Revisiting the Royals Review preseason predictions.

Back in March, the writers went on the record with their predictions for the 2019 season. Now that we’re at the All-Star break, let’s take stock on how those are looking so far.

Predicting the 2019 Royals

We’ll start in our own backyard with the Kansas City Royals specific predictions.

Well much like our Boys in Blue, we’re off to a real bummer of a start. Not a single one of us successfully predicted both the Royals’ best position player and pitcher per fWAR. Most of us got at least one of them correct, but that’s like a pitcher having a great pFIP but a terrible tERA+-+-, amirite?

Who’d have thought that thinking 20+ games under .500 was WAAAAAAY too optimistic? The Royals are on pace to win 53 games. The closest to correct on that was Craig Brown with 65 games.

And those who successfully predicted that KC would be 4th in the division were only correct by the hair on babyface Brad Keller’s chinny chin chin. By games behind, the Royals are still last in the division, but they’ve also played at least 2 games more than any other team in the division and 6 more than Detroit. By win %, they’re in 4th place (.330 to .329) over Detroit. All things considered, I think 4th is the correct answer here.

2019 Division and Wild Card Winners

*Note: The yellow is “kinda correct” for teams that are still in the playoffs but not in the correct position.

This seemed a bit more obvious apparently. Everyone got at least half of the correct. Someone (not gonna name any names IT WAS MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE) got 9/10 teams correctly.

Boston not being in the mix yet really burned a lot of us, as did Minnesota’s success. Washington was the hottest team in baseball going into the break, going 28-11 since May 24, which barely got them into that first WC spot.

Side note: that NL Wild Card Race is bonkers!

The whole National League seems way more wide open than the American. I’m excited to see how everything shakes out.

AL/NL Awards

Note: I used fWAR to determine these winners. (Spare me the reasons why that’s not a good indicator for players/pitchers/restaurants/pain).

Another Note: We got “kinda correct” credit for the top 10 players in the MVP award and top 5 players for ROY award.

Mike Trout and Max Scherzer are predictably very good. Less predictably, Lance Lynn and Spencer Turnbull are also very good.

Can we take a moment and bask in a player leaving St. Louis and succeeding instead of the other way around? Is it too early to hit the panic button, Cards fans? Ha Ha Ha. Silly, Josh. Cardinals fans don’t know how to use a computer; they’re not going to respond.

The biggest upset thus far is Vladito not being in the top 5 of AL rookie fWAR. After his Herculean effort in the HR Derby though, it’s easy to see him making good on that by the end of the year.

Tatis Jr. is on a historic pace and I’d think that he’d be at the top of that NL ROY list, and potentially the NL MVP list, had he not missed the entire month of May. He’s an exciting kid.

Who’s winning?

I assigned 5 points for every correct answer and 3 points for every kinda correct answer. As a collective, the readers know better than 7 of our writers, so whenever you’re reading their articles in the future feel free to post this table in their comments letting them know how wrong they are.