The Royals, and When Just Making Contact Isn’t Enough

Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

For as long as the Royals have been a franchise, they’ve been averse to drawing walks. Among all American League teams since 1969, the Royals have the second-lowest walk rate at 7.9%, ahead of only the Astros. Teams that don’t walk very much aren’t very likely to get on base as often, as shown by the Royals’ .327 OBP in that time, which is tied for the third-lowest rate in the league.

This isn’t new information, of course. Many people have written about the Royals’ inability to draw walks before, and it’s an issue that’s been around for far longer than just the last couple of hitting coaches, managers, and general managers. Instead of getting into that topic once again, though, I wanted to look at something the Royals do quite well to try and offset their poor plate discipline: make contact. 

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Players who don’t draw walks likely swing pretty frequently, and if a player is going to swing, it’s usually better for him to connect. In the last few years, the Royals have been a very high-contact team, and it was something mentioned quite often during their playoff run, so I thought we could see if that trend – like the lack of walks – has been around for a while.

Unfortunately, we don’t have contact rates going back to 1969, so we can’t create an apples-to-apples comparison. I could look at strikeout rate as a proxy for contact, but there are other things involved there that could distort the picture. We do have contact rates since 2002, however, so we can see how the Royals have fared since then.

The league average contact rate in those 13 seasons was roughly 80.2%. The Royals’ contact rate was 82.1%, which ranks first among all AL teams in that timeframe. We kind of already knew they made contact more than most teams, but now we see it in numerical form.

Looking at the big picture is fine, but jumbling every season together to get an average can hide trends, so let’s look at the year-to-year numbers for the Royals’ contact rate, as well as where they ranked in the league in that statistic.

2002: 1st (82.8%)
2003: 7th (81.5%)
2004: 8th (80.9%)
2005: t-8th (80.9%)
2006: 6th (81.9%)
2007: 11th (80.2%)
2008: 7th (81.7%)
2009: 9th (81.3%)
2010: 1st (84.8%)
2011: 2nd (83.2%)
2012: 2nd (82.4%)
2013: 1st (82.2%)
2014: 2nd (82.7%)

I don’t know about you, but I was expecting to see the Royals in the top two or three of that stat in every season. Those 2004-2009 seasons were even worse than I remember, which seems impossible. Since 2010, though, the Royals have excelled at making contact, especially compared to the rest of the league. Here are those same statistics, but in graph form, with the league average contact rates also included.

As you can see, the Royals’ contact rate spiked in 2010, but when the league averages dipped back down below 81%, the Royals’ rates stayed above 82%. In the last five years, they’ve been significantly better than average at making contact. Considering the team’s hitting coach has basically been the drummer from Spinal Tap in the last couple of seasons, it’s tough to say it’s all coming from that instruction. Ned Yost probably wants to see contact, but he also has said he wants to see more dingers, and we’ve seen how well that’s gone.

I do think, as an organization, the Royals preach making contact, and they’ve probably done so for some time, but it has only recently stood out because of the players who’ve been in Kansas City during the last few seasons. Players like Billy Butler, Salvador Perez, Alcides Escobar, Nori Aoki, Eric Hosmer, and Omar Infante all possess above-average contact skills, so they were able to implement the high-contact approach.

It does make a little bit of sense that the Royals would stress making contact over selling out for power, considering they do play in Kauffman Stadium, where hits can fall in the outfield much easier than a ball will fly over the wall. I would argue they’ve gone a bit overboard in that approach, but I understand the thinking behind it, at least in theory.

But how has this approach affected the overall offensive performance?

So, yeah. The high-contact approach hasn’t resulted in an above average offensive season, with the exception of 2011, when Jeff Francoeur and Melky Cabrera had their big seasons, along with Alex Gordon. None of those players are really elite contact hitters, so I don’t think we can say the approach was the driver of that success. Since then, of course, it’s been ugly. If you’re looking for a silver lining, it’s that the Royals crept closer to the league average last season, although that had more to do with the rest of the league performing worse than the Royals actually performing better.

That isn’t to say the Royals can’t be at least an average offense with this kind of approach, but it certainly hasn’t paid off in the form of runs scored during the regular season. Making contact is usually good, but once again, making contact on the wrong pitches isn’t terribly helpful. Solid contact is the goal, and it’s more difficult to make solid contact on pitches out of the strike zone. The Royals have the third-highest O-Swing% in the league since 2002, and one of the teams above them is the Astros, who were an NL team for almost all of that time.

As we saw the last two seasons, the Royals can compete with their current offense, but it’s taken even more work from the pitching staff and defense to get them to that point. They don’t need to field a lineup of nine Joey Vottos or Carlos Santanas, but just a bit more selectivity could allow this high-contact approach to really flourish. Letting non-strikes go by will force opponents to throw more strikes, and that can only help an offense with so many hitters who can control the strike zone.

They wouldn’t turn into a homer-happy team, because they simply don’t have those kinds of hitters, but they should be able to make better contact, which should lead to more power than they have displayed in recent years. A higher quality of contact and more extra-base hits will likely result in more runs scored, and the Royals will need every extra run they can get if they hope to get back to the playoffs this year.

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