Game 106 Open Thread - Pairs of Minnesota vs. Nobles of Kansas City

The Royals are bad at hitting the baseball.

Very bad.

What metric would you like? Any will do. wRC+? 24th in MLB, 13th in AL. BB%? Tied for 29th in MLB, 15th in AL. ISO? Dead last, both categories. Home runs? Ditto. Runs scored? 19th in MLB, 12th in AL. The Royals have a 5th in the MLB in batting average, so that's a thing, as well as 3rd in stolen bases. They ride the #SinglesTrainToVictory.

The month of July has been particularly catastrophic in regards to guiding human beings across the pentagon of central platter. They have scored a putrid 3.30 runs/game in the seventh month of the Gregorian calendar, an unfathomable event considering that the Royals are a second half team in a year where everyone was set to improve.

Danny Duffy, tonight's starter, has born the brunt of this offensive offense this year. His record is 5-10, which means he's a bad pitcher, but his ERA is 2.47, good for 4th in the AL among pitchers with at least 90 innings pitched, which mean's he's a good pitcher. The reality is somewhere in between; his FIP is hugely different from his ERA but is still very respectable at 3.80. Regardless, Duffy has more losses than everyone not named Kevin Correia this year, which is a pretty good reason why pitching records are probably the worst stat in sports.

Fortunately, I believe I have solved why the Royals are a bad hitting team. Here is there particular lineup for tonight:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Here’s how the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Royals?src=hash">#Royals</a> will line up tonight against the Twins at The K. <a href="http://t.co/H6BzawnBOf">pic.twitter.com/H6BzawnBOf</a></p>— Kansas City Royals (@Royals) <a href="https://twitter.com/Royals/statuses/494564639061975041">July 30, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

And here is that same lineup with career wRC+:

1. Aoki, 103
2. Infante, 91
3. Hosmer, 103
4. Perez, 110
5. Gordon, 110
6. Butler, 117
7. Moustakas, 83
8. Cain, 94
9. Escobar, 74

It seems to me that maybe the Royals aren't scoring many runs because they don't have many good hitters. Even the 'good' hitters aren't that good, with career numbers between 10 and 17 percent above league average. If the Royals front office is reading this, I understand if you don't understand, because this is high-level, complicated baseball thinking.

The Twins send former Yankee Phil Hughes to the mound. He's had a good year, but at this point, it doesn't matter who is pitching if the bad offense shows up.