As I'm sure you've noticed by now, the Kansas City Royals offense is quite awful. The Royals are last in the American League in runs with 147, which is the main reason why they are the not-so-proud owners of an 18-26 record and currently occupy the AL Central cellar.
This isn't a particularly new development for the Royals. With the exception of their World Series team in 2015, the current makeup of the club has always ranked near the bottom of the league in runs scored. They've made up for that with some good timely hitting, decent starting pitching, phenomenal defense and an otherworldly bullpen.
The Royals no longer have a phenomenal defense, merely a good one. They no longer have an otherworldly bullpen, merely an average one. So here we are.
I'm not interested in discussing all of that, however. I'm interested in delving into what exactly is plaguing this year's version of the offense. In years past, the Royals have possessed one elite skill in the offensive department: their ability to make contact.
Through 44 games this season, the Royals rank dead last in batting average (.230) and are fifth in strikeouts with 333. Those are both a serious departure from where they were even last season.
Where the Royals have always lagged is walks and home runs. They're still poor at drawing walks, ranking second-to-last in that department with 116. But they're actually on pace for their best home-run season in franchise history. As it stands now, they've hit 48 home runs and rank ninth in the league in that category. The club record is 168; they're on pace for 178.
So home runs are up and, while only slightly, so are the walks. So why on earth is this offense tracking to be the worst one of the Dayton Moore era?
-------
I was watching the Royals' series against the Twins over the weekend and a thought popped into my head as the Royals clubbed four home runs in a 6-4 win over the Twins in the first game of Sunday's doubleheader.
"It seems like there are only three results when this team puts the ball in play: an out, a single or a home run."
This thought struck me. And I tried to think back and recall games this season in which the Royals had multiple extra-base hits that weren't home runs. Surely this had occurred a few times this season, right? Answer: Yes, 14 times to be exact. They have seven games in which they've had two non-HR extra-base hits, six in which they've had three and one game in which they've had four.
Nevertheless, it was alarming to me that I couldn't think of an occurrence off the top of my head.
So I took a look at their doubles totals this season, a staple of their decent offensive teams in recent years. The numbers backed up my inclination. The Royals have hit just 52 doubles in 44 games, ranking them dead last by a wide margin in the league. They've also hit just three triples, ranking them third-to-last in the league.
What exacerbates this data is the ball park the Royals play in. Kauffman Stadium's cavernous outfield is conducive to extra-base hits. The 2011 Royals were the best at exploiting this. That team finished sixth in the league in runs and hit just 129 home runs (11th in the AL). But they hit 325 doubles, which ranked second in the league. The 2012 team took a step back offensively, but was still third in the league in doubles with 295. The 2013 team was bad at everything offensively. They ranked last in home runs, 12th in doubles and 11th in runs. (The firing of hitting coach Kevin Seitzer, who preached a line-drive and gap approach, coincidentally lines up with this decline).
The 2014 Royals were one of the worst home-run hitting teams in the modern era, managing just 95 long balls, but they were ninth in runs because they hit 286 doubles, which was fourth in the league. And the 2015 Royals finally recaptured the 2011 offensive approach and finished sixth in runs, third in doubles with 300 and fourth in triples with 42.
The 2017 Royals are on pace to hit just 137 doubles. It would, quite obviously, be by far their worst mark in franchise history. Even the 1969 Royals, who scored an abysmal 586 runs, hit 179 doubles.
It's difficult to suss out what exactly the root cause is for this sudden doubles departure. At 44 games, the sample size is too large to brush it off as just a statistical anomaly that will correct itself. The most simple explanation is this team is putting the ball in play less frequently than it has in recent seasons. As was mentioned earlier, their strikeouts are up at 20.6 percent, compared to about 16 percent in 2014-15, and hits are down.
With more balls in play, one would expect the doubles total to rise. But by how much? If anything, it might point to a basic flaw in the team's overall hitting approach, which combined with the aging curve this crop of players is experiencing, has led to subpar results.
The Royals will almost certainly never have an offense that ranks in the top two or three in the league. They don't have the payroll or the ballpark for it and they seemingly have never had the ability to draft and develop the players to make up for those two things. But what has made their offense viable in this most recent run of success is their ability to use the ballpark to their advantage by employing a line-drive hitting approach that hits gaps and allows their young legs to take advantage of it.
The Royals are no longer young. And while their home-run power is experiencing an uptick, it does not appear to be the best path for them to take toward success if it means sacrificing putting the ball in play.
These are important things for the front office to consider with an inevitable rebuild looming.
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Monday, May 15, 2017
Is Alex Gordon Done?
The Kansas City Royals are fresh off a sweep of the Baltimore Orioles over the weekend and are all of the sudden one of the hottest teams in baseball, having won six of seven. Yet, they remain in last place in the division and tied for the worst record in the American League at 16-21 while also possessing an ugly -37 run differential.
The question of whether the Royals should stay the course as a contender or have a fire sale will linger for the next month or so and will hinge, obviously, on the club's performance over that stretch.
Amidst all of this, a disturbing storyline has persisted. Alex Gordon, the team's highest-paid player, fan favorite and starting left fielder is lost at the plate. In 35 games he's hitting .152 with a .264 on-base percentage and a .192 slugging percentage. He is, quite simply, the worst hitter in baseball currently.
Gordon's sudden demise at the plate is perplexing to say the least. It's quite common for a hitter to decline once he reaches his early 30s and Gordon is 33. But there are very few examples of a player of Gordon's stature falling off a cliff like this.
Gordon's best season came in 2011 at age 27 when he hit .303/.376/.502. From 2011-2015 he was one of the best 10 players in baseball as measured by bWAR; though he's never again approached that .500 slugging percentage mark. During that five-year span Gordon settled in as about an .800 OPS guy who played Gold Glove defense in left field. He was the team's best player.
He showed zero signs of slowing down in his age 31 season in 2015 and, in fact, was tracking toward his best year since 2011 before going down with a nasty groin injury that caused him to miss about two months of the season. He still posted a career-high OBP season (.377) and had an OPS of .809. The Royals won a World Series, one which Gordon was a hero in, and in the offseason the club signed him to a franchise-record 4-year $72 million deal.
It has all gone awry since.
Playing against the White Sox in May Gordon collided with third baseman Mike Moustakas while going after a foul ball in what was the seminal moment of the season that was riddled with injuries to key players. Gordon broke his hand and missed six weeks. Moustakas tore his ACL and missed the rest of the season.
It was May 22 and Gordon was hitting .211/.319/.331. Not good, but it could simply be deemed a slow start and one that could be recovered from over the course of a full season. Gordon finished with a line .220/.312/.380. He had a .649 OPS in July, essentially his first full month back, and then showed signs of putting it all together in August when he hit .265/.348/.510. A bad September lowered his season totals. Gordon was actually right in line, given the time missed, with his career averages in home runs with 17. However, he was far below his extra-base hits totals.
I for one chalked up his poor season to nothing more than some misfortune. I felt his slow start was exacerbated by the injury and it was essentially a lost season. Not what you want from a guy making $16M a year on a small-market club, but understandable and nothing too alarming, although he did have a career high strikeout rate of 29.2 percent.
Ultimately, I was confident Gordon would rebound this season and while his best years are clearly behind him, I felt he was capable of OPS'ing around .780 and being a two or three-win player. Which makes what's occurred so far this season so confounding.
The easiest way to explain Gordon's struggles is his sudden propensity to hit the ball on the ground. Gordon currently has a 53.2 percent groundball rate; by far the highest of his career. He simply isn't elevating the baseball. Or, in Royals terms, he's caught a case of the Eric Hosmers.
Gordon has never been a big-time power hitter, but it's May 15 and he hasn't hit a home run. What's more, he has just five extra-base hits (!), all of which are doubles. Gordon has a career BABIP of .314. His current BABIP is .200. Usually, that's an indicator of bad luck that will correct itself over the course of 162 games. The issue with Gordon, as it has been with Hosmer, is when you hit the ball on the ground more than half of the time, those are usually converted into outs.
It's not bad luck, it's bad hitting.
According to longtime baseball writer Jayson Stark, who appears weekly with Soren Petro on 810 WHB in Kansas City, some scouts around baseball are speculating that Gordon can no longer get around on major-league fastballs. If that's true, it's even more baffling, considering that was Gordon's signature skill during his 2011-15 run, as he was the sixth-best hitter in the American League against fastballs, compiling a 92.4 runs above average, per Fangraphs. Other players on that list include: Miguel Cabrera, Mike Trout, Nelson Cruz, Jose Bautista and David Ortiz.
Since 2016, however, Gordon is just 1.1 runs above average against the pitch, a catastrophic dip. He enters the series against the New York Yankees batting .190 against four-seam fastballs and .167 against two-seamers, according to MLB Statcast data. The league average against those pitches is .271.
While it's still probably too early to conclude Gordon no longer has the bat speed to hit a major-league fastball, these are scary numbers for Royals fans.
While it's a blog topic for a different day, I was a major proponent of resigning Gordon back in 2016 and I was a fan of the contract. To me, Gordon fit the profile of a player who would age well. His diet and fitness regimen is renowned around baseball. He's a tremendous athlete, who transitioned seamlessly from third base to left field. He has always had a good eye at the plate. I likened him to Carlos Beltran in terms of aging gracefully and thought he could replicate that production through the course of his contract.
So far, that hasn't come to fruition. So it's fair to wonder if Gordon is in fact "done." If so, it severely hinders the Royals going forward and actually accentuates the club's need to sell at the deadline. A large part of me, however, believes there's some flukiness to all this. It's somewhat unprecedented for a player with Gordon's core attributes as a player to suddenly fall off a cliff at age 33. A decline was expected, but he's slugging .192 for God's sake. It seems inconceivable that this type of poor performance would continue.
For the Royals' sake, let's hope that intuition is accurate. Because if not, it'll be an ugly end to one of the greatest Royals careers of all time.
The question of whether the Royals should stay the course as a contender or have a fire sale will linger for the next month or so and will hinge, obviously, on the club's performance over that stretch.
Amidst all of this, a disturbing storyline has persisted. Alex Gordon, the team's highest-paid player, fan favorite and starting left fielder is lost at the plate. In 35 games he's hitting .152 with a .264 on-base percentage and a .192 slugging percentage. He is, quite simply, the worst hitter in baseball currently.
Gordon's sudden demise at the plate is perplexing to say the least. It's quite common for a hitter to decline once he reaches his early 30s and Gordon is 33. But there are very few examples of a player of Gordon's stature falling off a cliff like this.
Gordon's best season came in 2011 at age 27 when he hit .303/.376/.502. From 2011-2015 he was one of the best 10 players in baseball as measured by bWAR; though he's never again approached that .500 slugging percentage mark. During that five-year span Gordon settled in as about an .800 OPS guy who played Gold Glove defense in left field. He was the team's best player.
He showed zero signs of slowing down in his age 31 season in 2015 and, in fact, was tracking toward his best year since 2011 before going down with a nasty groin injury that caused him to miss about two months of the season. He still posted a career-high OBP season (.377) and had an OPS of .809. The Royals won a World Series, one which Gordon was a hero in, and in the offseason the club signed him to a franchise-record 4-year $72 million deal.
It has all gone awry since.
Playing against the White Sox in May Gordon collided with third baseman Mike Moustakas while going after a foul ball in what was the seminal moment of the season that was riddled with injuries to key players. Gordon broke his hand and missed six weeks. Moustakas tore his ACL and missed the rest of the season.
It was May 22 and Gordon was hitting .211/.319/.331. Not good, but it could simply be deemed a slow start and one that could be recovered from over the course of a full season. Gordon finished with a line .220/.312/.380. He had a .649 OPS in July, essentially his first full month back, and then showed signs of putting it all together in August when he hit .265/.348/.510. A bad September lowered his season totals. Gordon was actually right in line, given the time missed, with his career averages in home runs with 17. However, he was far below his extra-base hits totals.
I for one chalked up his poor season to nothing more than some misfortune. I felt his slow start was exacerbated by the injury and it was essentially a lost season. Not what you want from a guy making $16M a year on a small-market club, but understandable and nothing too alarming, although he did have a career high strikeout rate of 29.2 percent.
Ultimately, I was confident Gordon would rebound this season and while his best years are clearly behind him, I felt he was capable of OPS'ing around .780 and being a two or three-win player. Which makes what's occurred so far this season so confounding.
The easiest way to explain Gordon's struggles is his sudden propensity to hit the ball on the ground. Gordon currently has a 53.2 percent groundball rate; by far the highest of his career. He simply isn't elevating the baseball. Or, in Royals terms, he's caught a case of the Eric Hosmers.
Gordon has never been a big-time power hitter, but it's May 15 and he hasn't hit a home run. What's more, he has just five extra-base hits (!), all of which are doubles. Gordon has a career BABIP of .314. His current BABIP is .200. Usually, that's an indicator of bad luck that will correct itself over the course of 162 games. The issue with Gordon, as it has been with Hosmer, is when you hit the ball on the ground more than half of the time, those are usually converted into outs.
It's not bad luck, it's bad hitting.
According to longtime baseball writer Jayson Stark, who appears weekly with Soren Petro on 810 WHB in Kansas City, some scouts around baseball are speculating that Gordon can no longer get around on major-league fastballs. If that's true, it's even more baffling, considering that was Gordon's signature skill during his 2011-15 run, as he was the sixth-best hitter in the American League against fastballs, compiling a 92.4 runs above average, per Fangraphs. Other players on that list include: Miguel Cabrera, Mike Trout, Nelson Cruz, Jose Bautista and David Ortiz.
Since 2016, however, Gordon is just 1.1 runs above average against the pitch, a catastrophic dip. He enters the series against the New York Yankees batting .190 against four-seam fastballs and .167 against two-seamers, according to MLB Statcast data. The league average against those pitches is .271.
While it's still probably too early to conclude Gordon no longer has the bat speed to hit a major-league fastball, these are scary numbers for Royals fans.
While it's a blog topic for a different day, I was a major proponent of resigning Gordon back in 2016 and I was a fan of the contract. To me, Gordon fit the profile of a player who would age well. His diet and fitness regimen is renowned around baseball. He's a tremendous athlete, who transitioned seamlessly from third base to left field. He has always had a good eye at the plate. I likened him to Carlos Beltran in terms of aging gracefully and thought he could replicate that production through the course of his contract.
So far, that hasn't come to fruition. So it's fair to wonder if Gordon is in fact "done." If so, it severely hinders the Royals going forward and actually accentuates the club's need to sell at the deadline. A large part of me, however, believes there's some flukiness to all this. It's somewhat unprecedented for a player with Gordon's core attributes as a player to suddenly fall off a cliff at age 33. A decline was expected, but he's slugging .192 for God's sake. It seems inconceivable that this type of poor performance would continue.
For the Royals' sake, let's hope that intuition is accurate. Because if not, it'll be an ugly end to one of the greatest Royals careers of all time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)