For no good reason really, I wanted to look at the WAR for the Royals since 1974 (where Fangraphs starts tracking pitching WAR). No big surprise with the slow steady decline with sort of a small bump up in recent seasons.

To help level out the readings, I weighted each year with 50% of the value from that season and 25% of the two adjacent seasons. Here is the results

Two main ideas I saw from this graph.

1. The pitcher and hitter WAR crossed for the first time in 1985. It was the same year the Cardinals lost the World Series to Don Denkinger
2. It looks like 2005 was the bottom year for the Royals. It was also the season that Terrance Long and Emil Brown had almost 1100 PA between the pair.