Royals in Wonderland

It’s here. It’s now. It’s World Series 2014.

Amazing. Improbable…it’s about Kansas City, too. Kansas City? Yes, Kansas City! A three decade wait is over.

What an achievement for a team that has struggled for so long. No .500 team is KC historically. The Royals are .482 all-time, 257 games under .500. Eleven of 30 MLB teams have done worse by percentage. One of those teams is … drum roll, please … the .476 (23^rd ranked) Baltimore Orioles.

THAT’S what made this year’s ALCS so great. The O’s and KC look up at teams most years. But, this year, they looked at each other. For impartial fans, at least, it was a “can’t lose” proposition: either way, a long-time loser would become a big-time winner.

The icing on this championship cake is delicious, too. It’s the way KC rose to the top—about what they did and didn’t do. They built a solid farm system; made solid trades (the Shields-Davis deal with Tampa Bay stands out); and didn’t assemble a championship team by just writing checks.

Courtesy: kingsofkaufman.com

KC has a modest payroll. KC ranks 18^th in MLB by aggregate payroll (2014 season), which puts the Royals in the middle of the AL (the Rays and Athletics, among seven others, spent less). The rival Tigers spent almost $163 million (overall) on its players in 2014. The Royals, by contrast, invested $90 million. And players in Detroit were paid about $2 million more per man (on average) than players in KC.

It’s heartening for the game (any game, pro or college) when a perennial also-ran rises to the top, especially when a team achieves success “the old fashioned way.” That’s what KC has done.

For one thing it renews the classic David v. Goliath scenario. And that’s exactly what KC is … David. They’re beating opponents with “small ball,” not primarily with power and punch: the team hit only 95 HRs all season long. It’s vintage baseball, the way that so many baseball purists prefer it to be played.

This is a team, no question about it. “Stars” rotate. It’s Cain one night. Gordon the next. Escobar the night after that. Position players…then starting pitching…then relievers. On and on and on…. It has to be that way. During the regular season only two players ranked in the Top 5 of major AL performance categories as recorded by ESPN: Greg Holland was #2 in AL Saves (46) and Alex Gordon was 5^th in AL Wins-Above-Replacement (WAR).

How does KC do it? Hitting-wise it’s a struggle. Data show that the Royals aren’t a great hitting team, especially when you define hitting broadly. The Royals finished in the AL Top 5 in only two categories: 2^nd in batting average and 3^rd in hits. KC was 7^th (of 15 AL teams) in runs; 10^th in total bases; last in home runs; 10^th in OBP percentage; 11^th in slugging percentage; and 10^th in OPS percentage.

Fielding? Well, statistics don’t support what eyes often observe. While KC players seem to make one spectacular play after the other (Gordon crashing into the fence recently comes to mind), episodic excellence belies what the data show: 10^th in the league in the number of errors and put outs, and 11^th in three categories—fielding percentage, assists, and total chances.

Courtesy: shop.mlb.com

Pitching? Well, that’s a different story, at least in part. In the AL the Royals were 4^th in ERA and runs allowed; 5^th in shutouts; tied for 1^st in saves (with Baltimore); and 2^nd in quality starts. But the Royals weren’t anywhere near the league leaders in two other closely followed pitching stats—number of strike outs and opponents’ batting average.

What’s the story? When we think about where KC is today it’s easy to forget that the Royals scrambled to win 89 games. The Royals were 48-47 around the All-Star Break: on July 18 KC was in 3^rd place in the AL Central, behind the Tigers and Indians. Then the team caught fire. Add eight straight postseason wins and, voilà, you have a World Series team.

KC did it with timely hitting (relying primarily on singles, speedy Lorenzo Cain is the sole starter with a .300 BA); smart base running; solid starting pitching (Yordano Ventura had season-high total of 14 wins with a starter-low 3.2 ERA); spectacular plays in the field; and “like nails” relief pitching. Really…like…nails. Yowza!

Set-up man Wade Davis had a year beyond reasonable imagination: 1.0 ERA with .85 WHIP. Kelvin Herrera was right behind him with a 1.4 ERA and 1.1 WHIP. If that’s not enough for opposing batters, then out of the pen come Jason Frasor, Tim Collins, and Branden Finnegan. But there’s more: Greg Holland, the closer, has a 1.4 ERA with a .9 WHIP. He gave up only 37 hits during the entire regular season while striking out 90 batters.

So there you have it. In a word, this team has “it.”

It’s a team on a roll. And let’s emphasize both “team” and “roll.” The Royals rebounded from a late-inning deficit against the A’s in the AL play-in game. That come-back win fueled an improbable and impressive win streak. The Royals are winning by manufacturing runs and slugging game-ending HRs. The relief pitching is almost beyond human.

But the beauty of this year’s season is what lead up to where we are today: a bunch of really good teams fell along the way.

Thomas Bowell expressed it well in The Washington Post: “Clayton Kershaw can lose twice in four games and be the central reason his Los Angeles Dodgers are done. The last three AL Cy Young winners can start Games 1, 2, and 3 of the Division Series for the Detroit Tigers and be swept. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, who won more games than anybody in baseball, can go winless in October…. The Washington Nationals, who’ve won more games than any team in baseball over the last three seasons and the most in the NL this year, are gone.” Then, the division-winning O’s were punched out.

But the Royals are still standing … for the first time since the ‘80s. Their fans are going absolutely nuts. Why not? Younger fans have no frame of reference for this; and older fans have but memories. As star Eric Hosmer told Bob Nightengale of USA Today recently: “When you walk into a restaurant and they give you a standing ovation that tells you want it means around here.” Hosmer even picked up a $15k bar tab.

Cheers to the Royals! It’s quite a story. I can’t wait to see how it ends.