Some numbers to define the Royals offense

Eight stats to illustrate how the Royals are scoring runs in this young season.

At 6-4 through their first 10 games, the Royals are off to a solid, respectable start. Given how they’ve opened recent seasons, it’s beyond fantastic.

The pitching has received a lot of attention, with good reason. The starters have been nails two times through the rotation. The bullpen wobbled in the first two series, but seemed to find its footing against the White Sox over the weekend. The hitting has obviously been led by Bobby Witt Jr. but there have been some interesting trends and numbers that have popped up in the first 10 games that deserve mention.

There’s still plenty of baseball to be played and most—if not all—the small sample size caveats apply, but I chose to focus on some big-picture type of numbers for both the team and some individual hitters to try to explain how the offense is performing. It’s good off day content!

4.4

The average Major League offense is plating 4.5 runs per game. The Royals are just below average at 4.4 runs per game. That’s notable because it feels like for, oh maybe the last six or seven years at about this point in the season the Royals would be making news for all the wrong reasons, doing something abysmal like scoring 2.8 runs a game or something. That they’re hanging around the league-average mark so early in the season is encouraging. The bats are clicking for the most part, but there’s still room for improvement. Last year they averaged 4.2 runs per game. Can they find another gear?

99.9

So close to 100. So close. This is Bobby Witt Jr’s average exit velocity. At 99.9 MPH, he owns the second-highest in the majors to the rejuvenated Miguel Sanó. It was so important that Witt get off to a strong start and by stinging the ball on the regular, he’s putting up monster numbers through the first 10 games. Witt has put 29 balls in play so far, 21 of them have left the bat faster than 95 MPH which classifies them as officially hard-hit. The only player with more hard-hit balls is Shohei Ohtani who has put 11 more balls in play than Witt.

2

Sorry. Not every number is a positive. This is the wRC+ of Vinnie Pasquantino. This is…this is a problem. I maintained all winter that the biggest addition to the Royals’ offense would come from a healthy Pasquantino. That clearly hasn’t happened and the fact he’s 98 percent worse than the league-average hitter so far while hitting in the heart of the order, it’s amazing the Royals have won six out of 10. Pasquantino isn’t barreling the ball, he’s not consistently hitting the ball hard and he’s driving the ball into the ground at an alarming rate. I’d like to say there are some positive signs, but if they’re there, I haven’t seen them. The contact is still there. It’s just not hard enough or at the right angle.

10

There was a lot of talk in spring training about focusing on situational hitting. The Royals weren’t very good at that last year. (They weren’t good at a lot of things, but I digress.) This is one of those areas where it’s easy to focus on the failure. If you don’t drive home that runner from scoring position, we see that. If you do…well, that was supposed to happen. This year with runners on third and less than two outs, the Royals have come to the plate 15 times. They’ve driven home 10 runners. They’re hitting .400/.474/.467 in that situation. I’d say that’s more than respectable. Overall, the team is hitting .256/.333/.415 with runners in scoring position which is exactly league average production.

17.4

I will, from time to time, focus on line drive rate. It’s a simple statistic that is easy to understand and appreciate, knowing that roughly 75 percent of all line drives end up as base hits. The Royals currently have a 17.4 percent line drive rate. That’s the fewest line drives on a percentage basis than any other team in the majors. By a lot. The next highest is the Diamondbacks at 19.9 percent. That’s quite a gulf between 29th and 30th place. The Royals are hitting more ground balls this year than last, but they’ve really boosted their fly ball rate, putting the ball in the air 30 percent of the time, which is the third-highest rate in baseball. Last year, Royals’ batters hit a flyball 27 percent of the time. It takes quite a bit for line drive rate to stabilize and the Royals are so far below the league average that I would expect it to bump up eventually. That different gear I mentioned earlier? It’s there. Speaking of hitting the ball in the air more…

14

This one kind of blows my mind because I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time following this team. The Royals have hit 14 home runs this year. That’s tied for the second most in baseball so far, behind only the 15 homers the Dodgers have clubbed. Seven of the nine regulars have left the yard with only Adam Frazier and Pasquantino yet to get one over the fence. No, I don’t expect this to continue, but given they’ve played seven games in the home run void known as Kauffman Stadium and then three games with a cavernous left field in Baltimore, it’s surprising that the Royals are ranking so high. Hell, given this team’s historical aversion to the long ball, this was always going to surprise.

.561

Speaking of home runs, I’m still a bit lightheaded of the power barrage Maikel Garcia has sprung on us to start the year. He’s currently slugging .561 out of the leadoff spot for the Royals, over 200 points higher than he posted last year when he hit all of four home runs and 20 doubles. With three dingers and two doubles so far this year, he’s 20 percent to his extra-base hit total from 2023. Given how his season played out last year, this power barrage feels purposeful.

24.2

This isn’t about the offense, but it’s here because it’s fun. I spend an unhealthy amount of time watching the playoff odds generated by the various projection systems. The Royals currently have a 24.2 percent chance of making the postseason according to FanGraphs. That’s a sexy number, even if it is April. What may be a little more optimistic is that the same projections are now tabbing the Royals for 79 wins. That would be an improvement of 23 games over where they finished last season. That would be insane. OK, OK…I’ll slow down a bit. The projections kind of confirm where I was at the start of the season. The Twins remain the prohibitive favorites to claim the division but spots two through four are up for grabs. That’ll work.