Finishing Strong

The Kansas  City Royals have done a remarkable job of digging themselves out of oblivion and into contention this August. Nine game winning streaks will do that, I’m told. While they may be done digging and poised to start climbing, the hill remains daunting. In a world where being intelligent and hip (yes, I know that is not a ‘now’ term) is measured by how unexcited one might be, we have more than our share of naysayers to the Royals’ playoff chances.

Yes, there is a ton of data and four living baseball teams that have a whole lot to say about Kansas City’s chances. The Royals could have an amazing finish and get 91 wins and still miss the playoffs. On the other hand, I worked out a scenario (however optimistic it may have been) where the team only had to have a very good finish, get to 86 wins and make the playoffs. Ninety wins is the cool kid mark that has been set. I am neither cool or a kid and like letting a little unsubstantiated hope into my life and thus, believe 88 wins is going to do it. Let’s compromise and say Kansas City needs to finish 89-73 to make the playoffs.

Eighty-nine wins. That requires a 24-13 finish from here on out: a winning percentage of .649. That is a tall order for a team that, even with a nine game winning streak in its back pocket has still only played .520 ball this year. Is it logical to think a team can play that much better than its current season mark in the heat of a pennant race?

Maybe.

In the last five seasons, 35 teams have played .600 ball or better from this point in August to the end of the season. Not too surprisingly, all 35 played the final month plus with a higher winning percentage than what they had for the season to date.  Winning just sixty percent of their games only gets the Royals to 87 wins. You have to be in a happy place to feel good about their chances at that level.

Is it unrealistic to expect or at least hope for this group to play .649 ball from here on out. Well, in the last five years, TWENTY teams have played at or above that level from this point in time through the end of the season. Curb your enthusiasm for a moment, however. Of those twenty teams, just five of them had a season to date winning percentage equal to or lower than the Royals’ current .520 mark.

Why throw numbers around, when you go use a chart instead?! Following are teams that finished out the year winning 60 percent or better of their games, sorted by best finish:

Let’s look at this in a different fashion and sort the chart by the difference (DIFF) between a team’s winning percentage up this point in the season and what they accomplished down the stretch:

We are asking Kansas City to play .649 ball the rest of way, an improvement of .129 over their season to date mark. Fourteen teams in the past five seasons have managed to do just that or better and nine of those had a season to date winning percentage equal to or lower than the 2016 Kansas City Royals.

From the above, we at least can point to a fair number of teams that have either improved dramatically down the stretch or played at the level necessary for the Royals to possibly make the playoffs. I’m telling ya’, there is hope, son.

Of course, we also need some teams in front of Kansas City to falter at the same time. Let’s take a look at teams that were playing .520 ball or better at this time in August and what they did the rest of the way. This first table is sorted from biggest collapse on down:

All told, 61 teams breezed into late August with winning percentages of .520 or better and a few experienced some epic collapses. Thirty-three played worse down the stretch and, follow my math here, 28 played as well or better. Nineteen played just .500 or worse.

Baltimore currently has 37 games left to play.  A 19-18 record gives them 88 wins.  A similar pace the Mariners would give them just 86 wins, while doing the same would put Toronto and Boston each with 90 victories.  Seventeen teams on the nearest above list have declined in winning percentage by what we, as Royals’ fans, would hope Baltimore would do.

In the end, there is nothing easy about what lies ahead for the Kansas City Royals. Contrary to what some might think, I doubt very few people believe otherwise. However, believing that the task that lies ahead for Kansas City is insurmountable and unprecedented is also a poor argument.

The concern in my mind, would be ‘have the Royals expended all their ammunition just to get to this point?’  Nine game winning streaks don’t just come along in bunches, and you could make the logical argument that Kansas City is more likely to fall back to being a .500 team than they are to surge ever forward at a .650 pace. That would be logical, but it is not illogical to hope that they might.

It has happened before.