I'm watching Cory Kluber (that's Perennial Cy Young-Candidate Cory Kluber to you, friend) go through 6 innings of baseball with the Royals, expending only 62 pitches. Almost all of the outs have been on the ground. The one baserunner we got in scoring position was immediately thrown out in TOOTBLAN fashion.
Let's count the ways that this team is constructed against the current of modern baseball thinking.
No wonder the Royals are the worst offensive club in baseball that is actually trying to win.
I fail to understand why the characteristics they value in their fantastic bullpen (a FIP-blessed bunch if ever there was one) are not valued in their rotation.
Let's count the ways that this team is constructed against the current of modern baseball thinking.
- Their batters do not draw walks. The negative value of this is self-explanatory.
- Their rotation (3/5 of it, at least), does not throw strikeouts. In fact, there was a multi-game stretch last year where Jeremy Guthrie had not gotten a batter to swing and miss on any pitch thrown.
- Their batters hit the ball on the ground. There is a known platoon split such that fly-ball batters have a small but definite advantage.
- Their pitchers tend to get fly balls. Kauffman does suppress home runs, but not extra base hits. Plus, I do believe that 81 games are usually played on the road.
- Their batters do not hit for power.
- Their pitchers are often selected from a list of players entitled "homer-prone". And that's even with Kauffman's help.
- Their batters do not take pitches and they swing at things outside the strike zone. (Related but slightly different from [1], since their high contact rate on balls outside the strike zone is the highest by far in all of baseball, leads to weakly-hit grounders.)
No wonder the Royals are the worst offensive club in baseball that is actually trying to win.
I fail to understand why the characteristics they value in their fantastic bullpen (a FIP-blessed bunch if ever there was one) are not valued in their rotation.
