One of the happy tales of the early 2024 baseball season was the Kansas City Royals. 12-6 at the beginning, including a seven-game winning run at home. The Royals appear to be slipping back toward the preseason predictions of mediocrity after dropping four of their previous five games.
Kansas City is still tied for second place in the AL Central with a record of 13-10, so this small decline shouldn’t raise any red flags by itself. The Royals’ lack of offensive depth is maybe their most concerning weakness.
Four regulars for the Royals are hitting below.200: Adam Frazier (.174), Hunter Renfroe (.159), Kyle Isbel (.197), and Maikel Garcia (.178). While Salvador Perez has been hot all season long and Vinnie Pasquantino has rebounded from a cold start with an 11-game hitting streak, guys like Bobby Witt Jr. and Nelson Velazquez have cooled off significantly from their early season heat.
The Royals have been hitting home runs at a fairly decent clip, which is unusual. They are currently tied for third place in the AL with 28 hits. They rank seventh in the AL in batting average (.237), near the middle of the pack despite having so many guys hitting below.200. They are fourth in runs scored in the AL.Their starting rotation, which was so good early, still is above average, ranked fifth in ERA at 3.26. They are tied with the Mariners with 12 quality starts. The pitching isn’t even relying that much on luck, as they have a .287 BABIP, the 6th highest mark in the AL.
To top it all off, the defense has been good too. According to FanGraphs, the Royals are third in the AL in Defensive Runs Saved with 15.
One of the caveats with the Royals hot start was they went 6-1 against the hapless White Sox, who own the league’s worst record (3-19). Be careful when playing the schedule game, though, because teams who want to compete for divisional championships are supposed to beat the weaker teams. What is more concerning is their lack of wins against tougher teams. So far, they are 2-5 against the Orioles and Blue Jays, tough AL East opponents.
While you would like to see them even that record out a bit against good teams, they’ve only lost one of those games by more than two runs. In fact, of their 10 losses, six have been by two runs or less. It’s not like they are getting blown away on a regular basis, and they’ve only been shutout once.
The next two weeks or so should establish Kansas City as a contender or a pretender. They have six upcoming games with the Blue Jays, three with the Tigers, three with the Rangers and three with the Brewers. If they can survive that stretch with at least six wins, they’ll be at .500 and will have proved they can hang tight with some of the best teams in the majors.
Until proven otherwise, this cold streak should be considering a normal little blip that happens to all teams rather than a harbinger of upcoming doom. The Royals have a chance to show everyone if they are for real or not over the next two weeks. Let’s wait and see until then before declaring them just a good early-season story.
Leave a Reply