Buck the Trends: How Batted Ball Profiles can help the KC Royals

Welcome back to the latest installment of Kings of Kauffman's "Buck the Trends," our continuing series honoring Kansas City legend Buck O'Neil. Today, we consider Batted Ball Profiles and how they can help inform KC Royals decision-making as the club strives to get better.

Sabermetrics theory is based on a pretty simple idea: wins are the result of effective run production and run prevention. The underlying logic is also simple — teams that produce more runs than they allow tend to win more games.

Statistics junkies use an actual mathematical equation to lend support to these notions. Taking the square of a team's run production (676 for the 2023 Royals) and dividing it by the square of runs scored plus runs allowed (676 + 859), results in a theoretical winning percentage. Based on this math, the Royals should have had a .383 winning percentage in 2023.

But Kansas City lost a franchise record-tying 106 games this year, which resulted in an actual winning percentage of only .346. Where did the math go wrong? What did it miss?

The Royals need to identify the "how" and not rely just on a formula

In the famous 2011 film Moneyball, Brad Pitt as Oakland general manager Billy Beane asks the Athletics' scouts if he cares how a player gets on base, to which he responds he doesn't. It's a key moment in the film, designed to emphasize the conflict between the old ways and the new.

Baseball isn't so simple. There's no magic stat. To be competitive requires deep analysis of modern data, ideas, observations, including the nature and dimensions of individual ballparks. But it also requires player identification and development, proper coaching, and a deep understanding of how you hit a ball, or pitch to induce contact.

Decoding run production and run prevention is key for the Royals

The key to breaking the code to run production and run prevention lies in Batted Ball Profiles (BBP), which for purposes of this story refers to the way batters hit the baseball. There are three basic types of batted balls: ground balls, fly balls, and line drives.

One of the biggest trends in the majors today is a focus on increasing team home runs. The logic behind this is that if a team can hit enough home runs to overpower its opponents, it doesn't need to rely so much on singles, doubles and triples. Let's call this the "Bully Strategy" — bullies try to overpower their opponents.

Bully Strategy teams spend big money to buy batters who hit home runs and pitchers who miss bats. They coach hitters to take as many pitches as possible, resulting in high walk and strikeout percentages, a strategy known as the three true outcomes: walk, strike out, home run.

On defense, bullies smother opponents with pitchers who throw impossible-to-hit pitches. They rely on strikeouts to lower their team WHIP, reducing opponents' at-bats and baserunners. The Royals are in no position to be bullies; they can't afford to compete for pitchers and their ballpark isn't Bully Strategy-friendly. Kauffman Stadium is, after all, huge, and plays like it. Bullies don't play well to Kauffman because, as Statcast data reveals, The K allows 50 fewer home runs a season than Great American Ballpark, which produces the most and is where the Reds play.

That's an advantage for the Royals. And knowing they'll play half of every season's games at Kauffman, where they and their opponents struggle to hit homers, the Royals can use BBP to buck the trends and better inform their decision-making.

But how?

Inducing batted balls contributes to run prevention

Fans focus on impressive feats. Pitchers who strikeout tons of batters are always impressive. But it's tough for big strikeout pitchers to go deep in games — because there are 27 outs in a nine inning game, striking out every batter would require a minimum of 81 pitches.

Then there's the fact that almost no pitchers have WHIPs below 1.00. Almost all will face a minimum of 36 batters to pitch a complete game; that's a heavy load of roughly 108 pitches.

To go deeper into games, then, pitchers need to shorten at-bats. Basketball coaching legend Bobby Knight said, "You don't play against opponents; you play against the game of basketball." So it is with baseball: because the game values strikeouts and long at-bats, playing against it requires inducing swings and bad contact early in at-bats.

Although some may favor the Royals developing starting pitchers internally, young hurlers tend to chase strikeouts because that's what teams value. To shorten at-bats and get more out of starters, the Royals should seek undervalued veterans just trying to stay in the majors. They're more likely to accept pitch-to-contact coaching.

Considering the nature of their home ballpark, the Royals should be looking for pitchers who avoid line drives and produce a lot of grounders or weak flyballs. They need to take advantage of the deep fences but avoid the power alleys. Keeping the ball in the park is a plus.

The Royals have recently acquired pitchers consistent with this logic. Seth Lugo brings a good 45.4% groundball rate, .231 OBA, and 1.203 to Kansas City. And Michael Wacha allowed a .204 OBA, 1.161 WHIP in 2023; although he's really not a groundball or flyball pitcher, he produced a combined 65.5% result.

What about those two pitchers make them good for KC? Both rely heavily on pitches with negative horizontal movement. Sinkers and splitters produce the highest percentage of groundballs, but sliders, curveballs, and circle changeups can also produce high groundball rates. Wacha's primary pitch is a circle change, but he also throws a curve and sinker. Lugo is a curveball pitcher but he'll toss in a sinker and slider to induce bad contact.

Looking at their existing stable of starters, the Royals have managed to develop or obtain several other groundball inducers. Cole Ragans and Brady Singer both throw hard sliders that result in high groundball rates. A healthy Kris Bubic can generate a lot of groundballs with his circle change, and the club also has Jordan Lyles who, like Wacha, produces an equal number of flyballs (33%) and ground balls (33%).

In terms of Batted Ball Profiles, the Royals are moving in the right direction. As they continue to build for the future, they should continue to focus on the importance of BBP.

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