Buck the Trends: Important adjustments improve this key KC Royals stat

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Welcome back to "Buck the Trends," our series honoring late Kansas City legend Buck O’Neil. This series considers current market trends and explores how the KC Royals could buck them by moving in a different direction. Today, we examine how the team has lowered its WHIP.

In November, Buck the Trends looked at the importance of WHIP to the Royals' future. Because the 2023 Royals' 1.407 WHIP ranked 23rd in the majors, the club's philosophical approach to starting pitching needed significant change. Has it changed at all this season?

Brian Sweeney and the KC Royals starters have made key adjustments

There’s good news on this front. It’s pretty obvious that general manager J.J. Picollo also identified the WHIP issue. He and pitching coach Brian Sweeney have done a great job making several key adjustments — starting pitchers have averaged 1.219 WHIP through Monday. The biggest improvement has been Brady Singer, whose current 0.764 is fifth in the American League.

But WHIP isn’t the only statistic the Royals have suddenly turned around. Kansas City starters are flat-out preventing the home run ball, a major change from 2023. Royals starters have allowed .49 HR/9 this season. The team as a whole has done well in this category, currently locked in a two-way tie for first at .5 HR/9.

The results are great in this small sample size: KC is above .500 for the first time in two years. The pitchers, particularly the starters, are doing a great job keeping the offense in the game. But how did that happen? What specific adjustments have been made?

The Royals made some smart offseason roster moves

The Royals have made some extremely well-thought-out roster moves since Opening Day 2023. Acquiring young Cole Ragans from the Rangers for Aroldis Chapman could potentially go down as the biggest trade in Picollo’s career. Ragans took the Opening Day job and has not looked back. In 23.1 innings this season, he has a 1.2 WHIP with 29 strikeouts and only seven walks. And he's given up only one home run. He’s given up only one home run in 23 innings. He’s been outstanding.

Adding off-season free agent signees Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha is also returning early dividends. Wacha has had a strong start with a 1.056 WHIP, allowing only four walks to 17 strikeouts. Lugo has been masterful at keeping the ball in the park — in an era when major league pitchers average 1.2 HR/9 (2023), Lugo hasn't given up a single home run in 18.2 innings. Although he hasn’t been much of a strikeout pitcher, he’s putting his team in position to defend, allowing only three earned runs in three starts. That’s incredible.

Then there’s Alec Marsh. He is carrying a terrific 1.080 WHIP after 16.2 innings. He’s done well to keep the ball in the ballpark and he’s not walking batters with a 1.6 BB/9. There's a lot Marsh can learn from watching Wacha and Lugo, two veteran pitchers who do a very good job of locating pitches.

Pitch location was an emphasis this offseason

Greg Maddux is considered one of the greatest pitchers of the modern era. He pitched 22 seasons with a career 1.143 WHIP. And yet, his career SO/9 was only 6.1. The point: Maddux was a great pitcher because he concerned himself with locating pitches and not beating down hitters. While Maddux could throw over 90, he rarely needed to. He finished his career with a 1.8 BB/9 and a 0.6 HR/9 despite giving up 8.5 hits per game.

The 2024 Royals starters look to have embraced Maddux’s philosophical approach. They are limiting home runs and walking far fewer batters. Meanwhile, the strikeout rate has not climbed. According to Fangraphs, the 2023 team finished the season 27th in strikeouts. The current squad ranks 26th.

And yet the improvements: from eighth to first in HR/9, from third to 30th in earned runs, and from 10th to 29th in BB/9 are all present. Why? Simply put, the Royals are locating their pitches and not trying to beat down hitters.

Look at Singer. He has increased his strikes per batter from 63.8 to 65.8% by reducing the number of balls he’s throwing (down 2% from last season). Because he’s locating his pitchers better, he’s inducing significantly more ground balls in 2024 (65.2%) than in 2023 (49.5%).

The KC Royals have expanded their collective repertoire

One issue previous versions of the Royals have suffered from was minimal pitch repertoires. Their youth movement of Singer, Kris Bubic, Daniel Lynch IV, and Jackson Kowar, always seemed to lack an adequate variety of pitches — especially Singer who until this season too frequently limited himself to just two pitches (more on that in a moment).

Newcomer Wacha does not have such issues. He comes with an expansive six-pitch arsenal, with varied velocity and movement. Marsh also boasts six pitches, and Ragans and Lugo both have five solid pitches. Picollo identified and chose starting pitchers who had more than two options, and Sweeney is urging the pitchers to take advantage of their options.

It's important to note that even Singer is in on this movement. For the first time, he's demonstrating he can, in fact, throw more than two pitches. While he still seems reluctant to utilize his changeup, Singer is throwing a four-seam fastball with far more regularity. Adding that third pitch makes his slider and sinker more effective; hopefully, we will see Singer develop something slower, too. Maybe he'll take a cue from some of his new teammates. Could a curveball be on the horizon?

The Royals have discovered the curve

The Royals front office has long had an affinity for the fastball, at times to the club's detriment. But the 2024 club doesn’t have the same look. What is clear is that Picollo built a new collection of pitchers with devastating curveballs. Four of five Royals starters throw the pitch 10% or more of the time. That must be some sort of Royals record.

According to Brooks Baseball, Ragans throws his curveball as the first pitch against RHBs 23% of the time; he’s not afraid to slip a slow breaker into his mix. And that pitch has proven to be a whiff machine at 66.7%. Lugo also relies heavily on the curve, throwing it 26% of the time. The hard-hit rate on his is only 29.4%, and since the start of 2023, he has allowed only two home runs off it.

Marsh is using his curve 15.57% of the time with a 31.6% whiff rate. He has struggled a bit with vertical movement, but that should improve. And Wacha isn't one to shy away from the curve. It's a pitch that has grown more effective as he has aged away from throwing gas. In 2023, it was incredibly effective — opponents batted only .172 against against it. They are currently batting .125 this season.

Why the curveball uptick? It's a pitch which typically results in lower velocity hits and more ground balls. As the Royals play half their games in spacious Kauffman Stadium, they can use those characteristics to their advantage. If they can get opponents to put the ball in play, Kansas City starters can go deeper into games, reducing WHIP and decreasing strain on the bullpen. It's a deliberate move from Picollo and Sweeney to put curveball pitchers on the field.

WHIP is certainly a key to Royals 2024 improvements

It's great to see that the Royals have made some serious improvements to their rotation. Sweeney has done an excellent job focusing the team on producing a low WHIP by shortening at-bats and forcing opponents to put the ball in play. Increasing pitch variety, introducing curveballs, focusing on pitch location, and not increasing strikeouts is helping a team that has spent the better part of a decade at the bottom of the majors.

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