Decline in American League Run Scoring Has Royals Catching Up

People talk about steroids leaving the game, and that may be part of it, but I think there’s a more factors that may be at work.

There seems to be a renewed emphasis on defensive ability being a measurable and valued commodity, and teams are willing to trade some offense for a greater gain in defense. This hurts run-scoring on both ends—by putting more emphasis on gloves, you limit your offensive talent pool, so the league generally has weaker bats at the plate. And then when those weaker bats make contact, there are stronger gloves to gobble those balls up, further depressing scoring.

There also seems to be more effective pitching. Looking up and down the line-up, the Royals offense seems a little better than in years past, but it seems like every team has great starters and a flame-throwing bullpen. This might be perception as offense has declined and defense has improved, but I wouldn’t be surpised if modern management of pitchers has kept them healthier and more effective. People talk about coddling prospects with 80 pitch limits, refusing to break 110 pitches with young big leaguers, specializing relievers to 1 inning, and unnecessarily taking starters out after the 6th because you’ve got your 7th, 8th and 9th inning guys all lined up. It’s occasionally annoying, but it would be interesting to see if more young pitchers are reaching their potential, thereby imrpoving the total talent pool of MLB pitchers. Specializing relievers is particularly annoying when it comes to the best relievers, but there’s little doubt that they’ve become more effective in their short bursts.

And then, there’s probably less steroids, which seems to, overall, favor the pitching side of the pitcher-hitter duel. Maybe there’s a little less heat on the heater in the 7th inning, but routine flies don’t land in the 2nd deck.

So how do these changes affect our view of the Royals offensive progress?
If other teams are just fielding crappy hitters (and there seems to be some of this), then you don’t feel like the Royals have actually gotten better. On the other hand, those crappy hitters are at least good with the glove, so the Royals should get credit for scoring slightly more runs against better defenses. With regard to the possibility of improved league-wide pitching, the Royals should get credit for standing their ground as other teams have fallen back. Of course, it would also be a black mark on the Royals that they haven’t found a way to join the league in its improved pitching health and effectiveness. Lastly, there weren’t exactly steroid rumors swirling over recent Royals teams like black clouds, so it’s not all that surprising that fewer steroids in the game hasn’t hurt the Royals offense as badly as it has hurt others.

The basic idea is that more teams are paying closer attention to defense and are willing to play a defense first player in traditionally offense-oriented positions. The effect is twofold — the players provide less offense, and help reduce runs scored by playing good defense. For example, the list of AL players with the most playing time in leftfield reads:

Gordon
Pierre
Brantley
Boesch
Gardner
Patterson
Willingham
Wells
Crawford
Raburn
Fuld
Hamilton
Rivera
Young
Murphy

Over half of these guys are CF types, and less than half of those guys are traditional offense first (and even among those guys, Hamilton and Wells would still be playing regularly in CF in previous eras).

Of course, teams may now see that offense-first guys are undervalued and swing back that way, so we probably should not assume that the scoring environment will remain this low going forward (although likely still lower than the early 2000s).