Fun with Arbitrary Endpoints: The Royals in July

Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

July was yet another interesting month for the Royals. They went 12-13 overall, which was certainly worse than one should have hoped, considering the weaker schedule, but I suppose it could have been worse. That’s not exactly a glowing endorsement, of course, but it’s the Royals, so I’d say it’s appropriate. They did gain half of a game on the Tigers from the beginning of the month to the end of it, which is nice.

Much like in the previous three months, the team had several noteworthy statistical lines that I feel are worth focusing on, both for positive and negative reasons. The posts for April, May, and June can be accessed via the hyperlinked text, and if you’re like me, you may want to have those posts open to compare the various statistics to the ones from the most recent month. Trust me, it’s fun. Maybe not as fun as watching Ryan Raburn spike a baseball, but still fun.

– The Royals’ team wRC+ was 86, which is below their season average.

– Only three players with at least 15 plate appearances posted an above average wRC+: Eric Hosmer (169), Mike Moustakas (119), and Danny Valencia (114). Valencia is now a Blue Jay.

– Alcides Escobar had a walk rate of 1.1% for the month, and still did not have the lowest walk rate on the team. That honor belonged to Salvador Perez, at 1.0%.

– Speaking of walk rates, the highest on the team came from Nori Aoki, at 10.3%, followed by Moustakas and Alex Gordon, both at 9.8%.

– Billy Butler, Perez, and Jarrod Dyson each had 2 infield hits. One of these is not like the others.

– Perez had an O-Swing% in July of 47.5%. Only two players in baseball swung at more balls. His infield fly ball rate was 23.1%. Only 5 players in baseball popped up fly balls at a higher rate.

– Aoki struck out just 5 times in the month. There are 62 players who have struck out at least 5 times in the last 7 days.

– As a team, the Royals struck out in 17.3% of their plate appearances. While that was the 2nd lowest rate in MLB, it was the first month in which they surpassed the 16% mark in strikeout rate.

– The Royals stole 25 bases last month, the most in the majors. No other AL team stole more than 17.

– Dyson went 9 for 9 on his stolen base attempts. Lorenzo Cain went 8 for 9, tying for second most steals in MLB.

– The team’s ERA- for the month was 91, which was the 9th best mark in the league.

– The bullpen walked 11.2% of the batters they faced. Only the Dodgers’ pen had a higher walk rate.

– Jeremy Guthrie struck out 7.32 batters per 9 innings, well above his average. He also had an ERA over 10, proving that strikeouts get you nowhere.

– Danny Duffy allowed 7 earned runs in 31.1 innings. Aaron Crow allowed 6 earned runs in 11 innings.

– Duffy’s fastball was worth 2.5 runs above average, but he still ranked second to Wade Davis (4.1) in that category. Davis pitched 10.2 innings.

– James Shields struck out more than 9 batters per 9 innings, and allowed just 1 home run in July, after allowing 11 home runs in the previous 2 months.

– Francisley Bueno struck out 14 batters last month. Two qualified starting pitchers (Brett Oberholtzer and Kevin Correia) struck out fewer than 14 batters last month.

– Fourteen qualified relievers had an ERA of 0.00 in July, and the Royals had two of them – Wade Davis and Kelvin Herrera.

– Yordano Ventura allowed 6 home runs last month. Mike Moustakas hit 5 home runs last month.