Offensive Dichotomy

I noticed something a little strange while checking out the Royals team page at ESPN.com yesterday after the game.  At that time, the Royals were sixth in the AL in runs scored.  I'll get to why that struck me as bizarre in a moment.

Now, keeping in mind that runs scored is a counting stat, we should see major variability early in the season; indeed, between the time I noticed that yesterday and waking up this morning, the Royals had slid down to a tie for ninth just on the basis of last night's games.  So I checked deeper and looked at R/G.  The Royals are tied for eighth by that measure, one raw run (and thus 1/6 of a R/G) behind Cleveland in seventh.

What's bizarre about this is that the Royals are in the middle of the pack as far as getting runs across the plate -- while being in dead last in both OBP and OPS.  Since KC is also 10th in SLG, this is entirely BAVG-driven (the Royals are currently 5th in the league), further leading to Angels comparisons.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out; will the Royals continue to score far more runs than should be expected based on their ability to get on base and hit with authority?  The Royals have been scoring their runs in tight bunches.  Indeed, is it part of Trey's strategy to do just that, and thus outperform projections?

Something to keep an eye on as the season progresses.

Oh, one more thing: the Royals are scoring a full run per game more than the Yankees.  Given Royals' pitching and New York's recent April floundering, this probably bodes well for the season-opening series.