Who did the best and worst against the Royals?

The recent Hall of Fame debates have led to a lot of interesting discussions, but also a lot of stupid ones. Take, for example, this column by former New York Times columnist Murray Chass, in which he writes:

Interestingly, while watching one of those shows, I saw a film clip from another show, in which Brian Kenny of MLB.com was arguing with Chris Russo, a talk show host, about which players belong in the Hall of Fame.

Getting nowhere and becoming exasperated with Russo, Kenny, a major proponent of monster metrics, said, "Well, what basic methodology do you use to rate players?"

"I watch the games," Russo said.

I have always avoided listening to Russo, who screams too much and too loud for my liking, but in this instance, he won my allegiance. In four words, he made the case for those of us who prefer to judge players on what we see on the field, not on the computer screen.

I watch a lot of baseball, but its almost exclusively Royals games. So I get to see our Boys in Blue 162 times a year, and then other Central Division opponents 19 times a year, but then I only get to see the rest of the league a handful of times, and some teams I don't get to see at all. And that's with interleague play and ESPN and MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) and the internet and all the modern niceties.

Now imagine you're a Kansas Citian in the early 1980s, the peak of Tim Raines' career. Raines plays for the Expos, a National League club, and there is no interleague play. There is no ESPN, no MLBAM, no internet. Your only exposure to Raines would be the All-Star Game, those rare occasions the Expos made NBC's "Game of the Week" and maybe a highlight once in a great while on the local news. You're supposed to judge a Hall of Famer based off that?

Anyway, that column made me think, what if we had no stats and we had to judge players based solely on how we saw them do against our local team? We'd probably have a pretty skewed perspective. For example, one guy that always seems to kill the Royals is Paul Konerko. The Royals played him 19 times a year, he hit cleanup for over a decade on a pretty good team, and he always seemed to kill us. You might think he's a Hall of Famer then, if you didn't know his stats (Paul Konerko was a very, very, very good player, but not a Hall of Famer if I were to judge him by his statistical record).

So I wanted to see who had done the best against the Royals in franchise history. Here are the OPS leaders, with a minimum of 350 plate appearances against Kansas City.

Not a completely surprising list. Frank Thomas is already a Hall of Famer, Jim Thome could join him, and Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Mark McGwire, and Rafael Palmeiro would probably be in someday were it not for PED suspicions. For what its worth, Konerko is actually a .261/.346/.454 hitter against the Royals, below his career numbers. So I guess we shouldn't completely judge things by our eyes.

What if we drop the minimum playing time requirement a bit to get guys that didn't face the Royals that much?

Gomes! Why did you let him beat you Ned! Herbert Perry is a guy that stands out as a scrub with the Indians, but I guess he must have terrorized Royals pitching in the late 90s.

Who has taken Royals pitchers deep the most?

Its now clear why the Royals have been pursuing Torii Hunter for so long.

Okay, so who did the Royals dominate against?

Some decent players in there, but no one really close to Hall of Fame status. Perhaps the best player the Royals shut down was Jose Canseco, who hit just .236/.319/.403 in 565 career plate appearances.

What about pitchers? Who shut down the mighty Royals hitters over the years? How about those that pitched at least 150 innings against the Boys in Blue?

Holy Cooperstown, Batman! That's four Hall of Famers (Blyleven, Hunter, Ryan, Palmer), two others that should probably be in (Clemens, Mussina), and Tommy John is a borderline case. I suppose we can put an asterisk by Roger's statistics?

Let's lower the minimum innings to 50.

Frank Castillo? Sheesh. Joe Nathan has 45 career saves, and Mariano Rivera has 37 against the Royals, in case you were wondering.

How did the Royals knock around a bit?

Yea, Garcia would have been my first guess. It seems like the Royals always had his number, no matter how good he was and how bad they were. How about those that were so crummy they only threw 50 innings against the Royals?

John Tudor sticks out as he was a very good pitcher, who was rocked in Game 7 of the 1985 World Series against the Royals (those numbers aren't included in these totals). Tim Belcher pitched for the Royals from 1998 to 1998.