Royals Are From Mars, Tigers Are From Venus
The Royals lead the American League Central by one game over the Tigers after Detroit defeated the Indians Thursday night, 11-4 in 11 innings. The teams are even in wins with 77; the Tigers have two additional losses. The Royals are 19-19 in blowout games and 20-22 in one run games. For the Tigers, those numbers are 23-18 (blowouts) and 20-18 (one run games). Both teams have a higher winning percentage on the road and both have dominated in interleague games.
This morning, FanGraphs’ playoff odds gave the Tigers a 54.5% chance of taking the division. The Royals’ odds are at 44.4%. No other division race features such closely-divided odds. Even in the National League West race between the Dodgers and Giants — which the Dodgers lead by two games with 22 to play — FanGraphs gives LA an 83.3% chance of winning the division.
If you believe the projections, the AL Central race is as close as it can get between the Royals and the Tigers. And yet the teams have reached this point in completely different ways.
Let’s start with the basics and go from there. Heading into Thursday’s action, here are the Royals’ and Tigers’ overall numbers on offense, base running and defense.
| Team | HR | R | RBI | SB | BB% | K% | ISO | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | wRC+ | BsR | Off | Def | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royals | 88 | 564 | 525 | 130 | 6.1% | 15.7% | 0.117 | 0.263 | 0.312 | 0.380 | 0.306 | 93 | 9.8 | -28.9 | 43.5 | 20.1 |
| Tigers | 132 | 649 | 630 | 92 | 7.2% | 18.6% | 0.151 | 0.276 | 0.331 | 0.427 | 0.331 | 109 | -2.6 | 52.2 | -47.2 | 19.5 |
Look at the last column first. The Royals’ position players have produced just .6 Wins Above Replacement more than the Tigers’ position players. That’s a small difference when you consider the range among teams in the American League: the Orioles’ position players are first at 24.4 WAR and the Rangers’ are last at 6.9 WAR.
Now look how the Royals position players got there: Not by taking walks. Kansas City has the lowest walk rate in the league. Not by hitting home runs. They’ve hit only 88, fewest in the majors. The Royals don’t strike out much, only 15,7% of their at bats, but when they do put the ball in play, they don’t get on base any more than the average American League team. Over the summer, Diane Firstman dubbed the Royals the anti-three true outcome offense in a post over at The Hardball Times. She’s right. And yet the Royals have scored 564 runs, only 20 fewer than the AL average.
What the Royals do exceedingly well is make the most of their offensive opportunities. Their 130 stolen bases is the best in the AL, as is their collective 9.8 BsR score. With runners in scoring position, their team wRC+ jumps to 103, compared to just 93 wRC+ for all plate appearances. Get ’em on, at first usually. Get ’em over. Get ’em in.
The Tigers’ offense couldn’t be more different. They walk more than the Royals. They strike out more than the Royals. They hit significantly more home runs than the Royals. Their .427 slugging percentage is the best in the American League, as is their .331 wOBA and 109 wRC+. After Thursday night’s blowout of the Indians, Detroit leads the AL with 660 runs scored.
But the Tigers don’t take advantage with men on base the way the Royals do. Their collective -2.6 BsR isn’t worst in the league — that distinction goes to the White Sox — but it’s a far cry from what the Royals do. The Tigers also hit worse with runners in scoring position than they do overall — just a 102 wRC+ with a man on second or third. This also shows up in our Clutch metric. While it is a descriptive more than predictive stat, we can again see the chasm between the two teams — Kansas City is second in the AL with a Clutch score that qualifies as excellent at 2.85, while Detroit is dead last with a at -3.87 score that easily fits in the awful bin.
On offense, it’s advantage Tigers, but it should be by a larger margin.
It’s another story entirely on defense. The Royals are simply superb with the glove. We’ve written about Alex Gordon’s defense quite a bit recently (here and here in particular) but Gordon’s teammates are no defensive slouches. In addition to Gordon, four other Royals rank in the top 50 American League players in by our Defense metric (which is fielding runs above average with a positional adjustment added in): catcher Salvador Perez, shortstop Alcides Escobar, second baseman Omar Infante and right fielder Norichika Aoki.
The Tigers have one player on that list: second baseman Ian Kinsler.
The Royals excel at making the plays that are rated as nearly impossible to very difficult by Inside Edge — the plays with a 1%-10% of being made; 10%-40% chance; and 40%-60% chance . As you can see on the below chart, they significantly outplay the Tigers in those circumstances.
| Team | # 0% | # 1-10% | 1-10% | # 10-40% | 10-40% | # 40-60% | 40-60% | # 60-90% | 60-90% | # 90-100% | 90-100% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royals | 251 | 166 | 4.8% | 133 | 34.6% | 85 | 63.5% | 210 | 81.0% | 2335 | 97.8% |
| Tigers | 250 | 187 | 3.2% | 134 | 25.4% | 95 | 56.8% | 193 | 80.3% | 2285 | 97.7% |
The eye-popper stat on defense is Defensive Runs Saved. The Royals have accumulated +33 DRS. The Tigers are at -62.
On defense, it’s advantage Royals. And it’s not close.
The Tigers lead the American League in starters’ WAR but the Royals starters’ have been nearly as good or better in several ways. The biggest difference is in strikeouts and home runs allowed — the Tigers’ rotation has the edge in both.
Let’s take a look.
| Team | IP | K% | BB% | BAA | GB/FB | HR/9 | ERA | FIP | RS/9 | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tigers | 861.1 | 20.4% | 6.5% | 0.255 | 1.15 | 0.78 | 3.90 | 3.43 | 4.96 | 16.7 |
| Royals | 866.1 | 17.3% | 6.5% | 0.255 | 1.13 | 0.89 | 3.56 | 3.91 | 4.31 | 11.3 |
The teams significantly diverge in the bullpen — a glaring weakness for the Tigers and a pillar of strength for the Royals. Only the White Sox have a less valuable bullpen than the Tigers among American League teams.
Here are the key stats for each team’s relief corps.
| Team | IP | K% | BB% | HR/9 | BAA | HR/9 | ERA | FIP | RS/9 | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royals | 382.1 | 22.8% | 9.7% | 0.68 | 0.233 | 0.68 | 3.44 | 3.45 | 3.51 | 4.4 |
| Tigers | 386 | 20.0% | 9.1% | 0.93 | 0.267 | 0.93 | 4.34 | 4.14 | 4.06 | 0.3 |
For pitching, it’s advantage Royals — a startling turn of events in light of the dominance expected of the Tigers’ rotation, before and after they traded for David Price.
Two teams, separated by two losses, vying for one division title with fewer than 25 games left in the season. And they could hardly be more different.
Wendy writes about sports and the business of sports. She's been published most recently by Vice Sports, Deadspin and NewYorker.com. You can find her work at wendythurm.pressfolios.com and follow her on Twitter @hangingsliders.
And RAJ is from Jupiter because he got more stupider?
Nice article. It may be obvious, but it looks like the difference in starting pitcher ERA is accounted for by LOB% (only 70.1% for the Tigers, 74.6% for the Royals). It’s a neat parallel to the difference the two teams have on offense with RISP. Do you think both stats continue at this clip, or regress to ___?
Steve – don’t you think they have a higher LOB% because their defense is better & they convert more balls in play into outs?
Also I’m guessing that making more of the plays in the <60% bucket prevents a decent amount extra base hits/opportunities to advance.
That’s a good point! Along those lines, I often overlook what the FI stands for in FIP… It is probably reasonable to expect the ERA-FIP differences to continue.
Great article. I find it somewhat humorous that an organization that is widely ridiculed (aka all the “Dayton Moore Says” posts) by many at Fangraphs, a site that advocates for better recognition of the value of defense and baserunning over traditional stats such as home runs and RBIs, are winning through defense and baserunning.
By design?
Fangraphs folks (if we’re going to do stereotypes) also value good process over good results. If you want to make a case that Dayton Moore’s process is a good one, have at it.
That said, there have also been an awful lot of articles recently lauding the on-field Royals.
I find it humorous when the biased project biases onto others.
In fairness to Moore, I am pretty sure part of his process probably is having good fielding players and baserunners on the team, especially given cost-constraints and how those skills come more cheaply. Escobar and Cain came in the Greinke deal, as did Odorizzi, who somewhat helped get Shields and Davis (leaving aside the Myers end of that one). Perez was locked up long term cheaply, etc. Gordon was moved to left and they stuck with him. Dyson came in the 2006 draft (Moore was hired the day after that draft ended), but s a 50th rounder that Moore has entrusted with playing time, I guess that counts as part of his process. That Nori Aoki deal looked meh in April but now Aoki is at 1.4 WAR, Will Smith is at .5 for the Royals, and the Royals pen doesn’t seem to miss Smith too much.
I mean, it has taken him 8 years, and let’s see how often he can do it, but I am not going to begrudge him what seems like it may be a successful year, maybe a Division Title, one that has eluded the Royals for decades. And it sure looks like baserunning and fielding were emphasized in the process.
“The Process” involved Hosmer and Moose developing into All-Stars, and that sure hasn’t happened. Up to this point, that ‘greatest-ever farm system’ has not really produced much.
Why wouldn’t the process involve the hope highly thought of prospects would be cost controlled, productive players. That they’ve succeeded despite Hosmer and Moose disappointing is hardly an indictment of their process, and makes dealing Myers actually look more sensible. Prospects don’t always pan out. I wasn’t a fan of it myself but leaving that aside it’s clear the Royals have built a playoff contender with fielding, base running and pitching, mostly relief and mid-rotation guys helped by the fielding.
The Royals have markedly targeted good atheletes in building their farm system, a process that naturally leads to positive baserunning and defense.
What would make you think it’s not by design? I definitely think they built their pitching staff to maximize their defense, Vargas, Duffy, Guthrie, Shields, Chen, are all pitch-to-contact types and are for the most part fly ball pitchers. If you had a staff of high strikeout and/or ground ball types then their defense wouldn’t be as valuable.
“Fangraphs folks (if we’re going to do stereotypes) also value good process over good results. If you want to make a case that Dayton Moore’s process is a good one, have at it.”
Except that they only even ATTEMPT to analyze the process of teams that they have already deemed to have a good process. How many articles have you read on here about Billy Beane targeting flyball hitters, acquiring closers with big contracts to keep salaries down, making a great trade to improve his chance of winning the division by 2% because it is so important to avoid the wild card, etc etc etc.
Now how often has anyone here really put an ounce of vigor to try and pick the brain of a Dayton Moore, Brian Sabean, Jon Daniels, or any GM with a good team that doesn’t already carry the “stat head” label?
Now, I’m certainly not saying that I am qualified to figure out what a front office is thinking. I’m not even saying that any of the front offices that get panned around here are any good. All I am saying is that it is pretty disingenuous to say that the Royals have a bad process when nobody around here can even TRY to identify what it is.
Every post I have seen regarding the Royals defense has only been an attempt to explain the shock that they are doing somewhat well. Every move or non move has been criticized for the last two years, and while some of this is deserving, there has been an extreme mob mentality against the Royals on this site. A few “their defense is good ” articles does not suddenly make the site unbiased.
in our defense, it all pretty much goes back to the terrible Myers trade. At that point we all just assumed Moore was an idiot.
Lorenzo Cain is, I believe, just a few PAs away from qualifying, otherwise he would also easily be in the top 50 for DEF with 11.2
If you lower the PA threshold to 250, Jarrod Dyson comes in at #2.
“The Tigers are at -62.”
And here I thought trading Prince was supposed to stabilize the Tigers defense.
Well they were counting on iglesias and dirks helping there. That would be a big help
The scary thought is where would the Tigers defense be if they hadn’t traded Fielder.
Amazingly, when the Royals trot out their usual starters, either Omar Infante or Eric Hosmer (Gold Glove and all) is the weak link on defense.
Also amazingly: KC is the only team at this point with 6 pitchers at 2 WAR or above that have played the entire year with the team.
Nice title but stats have plenty of writers, your game was the legal and you were alone in front of the crowd Wendy. Perhaps a better target would be the Houston-Nix ‘mess’. Both sides want to sign Nix, but the MLB Rules say that HOU cannot. So both sides want to goto arb so that HOU can be ordered (and thus violate the rules) to pay Nix as agreed. That sort of circus seems ripe for your special insight Wendy.
^ this guy sucks
*blinks* lolwut
ah, the internet, capable of multiplying the worst in no time at all
Actually, that makes sense.
He’s saying that we have lots of stat writers here, but none of them are as good at legal stuff as Wendy is, so he would be more interested in reading a Nix article from her.
Wendy DOES do fantastic articles about the legal side of the game. Very true. But as we see here, she does a fantastic job on plain ol’ baseball articles also.
In other words, I don’t want to miss out on an article like this just because it’s not in her traditional wheelhouse.
Excellent article.
How is does the pitching advantage favor the Royals?
Because the Tigers’ defense is so bad that the starters are underperforming their FIP by half a run, whereas the opposite is true for the Royals. And bullpens . . . well, there’s not even a conversation about that.
Double jeopardy! You can’t hold the Tigers’ lousy defense against their hitters and then hold it against their pitchers too. If you add up the rotation and bullpen WAR, Tigers pitching still comes out on top. If you want to judge the pitchers by ERA, you’ve got to give the Tigers’ hitters the edge.
Of course, half the rotation is on death’s door as we speak, so maybe it’s all a moot point.
Interesting stuff! But shouldn’t it be Royals from Venus and Tigers from Mars?
Great article