Highlights of a Lost Kansas City Royals Season

The Wrong

The Royals started the season with high hopes. It wasn’t to win it all but to improve on last year. They signed several veteran free agents, none of which are on the team now. The pitching seemed to have improved and many players were poised to have breakout years at the plate. However, the Royals season would not get off to the hot start they wanted. They won their first two games and then went on a ten game losing streak. Sprinkle in several losing streaks in every month that lasted four games or more and you get a team in fourth place in the division and in the bottom three in the league.

What caused these losses? The easiest explanation is pitching. Relief pitching put up 23 blown saves. That is a good place to start. Starters having 17 winning games ending up in losses sure does not help either. On the offensive side, a team 22.9% strikeout rate is not ideal. A team would look for more than a 7.5% walk rate by batters, but that didn’t happen for this offense. It shows that they are not as patient at the plate.

Let’s face it, almost everything that could go wrong, went wrong. One of the most glaringly obvious reasons is that runners only scored on average 14.5% of the time once they got on base. You do not win games and certainly not championships leaving that many runners on base.

Great hitting for the Royals

A bright spot in the otherwise dull 2019 Kansas City Royals season has certainly been the hitting. The most notable being Jorge Soler. He broke Mike Moustakas‘ home run record and continues to add to the lead. Soler is currently tied with Mike Trout for the American League lead in homeruns at 45. With Trout out for the rest of the year he has a real shot at finishing the season with the title.

Whit Merrifield is having another incredible year. He’s leading the all of baseball in hits with 196. That is 7 more than the second place hitter. He is also tied for second in triples with 9. He is tied with Hunter Dozier and Ketel Marte of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Leading the league in triples is none other than Adalberto Mondesi with 10, he is tied with Eduardo Escobar, and it shows that there are some decent offensive pieces in place moving forward.

A Light at the End of the Tunnel

After a rocky season bouncing around from the big league club and the Triple-A club players like Ryan O’Hearn, Brett Phillips, and Nicky Lopez seem to be making improvements. Alex Gordon made subtle improvements at the plate this year, but continued to be the gold glove left fielder we have all come to know and love. We will have to wait for the offseason to see what Gordon decides to do with his contract ending this year. Salvador Perez is progressing on his rehab and even has put the catching gear back on and started taking pitches. That is the best possible news a Royals fan could hear with this season winding down.

With less than two weeks to go of the regular season Royals fans can enjoy some exciting baseball from the electric hitters. They can even enjoy some scary pitching situations because the team has shutdown Brad Keller and now Jakob Junis. Lots of runners on base always is good to get the blood pumping for any fan. Even with what looks to be a bleak season based on the record, the Royals have still managed to show what they can do in the future. It is time to look forward to the 2020 Royals season, are you ready?

Head on over to the Overtime Heroics Forums to discuss what you think the Royals did right and wrong this season.

By: Jorden Miller

Twitter @cap_jrm