the next season. Outside of their core starting nine, Shea Hillenbrand was next in line for plate appearances, with only 200. Along with the 1975 A’s and 1982 Angels, these were the only three American League playoff teams on with six 600 plate-appearance players.
The 2007 World Series champion Red Sox are next, with three holdovers from the 2003 group — Jason Varitek, Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz — still in place. This also was a fairly old group. The core nine’s average age was 30.4. Interestingly, the 2008 Red Sox were the only AL playoff club since 1973 to have only three 500 plate appearance players. Boston began the season with the same core group, plus Jacoby Ellsbury, but injuries and midseason trades intervened, including the three-way deal that sent Manny Ramirez packing and brought Jason Bay to Fenway Park.
Then there’s the 2014 Royals. They didn’t platoon at any position, and the only notable extended absences among their core nine position players were caused by Eric Hosmer’s hand injury and Mike Moustakas‘ brief demotion to the minor leagues. They are by the far the youngest of these six clubs, with an average age of 27.8, and with as many — three — regulars ages 25 or younger as over 30.
In addition to the six aforementioned clubs with nine 500 plate-appearance guys, the following seven clubs had eight such players. The ninth position — the one that fell short — and the player who primarily manned it is listed for each club:
– 1977 Yankees (DH, Lou Piniella)
– 1990 Red Sox (SS, Luis Rivera)
– 1999 Rangers (CF, Tom Goodwin)
– 2005 Yankees (1B, Tino Martinez)
– 2007 Yankees (1B, Doug Mientkiewicz)
– 2008 White Sox (3B, Joe Crede)
– 2009 Yankees (C, Jorge Posada)
The 119 AL playoff teams in this study had an average of 6.02 players with 500 or more plate appearances. Interestingly, this average has fluctuated a bit over time:
| DECADE | AVG # 500PA |
|---|---|
| 1970s | 6.14 |
| 1980s | 5.50 |
| 1990s | 6.08 |
| 2000s | 6.32 |
| 2010s | 5.74 |
| DH ERA AVG | 6.02 |
The fairly significant climb in the average number of 500 PA regulars per AL playoff team from the 1980s to the 2000s is quite interesting. In fact, eight of the 13 instances that AL playoff clubs in the DH era had eight or nine 500 PA guys occurred between 1996 and 2009. Eight occurrences in those 14 seasons; only five in the other 27. This would seem to roughly coincide with the bulk of what most would consider the peak of the game’s steroid era. While increased strength is perhaps the most obvious impact of performance enhancers, reduction in recovery time for minor injuries is arguably as significant. The game has also made a conscious effort to root out amphetamine use in recent years. The primary reason a player would take amphetamines would be get through the grind of the regular season, both by increasing focus and allowing them to play through the symptoms of wear-and-tear injuries that otherwise would cost them playing time. Though we’re just halfway through the current decade, the decline in 500 PA players per American League playoff team has been quite stark, making this year’s Royals that much more of an outlier.
So how does the historic durability of the 2014 Royals help explain their success?
– They have a pretty good starting catcher. Only nine catchers in baseball had the requisite 502 plate appearances to qualify for a batting title this season. Salvador Perez, obviously, was one of them. This is the position that weeds out a bunch of clubs that wind up with just six or seven ironmen. The list of catchers on the six teams with nine 500 PA guys is an impressive one. You have to be athletic enough to handle the daily grind, and must be a strong two-way player, unless you are an extremely proficient defender, like Bob Boone, or an extremely impactful offensive player, like Gene Tenace.
– They possess a solid combination of youth, athleticism and — yes — some luck. Injury avoidance is a skill, both from a player’s and an organization’s perspective. Youth is obviously on the Royals’ side, and while they grade low in power production overall, each member of their everyday lineup with the exception of Billy Butler is clearly a better than average athlete for his position. As for the role of luck? Take another look at the 1982 Angels lineup. I have no idea how that group held up for an entire season.
– Their regulars have diverse skill sets and are at least respectable against same-handed pitchers. Teams platoon because of specific offensive strengths and weaknesses of individual members on the roster. The Royals get so much complementary value — via speed and defense — from their regulars that it compensates for their offensive shortcomings. While Hosmer and Moustakas continue to struggle at times with lefty pitching, they’re showing signs of progress, and they bring enough to the table to warrant remaining in the lineup.
– They have a pretty good, patient manager. For all of the heat Ned Yost takes — much of it for good reason — for his game management tendencies, he has proven to be an exceptional player-development manager at the big league level. Before his tenure in Kansas City, he managed a very young club in Milwaukee, with the likes of Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder, Corey Hart and J.J. Hardy, to name a few, simultaneously cutting their teeth in the majors. Yost will ride out the hard times and see the good in the player, showing much more patience than the typical manager. It’s good to see him finally getting some postseason payback in return for his labor.
– Their steady, everyday lineup has enabled them to put together a fairly unique postseason roster. The benefits of platooning are obvious. One of the downsides is the number of moving parts involved and the number of roster spots they can chew up. The Royals were able to play their small-ball, speed-oriented game to an extreme in the early stages of the playoffs by having not one, but two guided missiles on their bench: Dyson and Terrance Gore. While Gore’s role is an extremely limited one, he did have an impact. Back in the days of four-man rotations and 10-man pitching staffs, clubs were able to stock their benches with a diverse portfolio of offensive players — like Olympic sprinter Herb Washington — in the postseason. Now, with frequent lefty-righty matchups and deep pitching staffs as the norm, teams have had to do more with less on offense. The Royals’ heavy reliance on their core nine has enabled them to add a niche player that no other 2014 playoff club would have been able to have.
The 2014 Royals are not great. In my article earlier this week, I picked the Giants in five, and I’m feeling good about it. Still, this has been a great season for a slightly above average Kansas City club. The future doesn’t look so bad either. Their position-player core is young and affordable, enabling them to potentially open the wallet for necessary upgrades in right field, possibly at third base and eventually at second base. American League regulars with 500 or more plate appearances slashed .269/.332/.418 in 2014. Everyone else slashed .237/.299/.360. The Royals are far from an offensive juggernaut, but as long as the team continues to minimize the number of plate appearances given to players in that second group, they have a chance.
Because they win the games.
The Kansas city club continues to get more runs than the other team. This is why they are still in it. If they continue, they will be the champions.
They have pitchers who know how to win!
Interesting situation and article (nice pun in the title).
Durability is often a factor in determining who wins the division, makes the playoffs, etc.
To me, thats one of the most amazing things about the much-derided 2006 Cardinals. Its basically the same team as the 2004 and 2005 cardinals, which were the best in baseball … only in 2006 they experienced major injuries (Mulder, Pujols, Eckstein, Isringhausen, Edmonds).
We often look at the reasons why teams “don’t make the playoffs” and for good teams “injuries” is often a reason. So, it makes sense that durability would be a reason why other teams do make the playoffs.
I take issue with the statement that injury avoidance is a skill. Is there anything to actually suggest this is true? Other than reinjuring the same thing, are injured players more likely to have a second injury, once we control for age? If so, that would suggest there is actually some sort of skill involved, and not just random luck causing people to get injured then initiating a positive feedback, where one injury makes it easier to get a second injury.
It certainly depends on the injury, but I don’t think it’s an accident that a guy like Ripken could avoid missing a game for over a decade, while Tulo seems to add a new injury to the list every year. I’m not sure if ‘skill’ is the right word, but durability certainly seems to be an attribute that some players possess and others don’t.
This. As great of a talent Tulo is, any team trading for that contract must know that he hasn’t played in 150 games in five years and he is only 30.
Perhaps it’s something of an attribute, but you can’t deny the skill involved in some plays like an outfielder avoiding hard contact with a wall, or a middle infielder finding a way to avoid a baserunner coming in on a take-out slide, or a batter keeping his extremities protected on pitches in tight.
I don’t know that I disagree completely, but if injury-avoidance is a non-accident (or possibly a “skill”), it should be measurable and predictable to some degree.
A few of things to respond to here:
1) Can we avoid anecdotes from one or two players? If its a skill or pure luck, one or two players on the extreme are going to happen no matter what.
2) I do believe there are certain things a player can do to avoid injury. Like being fit, ie doing the right kind of weight training or cardo, and being flexible. But most players are doing this as well as we know how to do it. So I can’t imagine there is much separation in this “work ethic” skill.
3) On field events that are highly likely to lead to injury can be avoided only to a certain extent, it only takes one screw up out of hundreds of plays to get a significant injury, and many plays also involve choices other players make, not just yourself.
So, you probably only have so much control in avoiding these plays (like the turning a double play, which depends on the placement of the throw from the other fielder and the slide of the runner). I see it as a bit like driving a car. After you go above some baseline defensive driving techniques, there probably isn’t much separation in the chance of getting in a accident for drivers that are good at avoiding accidents and merely average at it.
There is totally different work ethics. Sandoval only recently took on a healthy diet. Rowand, despite being paid all that money and the way he start out hot then fade in second half, would only ride his mountain bike as his fitness exercise during the off season. Benitez has never seen a buffet that he could pass up.
Sure there are a few that deviate from the norm, but part of it is knowing what works for you. Ultimately, the majority of these people are professional athletes still fighting for the really big pay check or their next big pay check. They work out accordingly. The unhealthy slob is the rarity. The except that proves the rule.
I’m reminded of something Eddie Murray, years ago, said in response to this question: “Why don’t you dive into the stands once in a while to try and catch foul balls?” The question was prompted by a few nice foul ball grabs by a scrub named Jim Traber, who was subbing for Murray for a few games.)
Murray’s response (I’m paraphrasing): “Who’s going to take my place in the lineup? I’ve been averaging more than 27 homers and 90 RBI for 10 seasons. No one catch is going to win or lose a game, let alone a chance for a division title. But losing a key player for an extended period just so you can make the highlight reel can definitely hurt your team’s chances of going to the playoffs.”
Some players get that. Some don’t. And some are just plain brittle.
To be fair, I don’t think people (be they Jim Traber or Bryce Harper) go diving into the stands and into walls thinking “Gee I’m gonna make the highlights tonight!” Rather, I think they don’t know how to go less than 100% full speed all the time, occasionally to their detriment.
Also, you can’t call conditioning a skill, necessarily, but it is an attitude and a work ethic, which many major leaguers lack. I’m not sure for KC how much this has to do with the new-ish training staff (their longtime head trainer Nick Swartz retired in 2009), but that might be an angle worth exploring.
I disagree. I constantly tell my girlfriend to stop “moving so fast” around the house. For instance, if the phone rings, instead of jumping up and banging your knees into the coffee table, I try to get her to take a deep breath, and move slow. So, I would say that there is some amount of skill to “injury avoidance” although it absolutely cannot be avoided completely.
Well, striking out can’t be avoided completely but some players are better at it than others. There’s a component of chance to everything in baseball, in some cases very large and in other cases rather small. While getting beaned in the head as a runner during a pickoff attempt might be a pure fluke, some fielders are almost certainly better at not hurting themselves during catches; likewise some batters are better at getting out of the way of pitches (and some pitchers are better at protecting themselves from comebackers, either because of how they end their pitching motion or just from sheer reflexes).
And if the skill is so small compared to random chance we can’t quantify it….?
No injury avoidance hasn’t been something that an MLB organization has shown over a prolonged stretch that they can do at a statistically superior level compared to other MLB teams.
Stan Conte would agree despite much effort and analysis to try to figure out why.
It’s both a skill and a talent. Some players take care of themselves better or play in way that’s not likely to result in injury (or effort, often). Other players are simply more durable. They have stronger tendons, ligaments, and bones than their colleagues.
On a somewhat related note – how was 502 PA set as the magic number to qualify for the batting title? Why not just 500, or exactly 3 PA/game (486)?
I guess 501 just isn’t enough of a sample to tell how good of a hitter someone is, and 503 is more data than you need, really. (Which of course can be said for any arbitrary cutoff.)
Interesting question. 502 is based on requiring 3.1 PA per scheduled game, but that doesn’t answer the question of why they decided on 3.1 as the standard.
They wanted to use Pi, but not with all those decimel places.
Until 1957, the rule was a nice even 400 AB’s in the 154 game season (or 2.6 at-bats per team game).
In 1957, they changed the rule to 3.1 plate appearances per team game. So they switched from AB’s to PA’s. Maybe they were aiming for another round number? Nope, 3.1 PA’s works out to 477 PA’s over 154 games. Maybe they were trying to keep the playing time the same as 400 AB’s but were trying to be fair to guys who walked a lot? Nope, in the 1950’s, 400 AB’s would’ve (on average) required only about 450 PA’s.
So the history doesn’t help explain anything.
I went over to Bill James’ site and asked the question, and was lucky enough to time it so that he answered it right away. I don’t think his answer conflicts with anything you said, but he does have a reason for the number:
Oh, yeah, the 1954 AL race Bill mentioned was when Ted Williams led the league in batting average at .345, but lost the batting title to Bobby Avila who hit .341 because Williams only had 386 AB (with 526 PA).
Thanks Hank (and Bill)!
Two things that this article made me think of:
Shea Hillenbrand’s MVP 05 promo video. LOL.
and
“Gene Tenace at the plate and..WHAMMY!”
EA Sports.
It’s in the *WHACK*
If they’re not bringin’ the NotGraphs to us, the least we can do is bring the NotGraphs back to them. I like the cut of your jib.
“A slightly above average team”
LOL. 89-73 / 9-1 is now “slightly” above average. 172 outcomes **still** isn’t a large enough sample size for the SABRs. I guess it’s easier to just dismiss everything as luck (or as Cameron did, as essentially a poker hand of a lifetime) than do actual introspection. Joe Morgan hated Moneyball, and Fangraphs hates Royalball
90 wins is also an arbitrary mark for a “good” team. If you get into the playoffs your record starts at 0-0, it’s a crapshoot after that.
Criticize fangraphs for dismissing the Royals all you want, but I think most fans would agree that an 89-win team is only “slightly above average”. That’s only 8 games above .500.
I think it is still considered 16 games above .500, but 8 wins turning into losses, sure, would make it .500.
But they’ve won 50 of their last 73 games. That’s a .685 winning percentage, or 111 wins over 162 games. They are clearly playing like a very good team right now. They are a great fielding team. They are second in projected team WAR on fangraphs team depth chart page. So I’d say they are actually a very good team. And it seems to me the sabr-minded should be and seem to be embracing it, a small market team getting the most out of fielding, high leverage bullpen work, youth, health (as this article points out), speed and baserunning.
I crave VALIDATION!!
Wait, J.D. Drew had 500 ABs in a season?
Wonder if the wear and tear on the Royals has any effect on 2015 Royal regulars.
Although they weren’t quite as healthy in 2013 as they have been in 2014, they were remarkably healthy last year as well. That lends itself to wondering if the Royals know something abt health that we don’t know.
A good read on a quirky subject. How about a list of NL teams ignoring the pitchers spot? In other words, over the same period how many NL playoff teams had eight 500 PA players on their team?
You seem to be implying anyone cares about the NL!
Also, wouldn’t a heightened run environment lead to more plate appearances in general? During the “steroid era” teams accumulated more plate appearances than in today’s game. This year, the Angels led the league with 6284 PA. Compare that to, say, 1999, when twenty-two teams surpassed that threshold, led by the Indians with 6554 PA, and it looks like it was more than just injury prevention from steroid and amphetamine use that allowed eight teams between 1996 and 2009 to accomplish the “feat” described by Tony. There were simply more plate appearances to go around. Kind of lazy.
“I picked the Giants in five, and I’m feeling good about it”
LOL. Why? Aren’t these all random outcomes? Aren’t short series pointless to analyze? Don’t they lack any statistical meaning?
Think about what you said. It totally undercuts Cameron’s arguments about the “poker hand” theory of a short series
The Giants are favored because it’s an even numbered year, obviously. Some people.
Joe, are you saying boo, or boo-urns?
I was saying Boo-urns…
The royals pitching will carry them this series. I think SF had to win game one or they were in real trouble. Bum garner is their only reliable guy (and lefty).
I think it’s the royals series to lose. I don’t like your giants in 5 guess at all
If the team with the 4th best record in the AL is ‘slightly above average’ what does that say about the rest of the league?
FanGraphs leads the league in backhanded compliments.
6 teams in the AL had between 80 and 89 wins. There were only 4 teams that were truly bad in the AL this year. There were only 2 teams that were truly good. The Royals were in a bunch of very similar teams that were clustered fairly close together. They were good but not great at run prevention, and they were poor but not terrible at scoring. They might win the Series, but they were a “slightly abovbe-average” team all season long.
Nice try, but it doesn’t make any sense to lump an 89 win team in with teams winning 80 games! Why didn’t you group the Royals in with the Tigers who won 90 games, only 1 game more than the Royals? Because the facts wouldn’t help your argument?
In all of MLB only 6 teams had more wins than the Royals and 2 of them (Tigers and Cardinals) had only 1 more win. So, only 4 teams were more than 1 game better than the Royals.
That’s quite the distorted view of “slightly above average” you have.
Holy Semantics Batman!
They are 7th out of 30. One game above 3 teams at 88 wins, and 2 games above a 4th. So there wasn’t much differentiating slots 5-11 when ordering teams by wins. More or less, it was a 7 way tie for 11th this year.
Slightly above average, good, what ever. Until wining the right 8 games, there was basically nothing distinguishing the Royals from 36% of other teams in the league.
I should clarify that last bit, that is if all we apparently give a darn about is wins when clustering teams into groups….
So, so much wringing of hands and clutching of pearls over whether the Royals are “slightly above averge”, “solidly above average”, “great”, “merely good”, “superduper awesome”, etc.
Jesus, fanbases are insufferably sometimes. (Not just KC, each team’s whiny, entitled fanbase seems to take their turn.)
(Except the Cubs. Because Cubs.)
I hear your complaints, Jason B. That said, Go Royals!!
Thank you JC. I have a litany of other complaints that I will forward along.
I loved you in that Jim Caveziel movie.
Herb Washington became chairman of the board of the Buffalo Fed and was a Director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Quite a life story.
This post struck me as odd. Why is it interesting to compare the Royals to past healthy playoff teams? Once they’re in the playoffs it’s a crapshoot anyway. Isn’t the more interesting thing that the health of the Royals was a key to getting them to the playoffs in the first place? I’d like to know how often being healthy as a team led to making the playoffs vs. missing them.
How about the same for pitchers, at least starting pitchers? There have been some teams, I believe, that went the whole season with their starting 5.
It may be worthwhile to look at teams that would have made the playoffs if there had been 2 WC spots available. There have been some very good teams with better records than the Royals or Giants that would have made the playoffs with the current format.
The royals starters pitched every game this season. 5 SP. Take into consideration that three of them were over 30, and one was a rookie and that’s insane.
Gotta love that 1982 Angels lineup, with 6 of the 9 regulars falling into that “Hall Of Very Good” category (the others being HOFers Carew and Jackson, and good glove/no bat Tim Foli).
The Royals have scared Fangraphs every b
Too frightening to even complete that sen
Why is everyone talking about Candleja
I
I don’t think Butler is a below average athlete for a DH. His competition is guys like Ortiz and V Mart.
Still feel good about SF in 5?
Oh wait lemme guess: “short series doesn’t prove anything”, Amirite?
Yeah, definitely an overreaction to game one loss against the best pitcher in the post season this year (and a lefty which the royals struggle with). The royals bullpen is lock down if they can get through 6 innings. I said it earlier but it’s clearly the royals series to lose
You’re right. The teams seem evenly matched on paper and last night could’ve gone either way. Still, I’m confused as to why the author would say he “feels pretty good” about a 5-game series given the randomness of a short series…..esp one between even teams.
If anything it would be surprising if it went 5-games.