Kansas City Royals: How to ‘Moneyball’ this winter to remain competitive

Conclusion

Death and taxes. Those are the only things in life that are said to be guaranteed. If everything that I ever wrote up came to fruition, someone would have already hired me to be their GM. In no way am I suggesting that any of these things will happen. What I am stating, however, is that there is a path to competition next season for the Kansas City Royals.

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If the Royals could get in the range of a .320 OBP from Dozier, .340 from Jackson and .380 from Hosmer next season, the average of those three OBPs would be .347. That’s not quite .354, but the Royals hit another stroke of luck because they don’t need to it be exactly .354.

The team had two of the worst nine OBPs in all of baseball last season in their lineup. Alex Gordon can’t possibly be as bad in 2018 as he was in 2017, so there ought to be some improvement there. Raul Mondesi is also assumed to be ready to take over at shortstop. All he’d have to do is post an OBP of .273 in order to be an improvement from Alcides Escobar last season. (In 2017, Mondesi’s OBP in Triple-A Omaha was .340.)

If the Kansas City Royals can get figure out a way to get improvement from the two gaping holes they had in their lineup in 2017 (LF and SS), get some production from Hunter Dozier in his rookie season, then, ideally, they’re only an Austin Jackson addition and Eric Hosmer reunion away from being competitive again in 2018.

Next: Top 10 outfielders in Royals history

Well, according to Jonah Hill and Brad Pitt, that is.