ESPN Chalk's Joe Peta is sharing his season win total projections for every MLB team, including a reason for optimism and pessimism.
Plus, he recommends an over/under play, or a pass. This is the entry for the Kansas City Royals.
Kansas City Royals
Reason for optimism: The entire fan base and clubhouse is still basking in the glow of last year's postseason run.
Reason for pessimism: The ingredients that mixed so well for short series dominance might not be enough to get back to the playoffs. Plus, Ned Yost is still the chef.
In advancing to their first World Series in 29 years, the Royals went 8-0 during the American League playoffs. Not only is it possible many baseball fans forget that, but they are most assuredly unaware of the dominance the Royals demonstrated in sweeping the Los Angeles Angels and Baltimore Orioles, the two teams in baseball with the most regular-season wins in 2014. Kansas City won its first five games against the Angels and Orioles without ever trailing at the end of an inning. (In fact, Kansas City trailed at the end of only two of the 68 innings they played in the American League DIvision Series and AL Championship Series.) If that seems like outlier dominance, it was.
Only one team during the 2014 regular season had a streak longer than five games in which it never trailed at the end of an inning. What team was that? Why, the very same Royals during the first seven games of a 10-game winning streak in June. Turns out, Kansas City, with its contact hitting (league-low 16.2 percent strikeout rate) and untouchable trio (Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland) of late- inning relievers (1.28 ERA in 204-plus innings of work) were built to dominate over short periods of time.
Believe it or not, the Royals' first trip to the postseason didn't come as much of a shock to oddsmakers. Summing all of the Royals' 2014 single-game implied win probabilities reveals Vegas priced Kansas City as an over-.500 team from the get-go, and had them priced that way every quarter of the season. By the end of the season the Royals had won 89 games, enough to earn daily backers a slight profit over the 86.1 win expectancy, but that 2.9-win spread was almost exactly the same as their World Series counterpart, and the Giants, of course, didn't enter 2014 with a nearly-three decade playoff drought.
The point is that the Royals were, as expected, pretty good last year. And from an offensive standpoint at least, they should be even better this year. The Royals badly need power as evidenced by the fact that they got 10 total home runs from their right fielder and designated hitters combined in 2014. That's less than 25 percent of the 42 home runs the rest of the American League averaged from those two positions in 2014. So for 2015, it's out with Billy Butler and Nori Aoki and in with Kendrys Morales and Alex Rios, both of whom have multiple 20-plus home run seasons on their resumes. Additionally, Rios figures to be an upgrade defensively over Aoki, the weak spot in an otherwise tremendous fielding outfield, as viewers of October baseball learned last year.
From a rotation standpoint, while Yordano Ventura will be tasked with filling the symbolic shoes of staff "ace," it will be newly acquired Edinson Volquez who will initially be asked to replace the performance of the departed James Shields, last year's nominal ace of the staff. Shields gave up 95 runs (earned and unearned) while on the mound, so a 3.77 RA hole from 2014 isn't impossible to fill. Volquez rejuvenated his career last year with an even better 3.50 RA with the Pirates, but the NL isn't the AL and Volquez doesn't have the same skills as Shields. Still, put Volquez in front of a great defense, and as he showed in 2014, he can be quite effective.
In any event, some in-season upside for the staff might reside in free-agent signing Kris Medlen, who will be brought along slowly after undergoing surgery on his elbow last spring and missing all of 2014. Medlen has a career ERA of 2.96 as a starter, the fifth-best ERA of any starter since 2009 with at least 350 innings pitched.
While no one should expect Holland, Davis and Herrera to even come within one run of last year's ERA, believe it or not, collectively the bullpen may be even better this year. That's because outside of the aforementioned trio, the remaining members of the bullpen had a ghastly ERA of 4.89. Some of the worst of those offenders are no longer with the team.
Due to the peak average age of its roster, the mild upgrades on offense and defense, a return of the core bullpen pieces and only the loss of Shields a meaningful detraction from last year's American League champions, there is no reason the Royals shouldn't look very similar to the team that stayed above .500 all of last year.
Therefore, it's at least a mild surprise the Royals total wins market is not only below last year's 82.5 mark but, at 80, under .500 as well.
2015 projection: 82-80, (second, AL Central)
Bet recommendation: Pass