Having great starting pitching rules so hard

It’s amazing

The Kansas City Royals are 10 games over .500. They’re a legitimate good team and their run differential proves it–they’re not a fluke. And yet, it can be easy to wonder how they’re so good. After all, their bullpen is in the bottom 10 of the league and struggles mightily to strike people out. After Salvy and Bobby, the lineup is disappointingly thin.

And then you look at the starting pitching and go, oh yeah, that’s why the Royals are good. Kansas City’s starting rotation has been incredible.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I tend not to think immediately about the rotation, in part because the Royals have rarely had good ones. Even in 2014 and 2015, the Royals rotation was in the middle of the pack and functioned as a vehicle to get the ball to the lockdown bullpen. Starting pitching is expensive, and the small market Royals haven’t been able to compete for the high-end arms. And, of course, their pitching development woes have been well documented, so there have rarely been homegrown stars to root for.

But this year’s rotation? Oh man, this year’s rotation goes so hard. As a group, they are an undeniably top five rotation, where they rank third in ERA, second in Wins Above Replacement (per Fangraphs), and fifth in FIP. They are third in the league in quality starts with 51. They are fifth in strikeout rate. They are second in home run rate. To be sure, they’ve taken advantage of what is arguably the best defense in baseball, but what the pitchers can control they’ve controlled fantastically well.

Mathematically, starting pitching is so important because of the share of innings they must shoulder. Ideally, you want your starters to go five or six innings, meaning that as a team you’re aiming for 60% of your innings to go to starters. Since that’s, obviously, a majority of your innings, it’s better for those innings to be good. Groundbreaking stuff here, I know, but that’s precisely why the Royals have been able to cover their flaws so well: a killer rotation gives you way more innings than a killer bullpen does.

What’s so great about this year’s rotation is that it was purposefully assembled and/or supercharged by the current baseball operations administration under JJ Picollo in a way that does not feel like a fluke. Brady Singer, the poster child of the 2018 college draft class, has improved dramatically thanks to a different pitch mix and the addition of a cutter. Alec Marsh has been occasionally frustrating, but he’s been the quintessential effective fifth starter–and an internally developed one at that.

Meanwhile, the rest of the rotation is a masterclass in scouting and talent identification. In a free agent pitching class that had a lot of options this past offseason, the Royals went with Michael Wacha and Seth Lugo on creative contracts; they’ve been quite effective especially compared to other options. And Cole Ragans, the crown jewel in the rotation, was a midseason acquisition last year who immediately turned into a Cy Young candidate out of nowhere.

There is no grand opus or point to this article. But similarly to Jeremy Greco’s article about Bobby Witt Jr.’s pure joy and talent, I just wanted to sit down for a second and smell the roses here, which in this case smell like sliders and strikeouts. And in fact, more than any position player, the rotation gives Royals fans a reason to turn on every game: we know that the guy on the mound isn’t just going to give the Royals a chance to win, but a better chance to win than the other pitcher will. It’s an amazing feeling, and it’s the defining feature of this resurgent 2024 season.