Lousy Rotation, No Homers, No Bench: First Place!

The Kansas City Royals are this year’s Rocky Squirrel, defying the laws of physics. The team that shocked everyone to within 90 feet of a World Series title was by all accounts poised for a karma comeuppance in 2015.

Well, apparently Kansas City has been good to the gods. At 25-14, the team sports a two-game lead in the AL Central despite a lousy starting rotation and a near absence of home run power. They made almost no upgrades to their dubious 2014 roster, but they did manage to lose their best slugger, Billy Butler, and one of their best on-base guys, Nori Aoki.

The truth about KC in 2014 was that, other than a one-month stretch, they were a sub-mediocre squad, bereft of hitting of any type and entirely reliant on historically good relief pitching and outfield defense. That they discovered a little rocket fuel in October hardly obscured the notion that they were headed for a fall this season.

This year, the bullpen and defense are again igniting the wins. Although Royals starters sport a bottom-quarter ERA the team has allowed the second fewest runs in the league. That’s in part thanks to a relief corps (1.60 ERA) that’s relieving a lot of pain and in part thanks to stout defense that has held opponents to a .260 BABIP, about 40 points below normal. Low BABIP can be an indication of luck, but in this case it’s part skill. As Baseball Prospectus’s Matt Trueblood points out, “StatCorner credits their fielders with the second-highest Runs Above Average on grounders and the second-highest on fly balls; no one else is even in the top six on both lists.”

Up and down the lineup, Lorde’s favorite team is tearing up the league, not just by getting on base and running but also by slugging extra base hits that stay inside the park. Nowhere is the improvement more transparent than with the Greek God of Beating the Shift, Mike Moustakas. After a miserable 2014 in which the lefty third baseman batted .212, Moose altered his approach in the off-season and is no longer enduring an off season, hitting .331 so far, buoyed by handfuls of shift-busting oppo shots down the third base line.

But beware the dog days: the team’s kryptonite is its bench. For all the rockets’ red glare put out by the bullpen (1.29 ERA) there’s nothing along the pines. The entire bench has made 177 plate appearances and posted an abysmal .573 OPS, and only injured 34-year-old Alex Rios offers any promise of improvement. (By random comparison I chose the team at the bottom of the division, Cleveland, whose bench has come to the plate 278 times and contributed a .726 OPS.) That means Royals starters must carry the load for 162 games, and that’s not likely.

It’s a long season and May is quickly forgotten come Labor Day. If we look back then and see Kansas City still regal on the AL Central throne, we’ll admire their odd formula for success. And if they’re down muddling with the hoi polloi, we’ll know why.