Stats and the 2017 Kansas City Royals: The Not-Good

There are several great reasons the Kansas City Royals have been able to get back into the thick of the AL Central race after an abysmal start to the 2017 campaign.

There are also some pretty good ones about why those same Royals were divisional bottomfeeders for large swaths of April and May and why they may not be in such great shape going forward.

Baseball is a funny old game that way. Things don’t always make sense. Numbers don’t always add up. WAR is a fine statistic that gives an overall understanding of who is “good” but Mike Trout still hasn’t made his first plate appearance in the postseason, either.

As my wickedly funny friend Josh Brown (@santoniobrown on the Twitter if you’re a fan of baseball and common sense) likes to say, “Hits don’t matter. RBI don’t matter. Wins don’t matter. All that matters is how good a spreadsheet says you ought to be.”

I’m paraphrasing Josh, who would be appalled if he found out, but you get the idea. Generally speaking, an overview of the stats isn’t giving you the whole story.

Fortunately for you, the home consumer of internet and internet-related baseball articles, I am here. I will be your guide. And we will come to understand the bad (that’s today) and the good (that’s sometime in the future when I get back around to it. Probably next week.)