Go Hard

It’s been very obvious early this season that a big part of the Kansas City Royals struggles have been on the offensive side of the game. Most of the numbers speak to that fact: the Royals are last in the AL in home runs, runs, RBI’s, ISO, slugging percentage, and WAR. To use the word ‘anemic’ when speaking of the Royals hitting would be appropriate and speak volumes to a portion of the team’s poor start.

But while the team had only two players with a home run going into Tuesday’s doubleheader (Mike Moustakas and Lucas Duda have now been joined by Abraham Almonte and Alcides Escobar), there is one part of their game that should be looked at as a glimmer of hope over the coming months. In fact, it’s a statistic you would never think the team would be doing so well in:

That’s right, the Royals have the second highest hard-hit rate right now in the American League going into play on Tuesday. Wouldn’t have guessed that, would you? So how is the team doing it and why has the team struggled so hard to score runs in the early going?

When I first saw this number it made me want to go look up the team’s batting average on balls in play. While they aren’t at the bottom of the league in BABIP, they are 11th, at .284. This would explain a bit of bad luck for Kansas City and explains the big disparity between the amount of balls that are hit hard and the low amount of runs scored.

Next, I wanted to see how often the team was hitting the ball on the ground compared to in the air or even line drives. The Royals still have a fairly high ground ball rate, 40.6%, which leaves them at 11th in the AL. But the team is also in the top five in both line drives (21.8%) and fly balls (37.6%), which is a good sign.

We’ve seen a number of shifts on the Royals this year and I personally have seen a number of pulled balls scorched off the bat right to a defender in the early part of the season (with Soler’s blast to third base on Opening Day instantly flashing in my mind). But the Royals have actually been hitting the ball to the opposite field at a nice 26.8% clip so far this year, good enough for 6th in the league. They also aren’t pulling the ball as much, just 39.5%, which is 13th in the AL.

So how much are they making contact? Looks like they are sitting at 77.1% which is actually a bit lower than I would have expected, considering this is a team that makes a lot of contact. That also means that they are swinging at a number of pitches both inside and outside of the zone: 85.7% inside of the strike zone, 62.3% outside of the zone. They are also swinging at a lot of first pitch strikes, as they sit in 5th in the American League at 60.1%. None of this should shock anyone who has watched this team over the last four years and is just a continuation of their mantra of putting the ball in play.

They’ve also continued their issues with runners in scoring position. The Royals are hitting .215/.321/.290 with RISP and that last number (slugging percentage) is the real death-blow. Sometimes it is just as much about when you are hitting the ball hard as how often you are pummeling it. This could definitely be a big factor into how this team is hitting the ball so hard yet have very few runs to account for.

The biggest takeaway from filtering through the numbers is that the Royals hitters are doing a number of things right and if the team can get a little bit of good luck, some warmer weather and maybe even games played on consecutive days, we could start seeing the offense improve. New hitting coach Terry Bradshaw is obviously doing some good with the hitters and it’s just a matter of time before they start climbing out of this funk.

This will never be a lineup that will strike fear in the hearts of pitchers but it can be a successful one. Getting Salvador Perez back will help, as will the uptick in temperatures. This team might never be one that takes a lot of walks or goes deep into the count, but if they hit the ball hard consistently while continuing to lift, the numbers will rise. Patience might be a virtue, but it can also be the key to unlocking Kansas City’s success.