KC Royals Likely To Incite More Beanball Wars In 2016

KC Royals pitching coach Dave Eiland wants his pitching staff to lead the major-leagues in hit batsmen, according to Kansas City Star blogger Lee Judge.

While Eiland’s intent is for his staff to control the inner half of the plate rather than to hit opposing players, the inevitable result will be more beanball wars like we saw in 2015.

As Eiland addmitted to Judge, if Kansas City Royals pitch inside, like he wants, they will hit more batters than any staff in the league. Presumably, some of those teams will retaliate by hitting KC Royals hitters—leading to bench-clearing brawls like we saw in 2015.

The interesting part of Judge’s column came when he asserted that the reason the Royals lost a mid-season match-up in New York 14-1 was because Yordano Ventura was reluctant to pitch inside after getting a bad reputation early last season. The Yankees crowded the plate and turned the outside corner into the middle of the plate.

Judge, who presumably got his information from his discussion with Eiland, cited this reluctance as the reason for Ventura’s early-season struggles on the mound.

Take a look at Ventura’s month-by-month splits from 2015:

Split	W	L	W-L%	ERA	IP	SO	WHIP	SO9	SO/W
April/March	2	2	.500	4.94	27.1	20	1.207	6.6	2.00
May	1	2	.333	3.71	34.0	29	1.147	7.7	3.63
June	0	2	.000	9.00	6.0	5	2.167	7.5	1.67
July	2	1	.667	5.63	16.0	16	1.500	9.0	4.00
August	4	0	1.000	3.41	37.0	37	1.243	9.0	2.18
Sept/Oct	4	1	.800	3.14	43.0	49	1.326	10.3	3.06

Yordano Ventura’s shouting incident with Mike Trout took place on April 12, and his dust-up with Oakland’s Brett Lawrie happened on April 18. Ventura began the 2015 season strong with a 2.30 ERA in his first two starts, but his numbers tanked after April 18.