Royals' Offense Won't Struggle Like This Forever (Probably)
Despite the rough results, there are several indicators that the Royals might be just fine.
I like to think of myself as a logical and rational person. I work with data and use it to inform most of what I do, so hopefully you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt here when I say this:
I think the Royals’ offense is going to be fine.
Hey, wait, come back! Don’t click that red x just yet! I promise I can explain.
First of all, I didn’t say they’re going to be good, or even average. Just fine. I’ll also add that the Royals will likely end the season no better than slightly below average, simply because their start was positively putrid. It’s tough to dig out of a hole that deep, and the Royals dug themselves a veeerrrrrrryyy deep hole.
But things have begun to turn around a bit, and the numbers beneath the surface of that hole suggest it could get even better. That metaphor is getting convoluted, so let’s just get to the numbers (all from before facing Zac Gallen, so, you know, adjust as needed).
The Royals have improved their strikeout rate lately, and they now hover around the middle of the pack at 24.4 percent. That’s occurred while also improving their overall batting line. They still have the second-worst wRC+ in baseball, at 72, but as recently as a week ago, they were at 61, in last place. Which is, technically, better. And technically better is the best kind of better.
But even though more hits have begun to fall, I thought I’d look at some expected stats to see how the Royals stack up against other underperformers in recent years. Partly because it always seemed unlikely that they would continue to hit into the bad luck they had been in the first three weeks of the season, but also because weird statistical trends are fun.
First, I wanted to look at hard-hit balls, that is, balls hit with an exit velocity of at least 95 mph. The 2023 Royals have 258 hard-hit balls, and their expected batting average (xBA) on those is .488. Their actual batting average (BA) is .439.
Since 2015, the only full-season (excluding 2020 and 2023) teams with a BA below .468 on hard-hit balls was… the 2021 Royals, at .462. In other words, teams that hit the ball hard never continue to see their hard-hit balls turned into outs this frequently.
The 49 point difference between their xBA and their BA is also unprecedented. The next-closest number from a full season was the 2017 Tigers, whose BA was 23 points lower than their xBA. This holds true for their slugging percentage (SLG) and weighted on-base average (wOBA) as well. The only teams in the Royals’ vicinity are other 2023 teams.
If we only look at xBA on individual batted balls, this trend continues. For batted balls with an xBA of at least .500 (essentially a coin flip or better odds, based on exit velocity and launch angle), the Royals are hitting .688, despite an xBA of .740. The 52-point difference? You guessed it, it’s the largest gap since 2015, and the next-closest full-season team was the 2017 Red Sox, at a 30-point gap.
Turning our attention to SLG, we find a stat where the Royals don’t rank number one. On batted balls with an xSLG of at least 1.000, the Astros have a larger gap between their xSLG (1.721) and their actual SLG (1.365), though the Royals are in second with a 277-point difference. The only full-season teams with more than a 125-point difference are the 2016 Tigers (183-point gap) and 2017 Tigers (167-point gap), who played in a cavernous park that limited home runs, but even with that factor, it’s still an enormous gap.
The Royals actual SLG on those batted balls, by the way? 1.355, which is the lowest, of course, nearly 200 points from the next-closest full-season team, the 2015 Braves.
Also, because I can hear you saying, “but Hunter, aren’t they striking out too much for this to matter?” (Don’t ask me how I can hear you, I just can.) And the answer is, actually, the Royals are tied for the 9th-most batted balls with an xBA of at least .500 and an exit velocity of at least 95 mph. On a rate basis, that’s about 20 percent of their batted balls. The Rays, who are rolling out basically an entire lineup of Mannys Machado, have a rate of about 22 percent.
Any way you slice it, teams with this kind of batted ball quality don’t see results like this. If the Royals continue to hit the ball like they have been, there is really no question that their results will improve.
The main question, of course, is if they will continue to hit the ball with this kind of authority as the season moves along. I don’t have the answer to that question, unfortunately, but I believe in many of the Royals’ young hitters, as well as the hitting coaches who played a crucial role in the development of said young hitters. Here are seven Royals regulars who hit the ball hard last year, and they’ve continued to do so in 2023. I’ve listed their hard-hit rates for both years, as well as their percentile ranking, if applicable (several young guys didn’t get enough batted balls to be ranked last year):
(Salvy isn’t a young hitter, but he plays like a young hitter, and he’s also really good at hitting the ball hard, so I included him in the table.)
I also think that, as I wrote about before, if they see more of these hard-hit balls fall for hits, there’s an additional psychological benefit that could help the guys to relax at the plate, which could help alleviate some of their strikeout issues, which could then result in even more well-struck baseballs.
I certainly don’t foresee the Royals become an offensive juggernaut this season, but it wouldn’t be that surprising if they perform like an average or even above-average offense the rest of the year, especially if Drew Waters gets healthy and hits like he did last year. And while that won’t put them in the playoffs in 2023, it will help the organization set their sights on contention in 2024 and beyond.
Okay, now that you’ve finished reading all that, you can resume laughing at me before clicking the “Like” button and sharing this with your friends.