KC Royals: Psych Studies Support Batting Alcides Escobar At Leadoff

KC Royals manager Ned Yost was once labeled a “dunce” by the Wall Street Journal. Among the moves that drew their ridicule was batting hacktastic shortstop Alcides Escobar at leadoff. Don’t look now, but recent psychology research suggests Yost knows what he’s doing.

Every sabermetric guy under the sun will tell you batting one of the worst On Base Percentage (OBP) guys in major-league baseball at the top of your lineup is a bad idea. They’ll tell you that the leadoff hitter takes more at bats than any player on your roster. They’ll point to computer models that show teams will score more runs with a high OBP player batting no. 1.

They’ll laugh at the idea that hitting a low-OBP hitter at the top can gain some kind of intangible advantage. If you point to the Kansas City Royals and their two consecutive pennants with career .298 OBP hitter Alcides Escobar batting no. 1 in their lineup, they’ll insist the KC Royals won those titles in spite of their mistake with Escobar.

But those math whizzes ignore numerous psychology experiments that show Ned Yost is smarter than they think.

Ned Yost is well-known for rejecting sabermetrics in favor of managing with his gut. And, as the Kansas City Royals continue to defy the odds in both the playoffs and regular season, it’s becoming clear the KC Royals are doing something that numbers can’t quantify.

Sabermetric Gurus Ignore Psychology Studies That Support Yost’s Decisions

Yes, it’s hokey, corny, and sounds like something you’d hear in a saccharine Disney movie about a 12-year-old managing a baseball team to the World Series. But the story of the Kansas City Royals last two seasons is a Disney movie come to life. If you watch this team every day, at a certain point you can’t help but believe.

In fact, the numbers show that something beyond math is happening with the Kansas City Royals over the last three seasons. Let’s look at the evidence…

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Memorial Day Weekend

Now we come to Memorial Day weekend. After getting the miserable news that they had lost All-Star third baseman Mike Moustakas for the season on Thursday, they went out and swept the White Sox using three consecutive multi-run comebacks after the sixth inning. 

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That run includes Saturday’s seven-run, ninth-inning rally that powered an 8-7 win. CBS Sports estimated their winning chances at an even more improbable 1 in 1000.

Get that boys and girls, the Kansas City Royals came back trailing by six runs in the ninth inning. This came AFTER emotional leader Salvador Perez was helped off the field by trainers with an apparent knee injury that looked like it would also cost him the season in the top of the inning.

KC Royals fans on Twitter were calling it a lost season with three All-Stars in Alex Gordon, Mike Moustakas, and Salvador Perez suffering serious injuries:

Instead, the team pulled off the greatest ninth inning comeback in franchise history. For good measure, the KC Royals won their fourth straight game on Memorial Day due to a four-run eighth inning rally after the Tampa Bay Rays erased a one-run lead in the top of the inning.

This weekend isn’t the first time an injury caused the team to rally. After Alex Gordon tore his hamstring July 8, 2015, the Kansas City Royals went 31-17 in his absence.

Something happens to the Royals under adversity that takes their game to the next level

In the game that trainers drove Gordon off the field on a cart, the KC Royals fell behind 3-2 in the 4th when the Rays plated an inside the park home run with Gordon sprawled on the turf. Oh yeah, the Royals rallied to win that game by hanging five runs on the Rays in the fifth inning.

Just how many improbable rallies does it take before baseball analysts will accept that something happens to the Royals under adversity that drives them to another level of performance?

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It’s Poker, Not Chess

The only reasonable explanation is that something happens inside the brains of the Kansas City Royals under duress which causes them to raise their game. Otherwise, we’d have to accept that the KC Royals have been the recipients of insane luck at the most crucial moments for the last THREE FREAKING YEARS.

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One psychological study showed that golfers on a roll perceived the hole as bigger than rivals who struggled. Another research paper revealed that softball players who are hitting well believe the ball is bigger than struggling hitters. Researchers concluded that there’s a positive correlation between batting average and perceived ball size.

Given the above evidence, is it so hard to understand that the Royals’ historic playoff successes with Alcides Escobar at leadoff increased their confidence in such a lineup? Is it such a stretch to believe that the whole team might see the ball better because of their past feats with Escobar at the top of their order?

Ned Yost and his coaches might not be aware of it, but psychology experiments back up their decision to install Escobar as the team’s leadoff hitter. The KC Royals repeated ability to overcome impossible odds is rooted in psychology.

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When Wall Street Journal writer Brian Costa called Yost a dunce, he praised Baltimore Orioles manager Buck Showalter as a “chessmaster”. Maybe that’s what sabermetrics guys don’t understand. Maybe baseball is more like poker than chess, and the minds of the players are more important than any strategy.