The Royals are reaping the benefits of an offseason spending spree
Kansas City spent money in the offseason like a team that was planning on actually competing. So far, so good for the Royals.
As I mentioned in my most recent article here on the SB Nation mothership, my personal rule of thumb when it comes to baseball standings early in the season is that it’s not worth it to stress over results until Memorial Day at the earliest. With that being said, that day is right around the corner and there’s one story in particular that needs to be discussed.
Folks, the Kansas City Royals are good. They’re currently the owners of the fourth-best record in the American League and there’s a decent amount of room between them and the team that’s in fifth at the moment. This is their best start to a season since 2015, which was a very special year for the Royals that saw them win the AL Pennant for a second season in a row before winning the World Series. Yes, that was a real thing that actually happened! It was filmed in 4K and everything! You can still find the Blu-Ray online if you look hard enough!
Anyways, the Royals are on a roll to start the season and have already put some distance between themselves and the Twins who are barely over .500 at this point in the season. Meanwhile, the Royals are 31-19, they’re only 1.5 games behind the Guardians for first place in the AL Central, and this great start has done wonders for the outlook for the rest of their season.
Heading into the campaign, FanGraphs gave the Royals just a 7.5 percent chance of winning the division and a 13.2 percent chance of getting into the Postseason. Now, their chance of winning the division has shot up to just about 30 percent and their Postseason chances are now up to 57.4 percent. For comparisons’ sake, the Astros have been given a 34.1 percent chance of winning the AL West and are on a 53 percent chance of getting into the Postseason. Yep, you read that correctly: As of right now the Kansas City Royals have a better chance of getting into the playoffs than the team that’s made it to the ALCS for seven-straight years.
With that being said, I’d imagine that the least surprised group of people at this turn of events is, in fact, the Kansas City Royals organization, themselves. They were certainly spending money like a team that expected to be in the mix of things for this current campaign, as they were uncharacteristically one of the top-five spenders in all of baseball over this past offseason. They also committed a significant amount of money to paying Bobby Witt Jr. and making sure that the cornerstone of this franchise remained as such for the next eleven seasons. It’s safe to say that the superstar has been repaying the Royals for their faith in him so far by delivering some fantastic production for Kansas City here in 2024.
Witt has been hitting .304/.362/.546 with a wOBA of .345, an xwOBA of .428 and a wRC+ of 147 with seven home runs and 16 stolen bases. He’s been doing it all for the Royals and that includes on defense as well — Witt is currently in the 100th percentile when it comes to Outs Above Average and he’s in the same position when it comes to sprint speed and base running value as well. Witt looks set to blow through all of the projections that he had coming into this season, which is saying something considering that those were lofty projections, indeed. The Royals believed that Witt was the real deal after his breakout season in 2023 and now he’s set out on a mission to prove it.
It’s not just Witt who’s been balling out, either. Salvador Perez is having a bounce-back season and is currently on track to have the best season of his career — and at 34-years-old, no less! While Perez’s BABIP for this season of .378 is definitely an outlier when compared to his career BABIP of .291, it’s still not completely out of the realm of possibility that a hitter of Perez’s caliber would be able to return to form like Perez has here in 2024. Additionally, it also helps that Perez is currently on track to smash his career high for walk percentage (4.2 percent in 2021) as he’s currently walking at a rate of 7.3 percent. It’s been a renaissance of a season for Salvador Perez so far and the Royals are surely hoping that he can keep this up and eventually deliver the finest season that he’s had so far.
While Witt and Perez have been the standout performers at the plate and in the field for the Royals, a lot of their offseason investments have been paying off on the mound. The Royals spent a ton of money on bolstering their pitching staff and it's looking like it was money well spent so far. Kansas City as a pitching staff currently has an ERA- of 84 (3.41 ERA) and a FIP- of 93 (3.68 FIP) — both of those numbers are good for placing them just inside of the top 5 in all of baseball when it comes to pitching.
Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha were the two marquee signings this past offseason for Kansas City's rotation and so far they've delivered exactly what was expected of them. Lugo is currently running neck-and-neck with Cole Ragans in terms of fWAR — Ragans has an ERA- of 91 (3.70 ERA) and a FIP- of 64 (2.57 FIP) for 1.6 fWAR over 10 starts, while Lugo is sitting on an ERA- of 44 (1.79 ERA) and a FIP- of 81 (3.20 FIP) which has been good for 1.5 fWAR over his first 10 starts as well.
While Michael Wacha hasn't been as spectacular (as evidenced by his average-looking ERA- of 110 and FIP- of 99), they haven't needed him to be that. Instead, Wacha has been a steadying presence in the rotation in order to make sure that there isn't a huge dropoff from what the young guns like Ragans, Brady Singer and Alec Marsh have been doing on the mound so far. Both Wacha and Lugo have given this Kansas City rotation exactly what they needed heading into this season and now suddenly the Royals have gone from pitching being a liability for them to having one of the most formidable rotations in all of baseball.
Now, you would also think that due to KC's record that this wasn't a case of the pitching staff doing all the heavy lifting here. This is where you've got to delve deeper into Kansas City's hitting stats as their slightly below-average team wRC+ of 99 might fool you into thinking that this team can't hit consistently. As Jon Becker of FanGraphs pointed out back on May 15, this is a team that has figured out how to come through in the clutch.
That 94 wRC+ overall? Forget it. Their wRC+ was 132 with runners in scoring position, 131 with runners on, and 137 in their few dozen bases plate appearances with the bases loaded. They weren’t as excellent in high-leverage spots (101 wRC+), but that’s still notably better than their wRC+ in all other situations (94).
Becker made sure to note that clutch hitting isn't something that should be relied upon for the long haul but as long as it's a thing for the Royals, they may as well keep it going for as long as they possibly can. Bobby Witt Jr. and Salvador Perez are the real deal and if they can get some more consistent production from the likes of Maikel Garcia, Michael Massey and Vinnie Pasquqntino, then it would be easy to see the Royals keep on cooking well into this marathon of a regular season.
To sum it all up, if you're a Royals fan and you're feeling good about how this season has gone so far then you have every right to feel optimistic. The pitching is definitely there, the hitting has been opportunistic enough to make an impact and the stars who needed to perform are indeed doing their job. I wouldn't exactly start planning the parade for Kansas City or anything like that but it at least seems like the Royals are going to be relevant in this season's race to the Postseason. Considering how all but a couple of seasons have gone for Kansas City since the turn of the century, that's about all you can ask for as a fan.