They’ve started brilliantly
This offseason, the Kansas City Royals wanted to compete in 2024. Not in the technical sense of the word; the 2023 Royals technically competed in every game by rote definition despite rarely being competitive. No, the Royals wanted to win games late in the year, to energize a fanbase, and to vie for the American League Central crown.
Coming off a 106-loss season, that sounded silly on its face. But the Royals banked on a few things. One, that they were getting Vinnie Pasquantino back (alongside Cole Ragans beginning the year in Kansas City as opposed to in Texas). Two, that Bobby Witt Jr. was likely to further refine his game. Three, that aggression in free agency would significantly beef up their pitching strength and overall depth. Four, that the AL Central was a weak division with no runaway favorite. And five, that the 2023 squad was an incredibly unlucky one with a higher true talent than their 56 wins would suggest.
With 19 games in the books, every single one of those hopes has thus far proven true. Vinnie and Ragans have been incredible. Witt has put in his best Alex Rodriguez impression. The pitching depth is night and day from last year. And only the Cleveland Guardians have proven competent.
The result? The Royals have a real shot to win the AL Central now. I know, I know, that sounds like a Royals fan being an unreasonable homer. But remember—I didn’t think the Royals had it in them! As a reminder, I predicted the Royals to win 74 games this year, which is just not enough to make the playoffs.
Fortunately for the Royals, they’ve done well enough, and the other AL teams have struggled enough, for projection systems to get on board with the idea. Fangraphs, in fact, projects the Royals to finish with 81 wins—the same amount that they project the Guardians and the Twins to accrue.
Fangraphs didn’t start off thinking this way. But any good projection system will bend with new data, and the fact of the matter is that the Royals have been stellar this year. At 12-7, the Royals have played at a 102-win pace so far. That level of brilliance won’t continue, but the Royals aren’t doing so accidentally; Kansas City leads Major League Baseball with a +40 win differential. You read that right: the Royals lead all of MLB in run differential.
Both factors here are reasons why Fangraphs and other projection systems think that the Royals can get to 80+ wins. The first reason is that simply by winning games at the beginning they’re setting themselves up better for the future. After this start, the Royals can lose a majority of games and go 69-74 over the rest of the season to get to 81 wins. And, of course, by playing so well the Royals are showing that their true talent level is higher than what the projection systems (and everyone else) thought would happen.
Kansas City has a long way to go still. It’s a long season and there are 143 more games to be played. The Royals have been lucky on the injury front and are actually the only remaining team not to have made a single roster move so far. Furthermore, while the Royals have much better 40-man depth than they did last year, their lack of top-end minor league talent means that there’s no phenom or huge injection of talent on the horizon. And, well, there’s reason for skepticism considering how bad they were last year and how often they’ve played the horrifically terrible White Sox this year.
But! The Royals are in a position to win a weak AL Central. Chicago and Detroit don’t pose big threats, to put it nicely, and the Twins and Guardians are definitely flawed. So are the Royals, of course. It’s just that “competitive yet flawed” is such a big improvement from last year that nobody really cares.
Bring back the #RoyalsDevilMagic and let’s go.