<\/p>\n
The Kansas City Royals will play their 10th game today, and went 4-5 in the first nine games of the year. Great? No. Awful? Also no. When the baseball season starts, it\u2019s really hard to keep things in perspective. The season is 162 games for a reason: it takes a long time for trends to stabilize, and a few games aren\u2019t a big enough sample size from which to draw conclusions.<\/p>\n
Just about anything can happen in any given set of nine consecutive games. Last year, the Royals\u2019 worst nine-game stretch happened in April when they went 1-8. Just a few weeks later, they played their best nine-game stretch and went 8-1. Heck, last year\u2019s Colorado Rockies lost 119 games and still<\/em> managed to go 7-2 over nine games in August.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n But we\u2019ve played enough baseball where there are some statistics that stick out and are worth keeping an eye on. They represent some hope and some worry as Kansas City goes through April<\/p>\n Kansas City\u2019s fly ball percentage league ranking infield fly ball percentage<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019re starting off with maybe a little cheating considering that these are two different stats, but I\u2019m listing them as one because the relation between them is what\u2019s important.<\/p>\n Kansas City hits a lot of fly balls. While the median team is hitting fly balls about 37% of the time, the Royals are hitting fly balls 40.5% of the time. Unfortunately, a lot of the Royals\u2019 fly balls are popups: 15.6% of them, in fact, significantly above the team median at a tick above 9%.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n To be a top-eight team in fly ball rate and infield fly ball rate is not good. The denominator for infield fly ball rate is fly balls, not overall batted balls. What that ultimately means is that the Royals are hitting into a large amount of easy outs\u2014strikeouts in the air, basically. And this is doubly disappointing because the Royals led Major League Baseball in infield fly ball rate last year. This problem has not been fixed.<\/p>\n Royals outfielder combined wRC+<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n It was no secret to anybody that the outfield was Royals\u2019 biggest problem last year, especially offensively. But so far, early returns of this year\u2019s outfield are quite positive. Isaac Collins has drawn a lot of walks and has gotten on base at a high clip, replicating what he did last year in Milwaukee. Kyle Isbel has started off red hot. Jac Caglianone looks way more comfortable at the plate and has been productive despite a lack of power. It\u2019s been a nice change.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Salvador Perez\u2019s on base percentage<\/strong><\/p>\n Salvy has a pair of home runs and a pair of doubles already in this short season, his prodigious power being in full play. He\u2019s on pace for another 30-homer season. To have that at catcher is great.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, Salvy continues to be an out-making machine. His OBP this year is .270, and that\u2019s even buoyed by a surprising three walks this year. His OBP since the start of last year is .283, which is the second-lowest among all players with 600 or more plate appearances during that time.<\/p>\n I know Salvy is a legend. I know he hits bombs. And I know his bat can change games with one swing. But I just don\u2019t see how the Royals can make the playoffs with such low on base ability coming out of the fourth spot in the lineup.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Number of times a Royals reliever has given up two or more runs in one relief appearance<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n During the offseason, there didn\u2019t seem to be much ink spilled about the bullpen. Most of its pieces were returning, and there was a seeming upgrade from Angel Zerpa to newly acquired Matt Strahm.<\/p>\n But maybe there should have been. Look: I don\u2019t expect every reliever to put up clean innings all the time, so a run here or there isn\u2019t a big deal. Giving up two or more runs in one appearance, though, involves a huge mistake pitch or a meltdown.<\/p>\n Unfortunately for the Royals, melting down is one of the things this bullpen has done with consistency. The instance that sticks out furthest is Carlos Estevez\u2019s disaster of a blown save in the second game of the year, but he hasn\u2019t been alone. The Royals have only played nine games this year, but a reliever has given up two or more runs in a single outing on eight<\/em> occasions so far this year. It\u2019s been a team sport, too, involving Matt Strahm, Lucas Erceg, Steven Cruz, Daniel Lynch IV, Alex Lange, Bailey Falter (twice), and Estevez.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n As a result, Kansas City\u2019s bullpen has an ERA north of 6.00. It\u2019s still early, but this could be a growing point of concern for the club as the year goes on.<\/p>\n Number of times the rotation has lasted 5+ innings and given up two or fewer runs<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n On the other side of the coin, the Royals starting pitching has been nothing short of nails. Cole Ragans had a rough outing the first game of the season, replacement starter Luinder Avila got lit up in what will likely be his only start in a while, and Kris Bubic struggled in yesterday\u2019s start against a good Brewers team.<\/p>\n Other than those three, though? Brilliance. The Kansas City rotation continues to be a marvel, and with the offense\u2019s struggles over the last year I think folks are starting to take the rotation for granted. Don\u2019t. It\u2019s a joy to watch every starter on the mound, and there are plenty of teams envious of what the Royals have in that department.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Number of extra-base hits by Bobby Witt Jr.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Bob has walked at a 12.8% clip so far, which is great and would easily be a career high if he can maintain it. But we\u2019re nine games into the season and Witt is still searching for his very first extra base hit.<\/p>\n Some of this is luck; Witt has hit the ball hard a few times this season that have been right at players or in the wrong spot. Just yesterday, Witt hit a fly ball at 105.1 MPH that Statcast put an expected batting average of .900 but it turned into an out. But it\u2019s not all luck. Witt\u2019s just not pulling the ball very much and he\u2019s hitting fewer fly balls than he ever has, and pulling those line drives and fly balls is how most hitters access their power.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n What\u2019s uncomfortable about Witt\u2019s lack of offensive production is that it shows how much Kansas City relies on him to be great\u2014not just good or ok, but great. That the Royals are 4-5 right now is almost miraculous. Witt will turn it around, but until he does the Royals will simply struggle to win baseball games and there\u2019s no way to mitigate that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source sports.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Kansas City Royals will play their 10th game today, and went 4-5 in the first nine games of the year. Great? No. Awful? Also no. When the baseball season starts, it\u2019s really hard to keep things in perspective. The season is 162 games for a reason: it takes a long time for trends to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2360940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[416711,424371,340898,392712,458549,351174,308583,311239,355713,353331,350963,458548,424369,279830,310650,311278,314436,311283,342882,349016,313216,327041,29913,77699,340583,402966,22091],"class_list":["post-2360939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-alex-lange","tag-angel-zerpa","tag-bailey-falter","tag-baseball-games","tag-baseball-season-starts","tag-brewers","tag-carlos-estevez","tag-cole-ragans","tag-colorado-rockies","tag-consecutive-games","tag-daniel-lynch-iv","tag-fly-balls","tag-isaac-collins","tag-jac-caglianone","tag-kansas-city","tag-kris-bubic","tag-kyle-isbel","tag-lucas-erceg","tag-luinder-avila","tag-matt-strahm","tag-milwaukee","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-missouri","tag-salvador-perez","tag-steven-cruz","tag-the-kansas-city-royals","tag-the-royals"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Six-stats-to-keep-an-eye-on-after-nine-Royals.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2360939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2360941,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360939\/revisions\/2360941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2360940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2360939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2360939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2360939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}8th and 15.6%<\/h2>\n
123<\/h2>\n
.270<\/h2>\n
8<\/h2>\n
6<\/h2>\n
0<\/h2>\n