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.

10 Reasons for Optimism in 2017

Only a sick bastard would start his Kansas City Royals blog today, but here I am. What am I supposed to do, just suddenly stop thinking about baseball after enjoying four hours' worth of baseball and baseball-related entertainment nearly every day for six months? After the ridiculous stretch this Royals organization just experienced - or rather, is still experiencing - any healthy transition away from constantly thinking about KC baseball is impossible.

It's gonna be a rough offseason, but I'm focusing on the positive in an attempt to avoid my typical end-of-the-season sadness-slump. Without further unnecessary info about my psychological problems, here are 10 good reasons to be optimistic about the Royals in 2017:

1. Ian Kennedy gave up more homers than any other Royal this season, but he also pitched the most innings and recorded the second-most strikeouts. If Kennedy keeps pitching like the guy who recorded a 3.38 ERA since the All Star break, Royals fans will quickly grow to adore him.

2. Paulo Orlando stepped up and proved to be a legit big-leaguer, and he's earned the lion's share of the starts next year as he presumably continues to split time with Jarrod Dyson. Kendrys Morales, Eric Hosmer and Lorenzo Cain are the only Royals with a better 2016 OPS than Orlando. That's two pillars of a championship-winning roster and a full-time veteran DH.

3. Despite Cheslor Cuthbert playing remarkably well as a replacement, KC suffered from the lack of left-handed power in the lineup after Mike Moustakas went down in May with a knee injury. Before that fateful moment, Moose looked like he was on pace to repeat his solid performance from 2015, when he finished with a .284/.348/.470 batting line, 22 homers and 82 runs batted in. Adding that production to next year's lineup will clearly change things for the better.

4. Jason Vargas was not expected to take the mound again in 2016, so any contribution from him before the 2016 season ended was an unexpected luxury. That's not to mention that Vargas quickly went back to being his old self, and should slate right into the rotation next year.

5. The next step for Danny Duffy after this successful season is to become a bona fide ace. Many experts within the organization believe that if all goes well, we could witness the best starting season for a Royal since a guy named Zack Greinke played here.

6. A bunch of the young talent we saw, namely Cuthbert, Raul Mondesi, Whit Merrifield and Matt Strahm, look like they'll be legit contributors in 2017 and beyond. Well, maybe they'll be trade pieces instead, but that's a different story.

7. I know it's too early to project an entire starting lineup, but just imagine this defense taking the field- Salvador Perez, Hosmer, Mondesi, Alcides Escobar, Moustakas/Cuthbert, Orlando/Dyson, Cain and Platinum Glove Award winner Alex Gordon. Go ahead and find me a position where the Royals don't have a chance to win a Gold Glove next season.

8. The Royals ranked 12th at the All Star break with just 50 stolen bases, but they swiped 71 bags in the second half, which was 4th in baseball and bumped them up to the 6th-highest total for the season. It seems like the club returned to embracing that style of play, and that should continue into next year.

9. The old Detroit Tigers roster gets one year older next year, the Minnesota Twins don't look like they're ready to contend yet, the Chicago White Sox somewhat-predictably faded into obscurity and the Cleveland Indians can't stay healthy. It's not as if KC needs to win the AL East next season.

10. There just aren't too many question marks surrounding next year's roster, and most of the questions we do have are actually fun to ask. How will KC deal with Moose's return and Cuthbert's success? Which one of the aforementioned young infielders will earn the majority of starts at second base? Frankly, we won't be asking if the Royals can be good next year, but instead we'll want to know just how good KC can be.

The Royals face off against the Twins at Target Stadium at 3:10 PM on April 3rd, 2017. We're less than 182 days away, Royals fans. Thanks for reading.

Doug LaCerte also runs The Red and Gold Report and tries not to neglect his minuscule fanbase on Twitter @DLaC67.