The saying goes that baseball is a game of inches. Because of that, there’s always going to be a lot of variance in the game. Hit the ball two feet to the right and the double play is a run-scoring single. Strike the ball two inches farther down the barrel of the bat and it’s a home run instead of a lazy fly ball. In any number of situations, all sorts of things have to go just right in order to have a positive outcome for your team. I tell you this because I think the Royals could be the best team in baseball in 2017. Or they could be one of the worst. And I’m not sure many teams can say that.
On one hand, this team is one led largely by a core that hoisted the World Series trophy just 14 months ago. They had the best record in the American League and won all three of their postseason series before holding a parade that we will never forget. Just one season has passed between then and now, and many of the names and faces are the same. Better yet, many of those names and faces are theoretically in the prime of their careers.
Eric Hosmer hit .297/.363/.459 in the Royals championship season. It was the best year of his career. In 2016, he turned some of the doubles into home runs to end the season with 25. It isn’t outside the realm of possibility that he combines the batting average and on base percentage with the home run power and becomes an absolute beast at age-27. It also isn’t outside the realm of possibility that he continues to pound the ball into the ground while struggling with pitch recognition and loses the home run power but continues to struggle to hit for a high enough average to provide real value.
Mike Moustakas made huge strides at the plate during the 2015 season that he looked to be carrying over into 2016 before a hand injury and ultimately his knee injury sabotaged his year. If he’s healthy, I think people are expecting the guy we’ve seen the last season and change to show up, but if he’s not, who knows? Plus, are we really sure he’s become a different player? The injuries robbed us of the opportunity to determine if 2015 was his career year or an outlier. I think it could go either way.
Lorenzo Cain played 140 games in 2015 and was so good that he finished third in the MVP voting in the American League. He’s one of the best defensive center fielders in baseball and can provide enough offense that even if his defense falters a bit, he’s still insanely valuable. Of course, he has to be on the field. From April 26th to June 28th, he hit .319/.351/.458. That’s what he can do offensively, but he also hit 200/.291/.286 in his first 20 games. Is Cain a 5-7 WARP player or a 2-3 WARP player? It makes a big difference.
Those are just three examples of the variance on this team. There are more. Does Alex Gordon hit again? Can Salvador Perez add back the 15-20 points of average and maintain his power? Can Jorge Soler become the offensive monster everyone believes he can be or is he destined to be an average bat with a well below average glove? These questions matter, but it doesn’t stop with position players.
In the rotation, the Royals have three guys fronting it who are no guarantees. Newly extended Danny Duffy was elite for three months in 2016 but struggled down the stretch and has never made more than 26 starts in any season. He’s never thrown more than 179.2 innings in a season. It sure looks like he’s figured it out and can at least be a very good starting pitcher, but I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted a bigger sample.
Yordano Ventura is the ultimate “what if” player on the entire Royals roster. We’ve seen what he’s capable of doing. We’ve seen him strike out a ton of batters and get deep into games and look like an ace. We’ve also seen him go four innings and take his team out of the game seemingly before it even started. The talent is clearly there. We know that Ventura is capable of putting up great numbers, but he hasn’t really done that since his rookie season.
And Ian Kennedy has shown the ability to miss bats with an interesting approach of fastballs up in the zone, but that leads to a lot of home runs. He’s 32 now. At some point, the swings and misses will stop coming, but the home runs likely won’t. What happens if that year is now? Maybe it’s not, though, and he can put together another season with an ERA in the mid-threes and be that middle of the rotation stalwart the Royals need so badly.
Then there’s the back of the rotation. Jason Vargas and Nate Karns have a chance to be a couple of the best four and five starters in baseball. If they are, the Royals are in great shape. But Vargas has made just three starts since undergoing Tommy John and Karns had his season end with a long DL stint that was preceded by a demotion to the bullpen. There’s potential for both to be very good, but also major bust potential.
In the bullpen, Kelvin Herrera, Matt Strahm, Brian Flynn and Joakim Soria have the chance to make a feared back of the bullpen. In the three years after recovering from his Tommy John surgery, Soria posted a 2.99 ERA and allowed just 7.4 hits per nine innings. He struck hitters out, limited walks and was generally very good. He wasn’t 2008-2010 good, but he was good. He was hittable in 2016, though, as you might recall. Maybe it’s a blip on the radar. Maybe it’s not. Strahm was out of this world good in his first taste of the big leagues, but he’s a young pitcher. Young pitchers hit road blocks. Flynn was so difficult to hit in 2016, allowing just 6.2 hits per nine. Of course, he didn’t strike enough hitters out and walked too many, so can we expect him to post a 2.60 ERA again? It’s hard to say.
I could go on. Maybe I’m just too close to the Royals and every team has these issues. I don’t know. Maybe this is one of the problems of trying to do it with a fully ensemble cast. You can’t look at any one player on this team and know what you’re going to get (well that may not be true because we have a pretty good idea of what Alcides Escobar is ). With that, there’s plenty of variance in performances. I think it’s partially one of the reasons projection systems aren’t too keen on the Royals year in and year out. Maybe I’m on an island here, but I look at how the 2017 Royals are shaping up and I see a team that could win 95+ games again. Then I look a different way and I see a team that could lose 85+ games. I guess we’ll have to do one of the hardest things in the world and wait to find out.