Game LIV: Indians at Royals

June is upon us so let’s take a quick stock of where the Royals sat after two months. Standing type stuff is from after 5/31 while hitting stats are through 6/1 games (since B-R updates daily and I can’t go back). I’ll rate them with the closest emoticon I feel when I discovered the stat.

• :‑( ...Record of 22-30, worst in the AL
• :'‑( ...That sparkling .423 winning percentage was significantly better than the .383 Pythagorean win percentage.
• >:/ ...Last in baseball with 178 runs scored... that includes all the teams with the pitcher batting
• >_>^ ^<_< ...But only second to last in runs/game as the Giants 3.33 was worse than KC's 3.42
• (-.-) ...It's better than their historically bad April with under 3 runs per game
• (>_<) ...Dead last in walks,
• :‑| ...Though 3rd from the bottom in strikeouts
• (@_@) ...And lest you think it's a lack of clutch hitting, they're 3rd from the bottom in LOB
• ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ...The pitching is a hair better than league average (4.53) with 4.44 RA/G.

Turns out if you combined mediocre pitching with bad hitting, you get a pretty bad team. Last year’s formula was slightly below average hitting and slightly below average pitching adding up to an average team somehow.

But I feel like a broken record: the Royals have played bad enough to be in last but just good enough to not be completely out of it. Last night, the Cleveland broadcast was talking about how no one has buried the Royals. They were a little concerned this was a team that could get up off the mat if given the chance. And, again, with the broken record: if they string together a good couple of weeks, the complexion of this season can look totally different.

Vargas was great last night. Moose is still on Balboni watch. The team just took the first game from Cleveland and has a chance to win their second series in a row from them and are just 5 back of them.

Here’s the game capsule. I can even reuse some from last Saturday:

And here are the lineups:

Another series win?