Royals In Monarchs Duds: June 22, 2008

The 2008 Salute to the Negro Leagues turned into a wild affair against the San Francisco Giants. The Royals donned uniforms based on the 1951 and '52 Monarchs style, seen here (hall-of-famer Willard Brown on left):

The visiting Giants presented a bit of a challenge, as there is little Negro leagues history on the west coast. A design based on a 1927 Royal Giants team was chosen; according to Around The Horn, an official Royals blog, the Royal Giants were an all-star team that toured through California, as well as a 1927 tour through Hawaii, Korea and Japan. That's hall-of-famer Biz Mackey second from right:

The Royals had the daunting task of facing eventual Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum. Kyle Davies started for KC, and had a short nightmare of a day, giving up five runs while only lasting one and a third innings. The Giants were up 6-0 after three innings, and 10-3 after four and a half. The Royals win probability at that point was 3%. The Royals made Lincecum work, and crawled to within 5-10 before knocking him out after just five innings and 109 pitches. The Royals jumped all over the San Francisco bullpen in the sixth, coming all the way back to tie the game at 10 by piling up eight base runners and five runs. In the seventh, Joey Gathright singled Alberto Callaspo home, and the Royals clung to a 11-10 lead for the duration. After a parade of ineffective pitchers from both sides, Ron Mahay came in for KC and breezed through the seventh and eighth, and Joakim Soria nailed down the ninth. The two teams trotted out 11 different pitchers, and the eight and a half inning game dragged out for four hours. According to the Kansas City Star, it was the second biggest comeback in club history.

The Royals did a great job of covering the salute on Around The Horn.

Royals Team wOBA+ & ERA+ Year By Year

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Can't stop graphing. This one compares team wOBA+ and ERA+ for every Royals season. I find this one pretty fascinating.

• See if you can tell if it was pitching or hitting that carried the '85 team.
• Royals haven't been above average in wOBA and ERA in the same season since NINETEEN-EIGHTY-ONE.
• The current pitching staff is on track to have the third worst ERA+ in team history.
• Those last 13 years sure are ugly.
• Royals had some serious pitching from '84-'96. Not so much since then.

Royals Career WAR Leaders

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Here are the all-time leaders in WAR compiled while a Royal (numbers from The Baseball Gauge). I've highlighted Royals Hall of Famers with gold bars.

• Kevin Appier needs to be inducted yesterday.
• WAR shows Freddie Patek, Larry Gura and Steve Busby to be marginal Royals HOF choices...
• ...but it's downright cruel to inductee Cookie Rojas. Cookie did start off as an effective player in his first few years as a Royal, and was selected to four All-Star games between 1971-74. The Royals may have kept him around a little too long, and his numbers between 1974-77 hurt his totals. His hitting line in eight years as a Royal is an underwhelming .268/.314/.346. Here a few of the 69 Royals with more WAR than Cookie: Gil Meche, Mark Teahen, John Buck. Cookie played eight seasons in KC to rack up his 4.9 WAR; Jay Bell put up 4.8 in his one season.
• Is Carlos Beltran a Royals HOFer?

Royals Best WAR Single Seasons

There's a new website for baseball nerds called The Baseball Gauge that has all sorts of fun ways to look at players based on WAR, Win Shares, and Win Shares Above Bench. WAR is my favorite metric of those. Here are the best single seasons in Royals history according to WAR numbers on The Baseball Gauge:

1. George Brett 1980: 9.4
2. George Brett 1985: 8.8
3. Bret Saberhagen 1989: 8.3
4. Darrell Porter 1979: 8.1
5. Zack Greinke 2009: 8.0
6. Dennis Leonard 1977: 7.6
7. Kevin Appier 1993: 7.4
7. Amos Otis 1978: 7.4
9. George Brett 1976: 7.3
10. George Brett 1979: 7.1
11. Amos Otis 1971: 6.9
11. Willie Wilson 1980: 6.9
13. Danny Tartabull 1991: 6.7
13. John Mayberry 1975: 6.7
15. Carlos Beltran 2003: 6.5
16. Mark Gubicza 1988: 6.4
16. Carlos Beltran 2001: 6.4
18. Amos Otis 1970: 6.3
19. Bret Saberhagen 1985: 6.1
19. George Brett 1977: 6.1
19. John Mayberry 1972: 6.1


Darrell Porter at number four! Wow. I had no idea how good Porter was.

Royals Best & Worst wOBA+ Single Seasons Graph

I originally had the best and worst wOBA+ seasons split up in two separate graphs, but they weren't too interesting. I've edited the original posts below, removing the graphs, and also added the 1969-1973 seasons, so the lists are now complete. I like this new graph better since it contrasts the difference between the best and worst. The midline is 100, or perfectly average.

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Royals Team wOBA+ By Year

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I can't stop making Royals wOBA+ graphs. Someone help me.

This one plots how the team's overall wOBA compared to the AL average every year. 100 (the yellow stripe)  means they were an exactly average AL offense that year. Above 100 is good, below is bad. Pretty dramatic illustration of distinct eras for KC offense; the surprisingly brief growing pains of an expansion team into a powerhouse from '72-'82, and into a middling to downright terrible offensive team ever since. The 2010 team is on pace to have the best wOBA+ since 2003, in spite of being below average.

Royals Worst wOBA+ Single Seasons

The saddest 20 offensive seasons in Royals history, 1969-2009, by wOBA+ (min. 400 plate appearances or a similar ratio in shortened seasons):

289. Jim Sundberg 1986: 87
290. Greg Gagne 1994: 87
291. Jerry Adair 1969: 87
292. John Wathan 1983: 87
293. Vince Coleman 1994: 86
294. Brian McRae 1992: 86
295. Brent Mayne 2003: 86
296. Jose Lind 1994: 85
297. Terry Shumpert 1991: 84
298. Frank White 1976: 84
299. Jackie Hernandez 1969: 84
300. Rey Sanchez 2000: 84
301. Dee Brown 2001: 83
302. Tony Pena, Jr. 2007: 83
303. Frank White 1998: 83
304. Desi Relaford 2004: 80
305. David Howard 1996: 77
306. Angel Berroa 2006: 77
307. Jose Lind 1993: 76
308. Neifi Perez 2002: 74

At least all we gave up for Neifi Perez was some guy named Jermaine Dye.

Jim Sundberg will be happy to hear that Jason Kendall and his 83 wOBA+ will probably knock him off this list after this season.