KC Must See Minnesota Stumble

Has this first week of Kansas City Chiefs football made you forget about any hopes for postseason baseball in KC? You may be checking out a bit too early. Your Kansas City Royals still have a chance, but they have to play almost flawless baseball AND get help from two teams currently standing between them and a postseason berth. The Minnesota Twins lead the race now by two full games over the Angels and three games ahead of KC. Our odds for seeing October baseball at the K, according to FanGraphs, currently sits at 7.3%.

Minnesota has by far the best chance of breaking our hearts this September. Aside from currently leading the race, they also have a relatively easy end to their regular season schedule. 11 of their final 17 games come against teams with losing records. This includes today's final game with the San Diego Padres, a four-game series with the 68-77 Toronto Blue Jays and seven more against the 60-84 Detroit Tigers.

It's not all bad news for the Royals, however. KC will play three different three-game series against sub-.500 teams as well, and they expect Danny Duffy to return this weekend. The Royals' team batting average in September is also tied for the MLB's best. A few good days can still change everything, but KC needs the Twins to struggle to have any hopes of playing postseason baseball in 2017.

KC Built Better in 2017

The sweet sounds of live baseball will again grace our eardrums one week from today, when the Kansas City Royals hit the airwaves for the first time in this much-anticipated 2017 season. Yeah, it's just Spring Training, and yeah, the Royals have a mountain to climb to return to the postseason. The relative unimportance of games in late February shouldn’t be our focus right now, though. Fans in KC still have good reason to be excited about baseball this year, and even this month.

I initially thought KC needed to improve offensively while also keeping the pitching staff and defense “as good” in order to have any playoff aspirations this year. A closer look at last year’s numbers, especially pertaining to clubs who reached the postseason, indicated something very different. You should nonetheless be excited by the realistic notion that your Royals could improve their pitching staff and lineup in 2017.

Kendrys Morales is KC's only major loss to the batting order, and Royals management made moves to shore up an offense that was one of the league's worst last season. Jorge Soler's potential should excite you, and Brandon Moss posted an OPS above .825 against right-handed pitching in four of the last five seasons. Mike Moustakas is back from a season-ending injury, Alex Gordon is bound to be better, legit competition for second base should improve productivity overall, and a lot of KC’s core is still trending upward. It’s easy to have hope for the offense, especially when the Royals don’t need a great offense to have hope for a playoff run.

This year’s lineup doesn’t need to be incredible, but it must avoid being awful. The 2015 World Series Champion Royals finished the regular season with a .734 team OPS that ranked 10th in baseball. Last year, KC's team OPS dropped to .712. Only four clubs in the MLB recorded a team OPS lower than that last season, and none of those four teams won more than 71 games. It’s worth noting that Baseball Prospectus currently projects this year’s Royals to win 71 games.

The offense shouldn’t concern you, or at least it shouldn’t concern you as much as starting pitching. If any statistic seemed to confirm a team’s legitimacy last season, it was a club’s combined ERA for their starters. The combined ERA for Royals starters last year was 4.67, which ranked 23rd in baseball. Repeating this lack of success would make KC's chances at reaching the playoffs this year frighteningly low. The clubs who ranked 1^st through 8^th in combined starters' ERA's all reached the postseason in 2016. The two teams who made the postseason with an unimpressive starters' ERA - Baltimore and Texas - both ranked in the top ten league-wide in home runs, teaming slugging percentage and OPS. For the record, KC ranked 27th in homers, 24th in slugging percentage and 26th in OPS.

While K-Mo was KC’s only major loss in the lineup, the Royals had many more holes in their pitching staff. Wade Davis, Luke Hochevar, and Dillon Gee are all gone after combining for 205 and 2/3rds innings. Edinson Volquez and the late, great Yordano Ventura finished 2nd and 3rd in total innings pitched for KC last year, combining for 375 total innings. This list of pitchers who won’t throw a single pitch for the Royals in 2017 looks daunting, but the success with which KC rebounds from these losses could surprise a bunch of baseball people this season. With the help of a more generous, thoughtful owner in David Glass, Royals GM Dayton Moore just recently built something that resembles a legit pitching staff.

Jason Hammel threw for at least 166 innings and recorded an ERA no higher than 3.83 in each of his last three seasons. The return of a healthy Jason Vargas, a crafty veteran lefty who can consistently eat up innings, will also be huge for this team. Nate Karns' health is another major factor. In his one full year as a big-league starter, Karns pitched 147 innings and compiled a 3.67 ERA. That's about 40 less innings than KC got out of Ace or Steady Edi last year, but Karns' ERA in that season was over 0.7 runs lower than that of Ventura's 2016 campaign.

And hey, do you guys remember Kyle Zimmer? You know, that guy with a mid-90’s fastball and a curveball that already embarrasses big-league hitters? If all of Zim’s injury history can be explained by thoracic outlet syndrome, which is a problem he just surgically solved, then the Royals will add the fifth overall draft pick from 2012 to a pitching staff already expected to improve. Add Travis Wood to the back of the rotation or the heart of the bullpen, throw in veterans Seth Maness and Peter Moylan on minor-league deals, and this pitching staff suddenly looks more-than-competent.

The losses from last year’s staff are significant to say the least, but Royals management successfully rebounded from those losses. On paper, our Royals are already better than they were in 2016. I’m looking forward to providing the KC faithful with more evidence of that, and much more Royals-related content, as the story of this season unfolds. Get ready, KC; we’re only seven days away from live Royals baseball.

Doug LaCerte will spend much of the next seven days studying new player nicknames on Twitter @DLaC67 while completely neglecting his Facebook page.