The Kansas City Royals HiV LOB, Most of July and August

I made a trip to the renovated Arrowhead Stadium Saturday evening, and it poured, and the Chiefs lost to the flippin' Houston Texans. And that's fine with me because it means baseball season is almost over. I say that with a taste of expectations on the tongue, not for my 2009 football team, but for those I once had for this Royals campaign. In sum, great start, which was really great because the Royals typically play awful baseball in April. But, in early May, they were still in first place in the A.L. Central, and then everything went to complete shit. Portions of the best rotation this club had seen in 15 years ailed and crumbled. The usual injury bug bit off its fair share, and then Dayton Moore, the General Manager who was supposed to be taking KC ball back to the post-season, started making bizarre moves, today's Alex Gordon demotion merely the most recent.

There're two aspects to the move: 1) The Royals need 21 days of Gordon-free service to buy themselves another year before he can become a free agent, and 2) the fact that The Professor is the guy coming up in is place. Regarding part one, the author of this fine blog said today on the SportsTalk Radios that the Royals were "Wal-Marting Gordon," or making a cheap, disgraceful move, that one might expect of a lowest-tier, pathetic ball club. He added that "baseball folks everywhere are laughing at the Royals." Ouch, and ouch. Now, Gordon's once Crown-Vision-high expectations have floated down to Dri-Duck-seat level, and frankly, I wouldn't know what to do with him at this point either. If Moore wants to buy some time, a la his move with Luke Hochevar a few months ago, I'm all for it. It basically implies that the tools for success, the need to "believe in the process," as he frequently says, are all down in the minors, and likely not even Triple-A Omaha. The second part is just simply the fact that the exchange was Gordon for Farnsworth, which is just a damn embarassing headline.

I digressed before I even began. The purpose of the HiV LOB -- Hits vs Left On Base -- was meant to explore how these Royals, back when the expectations were high, could move from wildcard status to legitimate division contender in, say, late August and September of this year. That is, I envisioned stranding fewer base runners to be the key to getting those few missed-out-on wins that would become crucial to the post-season push. A 46-72 record, however, means that stranding base runners doesn't matter; there's a much larger piece missing to this pie of success. We will continue, nonetheless, to, at minimum, post the numbers of the feature, and likely never take on such a grueling, meaningless project, ever again.

Early, Middle, and Late July

7/6 @ DET: 3-4 (W); nine hits, seven left aboard
7/7 @ DET: 5-8 (L); 10 hits, six stranded
7/8 @ DET: 5-8 (L); 10 hits, eight left on
7/9 @ BOS: 8-6 (W); 13 hits, seven unscored
7/10 @ BOS: 0-1 (L); four hits, five stranded
7/11 @ BOS: 9-15 (L); 13 hits, nine left on
7/12 @ BOS: 0-6 (L); three hits, three left
7/17 vs TAM: 8-7 (L); 13 hits, seven stranded
7/18 vs TAM: 4-2 (L); five hits, seven left aboard
7/19 vs TAM: 4-3 (L); 11 hits, 13 left hangin'
7/21 vs LAA: 8-5 (L); nine hits, eight unscored
7/21 vs LAA: 2-10 (L); six hits, seven stranded
7/22 vs LAA: 9-6 (L); 11 hits, seven stranded
7/24 vs TEX: 2-0 (L); five hits, six left on
7/25 vs TEX: 3-6 (W); 11 hits, eight stranded
7/26 vs TEX: 7-2 (L); four hits, six left on
7/27 @ BAL: 5-3 (W); 14 hits, 12 abandoned
7/28 @ BAL: 4-3 (W); 10 hits, seven left on base
7/29 @ BAL: 3-7 (L); nine hits, five stranded
7/30 @ TAM: 3-7 (L); 10 hits, nine unscored
7/31 @ TAM: 0-2 (L); five hits, six left on

Totals for this period: 198 hits, 86 runs scored, 153 runners stranded, which means nothing, since we've not looked at groups this large so far this season.

Early-Mid August

8/1 @ TAM: 1-7 (L); five hits, three stranded
8/2 @ TAM: 4-1 (W); five hits, five left
8/3 @ TAM: 4-10 (L); 10 hits, seven unscored
8/4 vs SEA: 7-6 (L); 11 hits, nine abandoned
8/5 vs SEA: 11-6 (L); 12 hits, 11 runners left
8/6 vs SEA: 2-8 (W); nine hits, four left
8/7 vs OAK: 9-4 (L); 14 hits, 12 stranded
8/8 vs OAK: 5-12 (W); 17 hits, seven left on
8/9 vs OAK: 6-3 (L); nine hits, six abandoned
8/11 @ MIN: 14-6 (W); 18 hits, 11 left on base
8/12 @ MIN: 1-7 (L); four hits, four left
8/13 @ MIN: 5-4 (W); eight hits, five stranded
8/14 @ DET: 0-1 (L); three hits, four abandoned
8/15 @ DET: 3-10 (L); nine hits, six left aboard
8/16 @ DET: 3-2 (W); five hits, eight forgotten
8/17 @ CWS: 7-8 (L); 10 hits, five stranded

Totals for this period: 121 hits, 81 runs scored, 107 runners left on base, which also means nothing as far as this chunk of a month.

On the season, however, are numbers look like this: 998 hits, 500 runs scored, and 930 runners left on base. (Editor's Note: Major League Baseball disagrees with these numbers; they show 1,017 hits for and 477 runs scored by the Royals, which shows two things: 1) I'm terrible at math, but that's nothing new. 2) The point of this season-long examination is slightly worse than I had miscalculated. That is, the official stats show that KC has more hits than I'd tallied, as well as fewer runs scored than my abacus revealed. And in case that doesn't spell it out for you: The Royals score even fewer of their base runners than my numbers intended to accidentally lie about.)

Truth of the matter, however, is that Kansas City is, through last night's game, seven runs ahead of Oakland for plating the fewest in the American League. Their hit total leaves them in dead last, four fewer than second-to-last-place Detroit (?). Then there are walks. I show them with 327 BBs; MLB says 326. Tomato, toe-mah-tow. Guess where that lands them: nine more than last-place Seattle.

There's really nothing more to say about the team or the numbers. I'm just excited to be nearing the home stretch of this torturous feature. Good day.

(Update: Rany Jazayerli, arguably Moore's biggest critic, has weighed in on the Gordon move. And he likes it.)
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The Kansas City Royals HiV LOB, Weeks 12 & 13

When I first began the crunching of the numbers, I anticipated having a thing or two to point to in the moments of the long season that weren't exactly going right. Now, this is Royals baseball, and Kansas City baseball fans know far too well that anything can happen, I just didn't anticipate that most everything would happen. We're but one week away from the mid-point, though, and things are a few losses away from miserable. We'll have a look at the typical stats for this feature after the jump, and because we're into self-loathing, we've even thrown in an extra gem. You know, if you're into that sort of thing. Your hits versus left-ons, a click away.

Week 12

6/23 @ HOU: 2-1 (W); six hits, six left on
6/24 @ HOU: 4-3 (W); 12 hits, 12 stranded
6/25 @ HOU: 4-5 (L); six hits, five left on
6/26 @ PIT: 3-5 (L); seven hits, five left
6/27 @ PIT: 2-6 (L); seven hits, four left
6/28 @ PIT: 3-2 (W); eight hits, five left

Totals for the week: 46 hits, 18 runs scored, 37 base runners stranded.

Not very good. And really, the thing about closing out this four-week period is primarily hitting. It's just not happening enough. Not anywhere near enough. Plopping one double-digit hits game in the mix of a six-game spread in which you have six-eight base hits an evening isn't even going to win you a 'Well, but.' Now, the fact that you took your runs scored, and more than doubled that number with the number of guys left on the base paths is just plain ridiculous. The other factor to consider, since it's the close of the period, is walks.

In the second period of the season, the Royals generated 77 walks. That's 12 fewer than in the first segment, which isn't awful, but it's not good, either. What, then, would you say is awful? The Royals drew 50 walks in this, the third four-week period of the season. Fifty. As you might imagine, their 216 BBs on the season is second-to-last in the American League, a mere cat hair ahead of the Seattle Mariners, who, for the record, have some 35 more hits, and a slight edge in runs, over the Royals. For hit totals in the league, the Royals are also one mark from the bottom, just over Oakland. When it comes to runs scored, they're dead last, looking up at the A's, the Mariners, and, obviously, everyone else.

So, in essence, there isn't much reason to examine the hits versus the stranded runners, because if you're not hitting yourself on base better than anyone, and everyone is better than you at getting aboard via walks, then what's the point of examining your ability to get guys home? You don't have guys to bring home. The few that you do, you're leaving out there, more or less.

Week 13

6/29 vs MIN: 2-4 (W); 12 hits, 12 stranded
6/30 vs MIN: 2-1 (L); eight hits, nine left
7/1 vs MIN: 1-5 (L); 12 hits, nine left
7/2 vs CWS: 1-4 (L); six hits, two left on
7/3 vs CWS: 0-5 (L); six hits, six left on
7/4 vs CWS: 2-4 (W); seven hits, four left
7/5 vs CWS: 3-6 (W); 14 hits, nine left

Totals for the week: 65 hits, 29 runs, 51 left on. The good news (sort of) is that the Royals fell only one game shy of making the two-week run a .500 affair. For the season, however, things still look grim in the standings, and things aren't looking much better in terms of the total numbers that we analyze in this feature. They are, at this point, as so: 679 hits, 333 runs plated, and 670 left aboard. That last figure averages out to 8.375 men left on base per game.

I think I've said it before, but the second two numbers should elevate a bit when the first one does, and week 13 was no exception for KC. It goes without saying that the trifecta of good hitting, good pitching, and good defense will bring you success in baseball. The Royals pitching staff has been inconsistent; when the rotation's decent, the bullpen struggles, and vice versa. Defensively, this team has, at times in 2009, toyed with ineptness. This leaves hitting, which, we've already noted, has been sub-par at best. That means that getting runs home, on the few occasions when you do have base runners, is absolutely crucial.

In conclusion, your (to date) American League left-on-base percentages:

1) Los Anaheim: .6718
2) Tampa Bay : .6869
3) Cleveland : .7003
4) Boston : .7062
5) Detroit : .7069
6) Texas : .7107
7) Baltimore : .7133
8) New York : .7134
9) Oakland : .7172
10) Minnesota : .7191
11) Toronto : .7192
12) KC Royals : .7343
13) White Sox : .7359
14) Seattle : .7496

No surprise there, that the two best small-ball clubs in the Angels and the Rays leave fewer runners on the bags than anyone. The White Sox are a bit of a surprise there, but Kansas City is not. They're only .054 percentage points away from being the league's worst LOB club.
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The Kansas City Royals HiV LOB, Pain & Suffering Known as Weeks Nine, Ten, Eleven

Rustin Dodd put together an interesting piece on the Royals Web site today. It discusses something positive for a change, the "right direction" in which the team is headed, now five years removed from the Carlos Beltran trade, a transaction that sent Beltran to Houston in exchange for John Buck, Mark Teahen, and Mike Wood. Omaha Royal outfielder David De Jesus was called up from Triple-A as Beltran's replacement. While the club has done a lot to change its losing ways in the past five years, the road ahead is still a long one. The first three weeks in June didn't make it much smoother. Your semi-regular look at the Royals hits versus stranded runners, after the jump.

Week Nine

6/2 @ TB: 2-6 (L); six hits, four stranded
6/3 @ TB: 0-9 (L); two hits, four left aboard
6/4 @ TB: 2-3 (L); six hits, three floaters
6/5 @ TOR: 3-9 (L); five hits, four remainders
6/6 @ TOR: 6-2 (W); nine hits, four left on base
6/7 @ TOR: 0-4 (L); seven hits, six stranded

For the week: 35 hits, 13 runs scored, 25 stranded.

Week 10

6/9 @ CLE: 4-8 (L); 12 hits, eight left on
6/10 @ CLE: 9-0 (W); 13 hits, three left aboard
6/11 @ CLE: 3-4 (L); nine hits, nine runners left
6/12 vs CIN: 1-4 (W); six hits, four stranded
6/13 vs CIN: 4-7 (W); 14 hits, eight left
6/14 vs CIN: 1-7 (W); nine hits, four abandoned

For the week: 63 hits, 34 runs, 36 left aboard.

Week 11

6/16 vs ARI: 0-5 (W); 10 hits, eight left on base
6/17 vs ARI: 12-5 (L); 13 hits, 13 left
6/18 vs ARI: 12-5 (L); 12 hits, six stranded
6/19 vs StL: 10-5 (L); six hits, three left
6/20 vs StL: 7-1 (L); five hits, seven left aboard
6/21 vs StL: 12-5 (L); nine hits, four stranded

For the week: 55 hits, 26 runs scored, 41 left on base.

Whew.

As you can see, a pretty dismal week nine, some improvement in 10, and mild regression in week 11. On the whole, though, a 6-12 record over the course of three weeks is going to do zero standings favors. The point of this feature was to initially analyze how well the Royals were playing their version of small ball, but when a pitching staff gets rocked like this one has so far in June, it matters very little. The Royals have produced 568 hits, scored a mere 286 runs, and stranded 552 base runners. Whether it's Inter-League, divisional, or whatever, those numbers are just plain painful. If in fact the franchise is headed in the right direction, it has to find to way to overcome big bumps in the road like the one they're stuck on right now called June 2009.
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The Kansas City Royals HiV LOB, Weeks Seven and Eight Far From Great

The HiV LOB was intended as a measure for how well the Kansas City Royals can get their baserunners home. This, was of course, assuming that they would have decent numbers in the base-running department, and some success in advancing them. So far, it's not looking as good as some of the very few flashes we've seen this spring from the boys in blue. In fact, things have been lousy enough lately, that we allowed ourselves to get two weeks behind on this feature since it's been as painful as three wins over 14 days, most of which was at home.

But after the jump, we'll still take a look at a few of the numbers and try to make some sense out of the whole mess. Although, sometimes the numbers do all of the talking anyone needs, and it's better to just move forward, to sift through the rubbish later. Much later.


Week Seven

5/19 vs CLE: 5-6 (W); 11 hits, eight left on
5/20 vs CLE: 6-5 (L); eight hits, 22 left on
5/21 vs CLE: 8-3 (L); seven hits, 17 left on
5/22 @ STL: 0-5 (L); five hits, 14 left on
5/23 @ STL: 0-5 (L); five hits, nine left on
5/24 @ STL: 3-2 (W); eight hits, nine left on

For week seven, the totals look like this: 44 hits, 17 runs scored, and for the third straight week, a season-high left-on-base total in 79.

Week Eight

5/25 vs DET: 13-1 (L); seven hits, 11 left on
5/26 vs DET: 1-6 (W); nine hits, 13 left on
5/27 vs DET: 8-3 (L); eight hits, 11 left on
5/29 vs CWS: 11-2 (L); six hits, 11 left on
5/30 vs CWS: 5-3 (L); eight hits, five left on
5/31 vs CWS: 7-4 (L); 10 hits, 22 left on

Week eight doesn't look much different: 48 hits, 73 left on, with 19 plated.

Tally 'em all up and your season totals are: 415 hits, 213 runs scored, and 450 base runners straded. That's an on-pace measure of 639 runs for the season and over 1300 left on, which isn't going to win any division title for anyone anywhere. In addition to putting men on base via hits, the Royals earned 77 walks for the second four-week period of the season, giving them 166 so far for the year. The long and the short is that the Royals offense is struggling. Mightily. I haven't compared their numbers against anyone else's, but I really don't need to. Producing small numbers of runners and getting very few of them home translates to not winning games, which they did plenty of in May, enough to fall to five and-a-half games back, and almost -- yep -- to last place in the Central.
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The Kansas City Royals HiV LOB, Sinister Week Six

When we checked in with the HiV LOB last week, things weren't looking good, and depending on your perspective of the half-glass of water, things could slightly improve, or get ugly quick. While week five wound up a four-win/three-loss week, that barely-above-.500 mark leaves no room for error, and in my estimation, you're actually heading into the next week from a somewhat-negative standpoint when you averaged eight and-a-half left on in the seven-game stretch. Add to that that the week wrapped up with the first season's sweep (courtesy of LAA) and went straight into another one to kick off the following week (a two-game set with OAK). The result? A four-loss/two-win week six. We'll examine a few of the numbers on the other side of that pesky "Read More" link.

Week Six

5/12 @ OAK: 3-12 (L); 10 hits, eight left on
5/13 @ OAK: 2-7 (L); four hits, eight left on
5/14 vs BAL: 5-9 (L); 12 hits, 12 left on
5/15 vs BAL: 1-8 (W); 13 hits, 10 left on
5/16 vs BAL: 2-3 (L); seven hits, 13 left on
5/17 vs BAL: 4-7 (W); nine hits, 17 left on

The sums for the week: 55 hits, 27 runs scored, and a (for consecutive weeks now) season-high 68 base runners stranded. I suppose in some sense, the rise and fall of these numbers go hand in hand. That is, the fewer the hits means the fewer the runs, and thus a higher potential for guys left on base. But it's not a certainty.

Compared with last week, the Royals managed nine fewer hits, a mere four fewer runs, and stranded eight more runners. So pardon the cliche, but something's gotta give. I'm not sure if it's being more aggressive with your speed, or better situational hitting, or a combination of the two, but leaving nearly 70 guys on the line in a six-game week is flat out unacceptable. There's also the oft-chatted-up X-factor of the lineup juggling, which is fascinating, really.

Take the Royals catching platoon for example. John Buck always catches Gil Meche, and Miguel Olivo always catches Zack Greinke. It was announced in the off-season that Olivo would be the starter, and he has been, which basically leaves Buck to catch Greinke, and then the day-game-that-follows-a-night-game duty (Editor's Note: Sometimes referred to in the English language as Sunday.) behind the plate. Now, Olivo was all fired up last year about playing time. Olivo hit .255 with 12 home runs and 41 RsBI in 2008; he slugged .444 and had an on-base percentage of .278. Buck, on the other hand, hit .224 with nine homers and 48 runs driven in; he slugged .365 with an OBP of .304. There are two key differences between the two guys in determining who gets the starting job though, and they are 1) Buck played in 25 more games than Olivo, and 2) Buck had 24 assists to Olivo's 32. So the batting figures either favor Olivo, or are a wash, and Olivo clearly has the better arm at gunning down attempted base thiefs, so you give him the job, and consider Buck as the occasional DH or PH on his nights off.

Catcher or no, you're still left with eight hitting slots to figure out. Do you stay traditional and keep your speed at the top of the order and follow them up with your measty sticks? Or do you mix it up depending on who's hitting well at the moment and who's not? It's all kind of a mind scramble either way, but to get back to the point of this feature, there has to be a way to get these guys producing offensively. There are, as it stands right at this moment, two guys on the roster hitting .300 or better, and one of them is Willie Bloomquist. That'd be the Willie Bloomquist that last year's awful Seattle club let go, the Bloomquist that was supposed to be a fill-in utility guy, the guy that has only 75 at bats on the season. The other guy is Alberto "Baby-Throwing Doubles Machine" Callaspo.

A few hitters are toying with the notion: Mark Teahen's at .279, Billy Butler's at .283, and Jose Guillen sits at .299. The rest of these guys are floating around the middle .200s range, and that's not gonna cut it. For the season, the Royals have 323 hits, they've crossed home 177 times, and hung a solid 298 runners out on the line to dry. The simple answer is more hits and more hits consistently. Easier said than done. The complexity in it is keeping your second baseman's bat nice, warm, and in the lineup everyday, while you try to get everyone not named Alberto Callaspo to simply produce more. And it's gotta change quick because the Royals are nearing the place where their LOB numbers are doubling their runs scored.
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The Kansas City Royals HiV LOB, Week Five

When baseball season got underway, I felt like the Royals were poised to be decently strong in some areas, weak in others, pitting them as a club that would really need to take care of the small things if they wanted to be a real contender for the Central. I'm not panicking yet, but this past week showed Kansas City fans that good pitching alone will not always do the trick. Two key words in that sentence: "good" as opposed to great, and "always." In the early part of the week, the Royals were in the middle of a nice little win streak, and they had a decent combination of good pitching and good hitting. If either of those factors declines, and especially if they both do, that's when doing the little things becomes massive, the Achilles to protect if you want to win ball games. We'll have a look after the jump.

Week Five

5/4 vs. CWS: 0-3 (W); 10 hits, 10 left on
5/5 vs. CWS: 7-8 (W); 11 hits, 13 left on
5/6 vs. SEA: 1-9 (W); 17 hits, 10 left on
5/7 vs. SEA: 1-3 (W); seven hits, five left on
5/8 @ LAA: 4-10 (L); four hits, nine left on
5/9 @ LAA: 0-1 (L); five hits, five left on
5/10 @ LAA: 4-5 (L); 10 hits, eight left on

For the week: 64 hits, 31 runs scored, 60 stranded. For those first two numbers, I'd say that was alright if you're talking about a five-game we, but we are clearly not. As far as 60 runners left afloat, well that just makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Take the four home wins: Your pitching keeps you to allowing two and-a-quarter runs per contest through four games; your batting's generating almost a dozen a night. That combination makes it hard to lose games. Tony Muser would struggle to lose those games. Go on the road, though, and your pitching yields five and-a-third, while your plate appearances produce six and-a-third. That drastic shrinkage means you've got to find a way to get your seven and-a-third-stranded-per-game number down. Like way down.

Numbers for the season: 268 hits, 150 runs, 230 stranded runners. Now, you factor in walks, which we're only going to peek at at month's end, and it might be possible to have more stranded than hits, but let's not go there. For the time being, let's focus on pushing the number of runs up, which would keep the left-on number at a shrinking rate. Here's looking toward a better week six.
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The Kansas City Royals HiV LOB, Frame Four

When we last checked in with the Royals offense, and had a gander at how well they were (or weren't) advancing base runners -- the HiV LOB, as you well know by now, is a brief look at hits versus runs, in a sort of remedial-statistics class, if you will -- we'd seen some concern in week one, some improvement in week two, and a touch of tepidness in week three. Tepidness was damn near the last thing you wanted to see for this Royals team as a four-game home stand against A.L. East-leading Toronto and a three-game tilt in Minnesota filled all seven days of Kansas City's fourth week in the season. How the boys in blue fared, after the jump.

Week Four

4/27 vs. TOR: 1-7( W); eight hits, seven left on
4/28 vs. TOR: 8-1 (L); six hits, eight left on
4/29 vs. TOR: 3-11 (W); 15 hits, seven stranded
4/30 vs. TOR: 6-8 (W); nine hits, seven left on
5/1 @ MIN: 5-7 (L); 10 hits, five left aboard
5/2 @ MIN: 10-7 (W); 15 hits, 11 left on
5/3 @ MIN: 7-5 (W); 10 hits, four stranded

The week's totals: 63 hits, 49 runs scored, 49 runners left on base. Compared to last week, the Royals generated almost 20 more base hits, more than doubled their runs across the plate, but also left a dozen more on the base path. Now, it stands to reason that the more base hits a team gets, the higher their LOB percentage will be, but logic also dictates that the more base hits you're generating as a team, the more runs you will score, and the more games you will win. In this fourth week of the season, KC averaged nine hits, seven runs per game, which is pretty darn good when you compare that to week one's totals, thus suggesting that the bats, as they say, were still waking up. Add to that that the Royals played seven straight, and came out of the full week with five victories.

This brings the season's totals to 204 hits, 119 runs, and 170 left aboard. The obvious professional sports-blogger thing to do would be to compare those numbers with other teams in baseball, but frankly, we (Editor's Note: By "we" I mean me.) don't care what other teams are doing, as long as they're not beating Kansas City.

This week's surge in power at the plate brings the Royals' on-pace-to-score likelihood up from 630 to 714 in terms of runs for the season. The one aspect to this feature we haven't examined is walks, and that's by design. Bases on balls, you could argue, are sort of a gift. At the same time, they're not. On the one hand, the pitcher isn't giving you anything good to swing at. On the other, you're disciplined enough at the plate to know not to swing at any of his crap. There's also the possibility that he's afraid of you because you've had success at the plate, so he's attempting to paint the corners while you're in the box. For the purpose of this feature, we're examining the success of Royals' bats putting balls into play, and then getting those runners home, and in doing so, we're looking at only hits. Obviously runs are affected by walks, though, so we'll look at them on a monthly basis.

In this first four-week period, 89 Royals batters have walked, which of course only makes the LOB percentage look worse if you try to factor in the total number of guys on base versus the number of runs scored. If, however, you value something like, say, winning games, then BBs work in your favor, especially for a club that could scarcely buy a walk in each of the last three seasons. So, view a walk how you will. We're simply going to view them once a month, and leave the extrapolations up to you.

(photo courtesy of John Sleezer of The Kansas City Star)
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The Kansas City Royals HiV LOB, Week Three

Every once in a while, we come up with a great new feature idea, then promptly ditch it like a prom date with crabs. This will likely be one of those, and we will likely be Debbie Downers in weeks that the Royals drop both series in which they play. This has most certainly been one of those weeks. Numbers on it, after the jump.

While the Royals showed some base-path improvement in week two, they lost some important ground in the Central this week, squandering matches to both Cleveland and Detroit. It is, as they say, a hard knock life, as the hits vs. left-on base would suggest.

Week Three

4/21 @ CLE: 7-8 (L); 13 hits, six left on
4/22 @ CLE: 2-0 (W); nine hits, six left on
4/23 @ CLE: 2-5 (L); five hits, eight left on
4/24 vs. DET: 1-6 (W); eight hits, two left on
4/25 vs. DET: 1-9 (L); six hits, seven left on
4/26 vs. DET: 3-2 (L); four hits, nine left on

The week's totals: 45 base hits, 20 runs scored, 37 stranded. Compared to last week, the Royals had six fewer hits, they left just as many runners on, and brought a dozen fewer home. The big difference of course being the inability to get those runners home, translating to three losses and two wins, versus the opposite last week.

The season's totals now sit at 141 hits, 70 runs, and 121 left on. Heading into tonight, Kansas City sits at .500 with a 9-9 record. If good/playoff teams are supposed to average 800 runs a season, then the Royals will not qualify as either. At this pace, according to my special-education calculations, this would put them on pace to score 630. It would also put them on pace to log nearly 1300 base hits, which, with no evidence to support such a claim, would suggest that the Royals need to bring roughly 60 percent of the runners they got on base full circle. I'm not a sabremetrician, but that doesn't seem like too much to ask. If you can't manage the base paths well enough to bring a little over half of your hits in for runs, you certainly don't belong in October baseball. It's of course still April, and there have been some decent pitching performances. There's also the notion that the Royals' bats are still slowly awakening, but for my money, little of that matters if you can't transform those sticks into funs.
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The Kansas City Royals HiV LOB, Part II

Every once in a while, we come up with a great new feature idea, then promptly ditch it like a prom date with crabs. This will likely be one of those, and may, from time to time, have snarky commentary from the locals.

Look, Sluggerrr doesn't mind if you want to celebrate 4-20, bro, but Sluggerrr wants you to utilize a little tact, for Pete's sake.

Your refresher is this: this feature is a mildly researched, thoroughly unprofessional comparison of the base hits generated by the Royals, versus those they leave on the bags. We'll attempt to visit this topic every seven games since that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Anyway, we last checked in with the Royals after game one in the Cleveland series. Their week One totals: 45 hits, 18 runs scored, 47 runners left on.

In week two of the season, we saw some improvement from the boys in blue. The numbers look a little bit like this:

Week Two

4/14 vs. CLE: 3-9 (W); 11 hits, five left on
4/15 vs. CLE: 5-4 (L); seven hits, seven left on
4/17 @ TEX: 12-3 (W); 19 hits, 10 left on
4/18 @ TEX: 2-0 (W); five hits, seven left on
4/19 @ TEX: 5-6 (L); nine hits, eight left on

The week's totals: 51 hits, 32 runs plated, 37 stranded, an improvement in every category, albeit five fewer games played, which is fantastic for the first two categories, a bit concerning in the third.

The season's totals: 96 base hits, 50 runs, 84 left on. I'd go into detail about how they need to whittle that last number down, but frankly, I'm exhausted from all the extensive absurdities surrounding fan-base doubt in Trey Hillman based on his late-game decisions yesterday in Texas. Personally, I like giving the team the chance to win without The Mexicutioner on multiple, consecutive occasions. I like keeping Callaspo in at second late in the game because his bat was fantastic all series, and he had a couple of stellar defensive plays on Saturday. I approve of going to Mahay to face Hamilton because, in all honesty, Hamilton was due, and Mahay got the job done. And finally, I don't, for the record, like Kyle Farnsworth. I do, however, appreciate Hillman giving him the opportunity to do something good, to gain back some confidence. Given now, though, that he is significantly responsible for three of the Royals' five losses, I would not put him in in that, or any similar, situation again. At all. Tough loss. Felt like the whole world knew he was gonna serve it up.
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The Kansas City Royals HiV LOB, Take One

Every once in a while, we come up with a great new feature idea, then promptly ditch it like a prom date with crabs. This will likely be one of those.

In case you're wondering, and I know, crazy reader, that you are, the HiV LOB is this: an mildly researched, thoroughly unprofessional comparison of the base hits generated by the Royals, versus those they leave on the bags. We'll attempt to visit this topic every seven games since that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

On the flip side, you may note, as evidenced by the above nearly impossible-to-see photo, that I've already taken in one game in which the KC starter was Zach Greinke. I'll make many an effort to be in attendance for his starts this year, as Old No. 7 has proudly (but really only because he drafted him in fantasy) proclaimed that the Greinkmeister has embarked upon a Cy Young campaign, dubbed "Gettin' Stanky with Zach Greinke," but that, of course, is another post, for another day, one neither of us will likely ever get to.

Through seven games, however, the atrocity known as the Royals' offense, looks like this:

Week One

4/7 @ CWS: 2-4 (L); seven hits, 11 left on
4/8 @ CWS: 2-0 (W); six hits, six left on
4/9 @ CWS: 2-1 (W); nine hits, 11 left on
4/10 vs. NYY: 4-1 (L); four hits, six left on
4/11 vs. NYY: 6-1 (L); seven hits, eight left on
4/12 vs. NYY: 4-6 (W); seven hits, two left on
4/13 vs. CLE: 2-4 (W); five hits, five left on

That brings the week-one totals to 45 hits, 47 runners left on base, and 18 runs scored, meaning the Royals have capitalized on 40 percent of their non-HBP, non-BB base runners, and could've scored a ton more.

I'm no statistician, and, for the record, I have no idea if there's already a sabremetric to figure this for you, but those are not great numbers. Add to that that, of the regular starters, one guy is hitting over .200, and that's Mark Teahen. Further conclusion of KC's chances of making a run at the Central: Need more better.

That was fun, no?

Great. Let's do it again next week.

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