Royals Authority

The Offensive Offense, Part 2

By Craig Brown | May 14th, 2008

Do the Royals own the Tigers this year, or what? Hochevar looked good and again the bullpen was outstanding in closing out the win. And the offense barely registered a blip on the radar.

Speaking of the offense…

Let’s expand the discussion on RBI Percentage a little more and look at last year’s numbers in comparison to this season.

Player	2008 RBI %	2007 RBI%
DeJesus	27.0%	15.5%
Buck	16.9%	11.9%
Butler	15.9%	18.7%
Gload	15.5%	19.4%
Guillen	15.5%	16.0%
Gordon	14.6%	11.8%
Olivo	12.2%	13.8%
Pena	11.8%	13.8%
Callaspo	9.4%	8.9%
Teahen	9.0%	13.2%
Gathright	7.5%	12.2%
Grudzielanek	6.7%	16.7%

We see that this group almost across the board is less productive with runners on base than last year. Only DeJesus and Buck are doing a better job of scoring runners this year. How weird is that? Only in Kansas City can an entire team (with the exception of two) have a decline in production at the same time. I feel like I’ve been hit with the same wet noodle over and over. Not that this group is going to amaze anyone with their ability to score base runners, but it’s still very strange that almost everyone has seen their percentages drop.

And it doesn’t look any better when you realize Emil Brown led this team in RBI % last season, driving in 21.7% of all base runners. As much as I hate to say it, I’m beginning to miss LimE and his production with runners on base. Hindsight is 20/20 and I was more than in favor of letting him go, but the further away from 2006 we get, the more we realize Mark Teahen’s three month run was out of the ordinary. While an outfield of Jose Guillen, David DeJesus and Brown wouldn’t be great, it’d be better than what the Royals are throwing out there in 2008.

If a team isn’t going to hit for power (i.e. Earl Weaver’s strategy to play for the three-run home run) then they’re going to have to come through with runners on base in general and runners in scoring position specifically. The Royals won 2-0 last night and again, it was another game that was way closer than it needed to be. They had a runner thrown out at home, a caught stealing and a runner picked off first. In addition, they had a runner on third with one out and failed to bring him home.

Same crap, different game. Far too many outs are given away and when the Royals have the opportunity to actually score runs, they don’t execute. Ugh.

More on Contact

When the Royals swing and make contact and put the ball into play, here are the results:

–They hit a line drive 14.4% of the time.
–They hit a ground ball 55.1% of the time.
–They hit a fly ball 30.4% of the time.

Frankly, I’m a bit surprised at the team’s line drive rate. For a team with such offensive issues, I was expecting it to be lower. But the Royals are actually better than major league average in line drive percentage (14.1%)

But the more I think about it, I shouldn’t have been surprised. We know that roughly 75% of all line drives go for base hits and batting average isn’t a problem for this team. Through Tuesday, the Royals were hitting .260 as a team which is the twelfth best mark in baseball.

(An aside: How is it that the NL is hitting better than the AL? Five National League teams are hitting better than .269. Only one American League team is hitting better than .269. Weird.)

But let’s look a little closer at the other categories, the grounders and fly balls.

With a league average of batted balls at 52.6% on the ground and 33.3% in the air, the Royals trend to the side of being an extreme ground ball hitting team. Again, looking at the makeup of the team this isn’t a huge surprise. When you’ve got Joey Gathright, Mark Grudzielanek and Tony Pena on your roster, you can be pretty sure those guys will hit more ground balls than fly balls.

As a team, the Royals GB/FB ratio is 1.46 which is the fourth highest in baseball and behind only the Angels in the American League.

But what’s surprising is how few Royals batters are what we would call fly ball hitters. Of the 13 hitters who have come to the plate this season only Alex Gordon (0.98), John Buck (0.81) and Miguel Olivo (0.56) hit more flies than grounders.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat. Just because Olivo hits a ton of fly balls or Gathright kills worms by the dozen, that doesn’t really mean anything. I’m not about to draw conclusions from this.

But I’m struck by the fact the Royals seem to have too many players that are at the extreme ends of the GB/FB spectrum. So far this season, 154 players have come to the plate at least 50 times. Here’s a list of Royals hitters and where they rank, according to GB/FB ratio:

Player	GB/FB	Rank
Callaspo	2.78	5th
Pena	2.69	6th
Gathright	2.63	T-9th
Teahen	1.97	21st
Gload	1.87	24th
Grudzielanek	1.72	32nd
Butler	1.47	51st
Guillen	1.20	T-79th
DeJesus	1.14	91st
Gordon	0.98	111st
Buck	0.81	132nd
Olivo	0.56	151st

It seems there’s too many ground ball hitters on this team. Again, this isn’t anything revolutionary… It’s a simple statement of fact. And I’m not going to attempt to draw any conclusions from this. To quote noted government witness Brian McNamee, “It is what it is.” It’s just kind of interesting to me that almost an entire team would trend to the ground ball side.

But what’s also a fact is the players who are hitting the ground balls have always been extreme ground ball hitters. We know that GMDM coveted a power bat and signed one of the best available in Guillen. We also know that GMDM is aware of the offensive deficiencies of this team. But like the pitching staff, there is a ton of work to be done to make this a major league lineup capable of scoring runs on a consistent basis. Despite his struggles in the early going, I still think Guillen is going to warm up and will prove to be a quality signing. (And seriously, can we stop talking about how he doesn’t like cold weather. It’s way too overdone.)

This is our team and we’re stuck with it. There’s no one in Omaha and the Royals don’t have the depth to swing a deal that would make any kind of an impact. I’m not sure there’s anything the Royals can do at this point, except throw nine bats into the lineup and hope their starters can shut down the opposition.

After all, it worked on Wednesday.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 7:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

13 Responses to “The Offensive Offense, Part 2”

Adam says:

May 14th, 2008 at 7:54 pm

Maybe I’m wrong about Gathright being too much of an offensive liability to be the every day center fielder. That was a nice rundown of Guillen’s blast in right center, and I can’t begrudge the guy for getting a couple of RBIs.

Two doubles in two days for Pena, I wonder if those glasses are helping? (A mild joke, don’t kill me about small sample size)

Regarding Emil Brown, we know that GMDM is building pitching and defense. As unmotivated as Guillen seems at times in the outfield, I haven’t seen him boot routine grounders and turn outs into doubles. Thanks, but no thanks.
Chief says:

May 14th, 2008 at 8:31 pm

Well, I guess I will have to make bold predictions more often - TPJ drew his walk a month early! He also got another hit and made a dazzling defensive play. So, he’s off-limits for another day.

This lack of run production is across the AL - not just KC fans are complaining. It can’t be steroids, because NL runs scored are up (even with Santana in a Mets uni). For the same reason, it can’t be that the ball is “de-juiced” either. So what is it?

I dunno, but it looks like we switched to a pitching and defense team at exactly the right time.

For my next bold prediction, I see a sweep of the Tiggers.
David says:

May 15th, 2008 at 5:39 am

I’ve been saying this all year long, but if this team could just be slightly below average offensively, they’d win 85 games. Unfortunately they’re way below average, so they’re on their way to 75 wins. 4.5 runs per game is all they need.
kcghost says:

May 15th, 2008 at 6:17 am

The pitching last nite was superb. I have to hand it to Hochevar. He has pitched very well since being called up. And the bullpen was just rock solid (Mahay, Nunez, and Soria).

We must the worst baserunning team in all of baseball.
Zack Daddy says:

May 15th, 2008 at 7:15 am

Adam…four eyes are better than two (from a man with experience). :)

Chief…nice prediction. Is that a sweep for the season?
Kubi says:

May 15th, 2008 at 7:31 am

OK…time for a wild theory for which I have no evidence: teams tend to do better offensively when the individual hitters who different skills (i.e., some guys that hit for a high average, some that draw a ton of walks, some that hit for power, and some with great speed).

The Royals dont have this; they have a lot of guys with the same offensive profile: ground ball/line drive hitters with good or even great batting averages, but few secondary skills (who besides Gathright can steal a bunch of bases? who besides maybe Guillen has shown real power? anyone on this team a threat to ever draw 100 walks in a season anytime in their career?).

Has anyone done a study to see if my idea is right?
Jack C says:

May 15th, 2008 at 8:01 am

Interesting food for thought Kubi. As Posnanski points out that Bannister has a bad day when his pitches aren’t defined (they’re all the same speed and aren’t very different from one another), maybe our offense has the same problem? The only thing I would say to this is that if you had 9 batters who were exactly the same, and they were decent line drive hitters–let’s say you could clone David Dejesus 8 times–I think you’d score plenty of runs. Is 9 guys who have .350 OBP and hit .300 a good lineup? I’ll bet it would lead the league in runs (we should test this). Our problem is, 4 Tony Penas with a few DDJ’s sprinkled in doesn’t get it done.

Also, note that Mitch Maier is hitting 370 and slugging 600+ at AAA right now. He’d be an interesting 4th outfielder (if we could swing a trade at the deadline to make room).
Chief says:

May 15th, 2008 at 8:23 am

Zack - no. In fact, if they lose today, I will claim my prediction is retroactive to the beginning of the season (when KC swept Detroit).

Kubi - I would say our player skill sets are different. Gathright is the speed specialist. Pena is the defensive wonder. Guillen and Butler (someday) are the pop in the lineup. Gordon is the five-tool guy. Grudz is the seasoned veteran who does everything “the right way” - I really like that guy. DeJesus is close to Gordon in five-tool skills. Teahen is the one that I can’t figure out. I think he’s mis-matched in a corner OF spot. If only he could play SS or 2B…

Jack C - who are you going to trade? I would hate to see Grudz go, BUT he deserves to play for a champion in his last years. Teahen is most expendable in my view, as he is playing out of position. Gathright and DeJesus would draw some value back, but those are the kind of guys you want to keep.
Rob says:

May 15th, 2008 at 9:02 am

Does it say anything about Hillman that the Royals are winning more games this year with a weaker offense, or is pitching the real difference maker? Buddy Bell never had a good team to work with, but I have to believe that our record would be worse with him.

Gathright is playing well enough to stay in KC, but we need to find a way to get Maier up while he’s hot. His confidence must be high if he has a 17 game hit streak going for him. Now’s the time to give him a shot.
steve y says:

May 15th, 2008 at 9:30 am

GMDM and McClure have made big strides with the pitching (and MTH, who was smart enough to try Rodiguez and Nunez and then stick with them when Yabuta was imploding?), somehow the defense is a lot better, those are the strenghts that GMDM wants to build around and that part is going good. I hope that he is not like Vermeil (offense only, bad at D), or Edwards (his opposite), that we can get good enough on hitting and baserunning. We need a Hit Whisperer like McClure is the Pitch Whisperer, we need to hope that GMDM is good enough on the offensive side to get us the players, approach, and/or coaches that we need to be good enough on that side. Pena’s 2 game experiment to take my advice and shorten up and swing short (like Grud) is working so far, if it continues to work and he can hit 280 with some gap power, then he is a keeper
Zack Daddy says:

May 15th, 2008 at 5:09 pm

Wish we could play the Tigers everyday! It comforts me to know that the Royals are NOT the worst hitting team in baseball. Detroit would probably be better if they took more pitches. ;-)
Adam says:

May 15th, 2008 at 5:56 pm

Looks like Guillen is awake. That 0-2 he worked into a walk with the basis loaded made me really, really happy.
Mike Roth says:

May 16th, 2008 at 12:44 am

Anyone think we need to drop Peralta back to AAA? (If so, who would we bring up?)

Looking at his numbers, things don’t seem to be too bad until you look at his ER’s and HR’s allowed. He’s already 1/3 of the way to his HR allowed total for last year, and he’s pitched in 1/6 the games. With ER’s he’s almost 1/4 of the way there, in 1/6 the games.

He’s allowed runs in 5 of his 10 appearances so far this season, 4 of which he allowed 2 runs. I know he was pretty decent last year, but he scared me to death today. I thought he was going to blow that entire lead for us.

Assuming I’m reading stats correctly, (hey, it is 3:30am) his strike outs, walks, and hits allowed per inning are all better than last year, but he’s allowed 60% more ER’s.

Am I just freaking out too early in the season, expecting too much out of him because others have been so good this year, or what?

Just some late (early morning) food for thought.

THE AUTHOR

Craig Brown

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