FanPost

Why the Royals probably won't make the playoffs

Some of you may be wondering why I am so pessimistic about the season for the Royals? Well first, off I have seen the Royals lose for pretty much most of my life -- I'm still in high school, by the way -- and I know a losing team when I see it. Or at least, a team that is highly unlikely to make the playoffs. There's one thing I can establish. But there are several other big reasons that I am going to cover in this post, explaining why we are in trouble for 2017. Maybe you might think I'm going a bit extreme on the Royals, but these are real issues that the Royals have. All in all, I would be legitimately surprised if the Royals make the playoffs in 2017.

The Offense can't Score:

The Royals did have a decent .261 batting average as a team, but once runners got on base, the offense completely stalled, especially in the later half of the season. For example, the Royals ranked very low in crucial categories of offense, such as RBI (5th worst), OBP (5th worst), OPS (5th worst), runs (8th worst), and runs per game (8th worst). The Royals, especially after the All-Star Break, began to completely tank offensively. They also had the largest jump in strikeout rate from 2015 to 2016, from 6.07 to 7.56 in 2016. Several key players had absolutely pitiful second halfs, such as Salvador Perez and Eric Hosmer. And a big cause of it is that I believe that the opposing teams have our offense figured out. The team doesn't want to take walks, so all the opposing pitchers need to do is get two strikes on them, and throw a high fastball, changeup, or slider, and they'll swing at it. They will either strike out, fly out, pop out, or ground out. This was the most obvious in July, where the team as a whole batted an anemic .226 for the month. The Royals were shut out 11 times for the year, held to only one run 11 times, and held to only two runs 26 times on the season. And out of all those times I listed, the Royals only won the game 7 times out of 48. That's absolutely pitiful for the Royals. And with the departure of Kendrys Morales, and having to trust Jorge Soler, I don't really think the Royals offense will be much better. There's too many questions in Soler, Hosmer and Perez are bound to flop in the second half, and we are still technically looking for our DH, so I doubt our offense will improve. But that's not the only reason.

The Pitching is Weak:

For a large part of 2016, the Royals had problems in pitching, mostly in the starting rotation, but also issues that started to seep into the bullpen. As for our current situation, the Royals really only have two reliable starters in the rotation: Danny Duffy and Ian Kennedy. After watching it for two years in a row, I am expecting Yordano Ventura to suck once more (I mean, he's a bust at this point), and there are too many questions on Jason Vargas and Nathan Karns or Chris Young. The pitching rotation is probably one of the weaker ones in the majors. But the bullpen is also putting up frustrating problems. Joakim Soria is unreliable in the bullpen, and seems to always blow the hard earned lead away, as he did thirteen times in 2016. Wade Davis is gone, and all we have left of our once vaunted bullpen, really, is Herrera. And with the lack of good free agent relievers left, I can't say that the Royals bullpen is really going to improve. It doesn't help that David Glass and Dayton Moore waited for too long to start working on the team, which compounds the problem in the bullpen. All that's really left are rebuilding projects to sign, and I'm not sure if I can trust them.

The Farm System has Gone Dry:

What was once the best farm system in the majors has dried up. We've passed that point in the life cycle of a farm system where all of its prospects have either graduated to the majors or been traded to other teams, and the later draft picks that result in the team winning mean that lower-quality prospects start coming in to replace the ones from before. Moustakas, Hosmer, Ventura, Perez, all of those players are now established major leaguers instead of parts of the farm system. However, poor drafting has only accelerated this process. Having four draft busts in a row in Christian Colon, Aaron Crow, Bubba Starling, and Kyle Zimmer will devastate a farm system in the long run, and cause it to quickly dry up, which drastically shortens how long the team can be competitive. Now that Raul Mondesi has become a major leaguer, there are no Royals prospects in the top 100 list (seriously, I double checked) and the farm system has really dried up. This could mean that we might be talking about a new Scouting Director sometime soon, as if this continues, things will only get worse for the Royals in the long run.

Edit: My apologies if this came off as a bunch of cynicism and complaining. I may have gone overboard with this one. Regardless, the message I'm trying to get across is to not get your hopes up too high, because they'll probably be let down the way things are. It's better to be prepared for the worst.

This FanPost was written by a member of the Royals Review community. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the editors and writers of this site.