Team Offense, Kansas City Royals

The 2019 series on team offense continues with the Kansas City Royals. The Royals finished twenty fifth in the majors and thirteenth in the American League in 2018 with 3.94 runs scored per game.

I am using RotoChamp as a source of default lineups. That Ned Yost order is plugged into the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) using Musings Marcels as the batter projections. That information produces the following results (Runs per game):

• Best lineup: 4.47
• Probable lineup: 4.37
• Worst lineup: 4.14
• Regressed lineup: 4.19

In a remake of That 70’s Show, the Royals seem to be testing the idea that OBP doesn’t really matter. To be fair, they are also a throw-back to early 20th century teams that played without a lot of power. Given the poor stats of six of the nine batters, a probable lineup runs scored of 4.37 R/G is pretty impressive.

When entering lineups into the LAT, it’s fun to figure out what is going to be the result. Billy Hamilton batting eighth? The LAT is going to like that, as Hamilton is the worst hitter on the team. That turned out not to be true, as Martin Maldonado owned a worst projection. Still, given that, Yost’s lineup agrees with the LAT in a number of slots, including Alex Gordon batting third, and Jorge Soler, Hunter Dozier, and Chris Owings batting 5-6-7.

It’s turns out there isn’t much a manager can do right with this lineup, and not much to do wrong. The good news is this team is young, and many players are just coming into their primes. That means one should tend to bet on the upside here, and I would not be surprised to see the Royals do better than expected on offense.

You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet. If you like this series, consider a donation to the Baseball Musings Pledge Drive.

Previous posts in this series:

• Introduction (From last year, still using the same methods and regression equation.)
• Boston Red Sox
• New York Yankees
• Cleveland Indians
• Oakland Athletics
• Los Angeles Dodgers
• Houston Astros
• Colorado Rockies
• Washington Nationals
• Atlanta Braves
• St. Louis Cardinals
• Chicago Cubs
• Milwaukee Brewers
• Minnesota Twins
• Texas Rangers
• Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
• Tampa Bay Rays
• Toronto Blue Jays
• Cincinnati Reds
• Pittsburgh Pirates
• Arizona Diamondbacks
• Philadelphia Phillies
• Seattle Mariners
• New York Mets
• Chicago White Sox

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