75-87: Updated 2012 Projections

I first posted some 2012 guesses/projections on January 2nd, and came up with an 80-82 record for the Royals. Still using Jeff Zimmerman's spreadsheet, I've tinkered with the numbers. The most significant changes are decreased playing time for Sal Perez, the addition of a generic third catcher, and projecting Soria to miss the entire season. The loss of playing time from two key players (combined with minor tweaks elsewhere) show a decrease of five wins, or a projected record of 75-87 (ugh). Here are the individual numbers I'm plugging in to come up with that record:

Historical Royals Attendance

The four seasons played at Municipal Stadium at the beginning of the Royals existence were not well attended with a four year average just over 10,000 per game and the all time yearly low of 8,772 in '70. The move to Royals Stadium plus a pretty good club boosted attendance to 16,609 in '73. Another big increase came in '76 on the strength of a burgeoning powerhouse on the field. At 20,744, it was the first season the team surpassed the 20K mark in a season. Attendance remained strong for a long time, peaking in 1989 at 30,589 (the only season over 30K), and did not fall below 20K until the aftermath of the strike in 1995. The team has of course been terrible since then, so attendance has only marginally increased ever since. There was a small spike to 22,249 in 2003 thanks to a winning team, and another small boost to 22,196 in 2009 after renovations were made to Kauffman Stadium.

Another, possibly more revealing way to look at attendance is to compare it to the MLB yearly average. This paints a slightly different picture, one where KC fans are actually turning out relatively less now than they were even during the expansion years at Municipal. Attendance stayed above average between '76-'90 but has dipped far below ever since. The low point was 2005 and '06 when attendance was just 55% and 54% of the MLB average. (With the teams we were asked to watch those years, Royals fans can hardly be blamed.) The last three seasons combined have produced an average of 21,143, about 70% of the MLB average 30,172. 

The Improved Approach of Francoeur

I noticed in the very early going last season that Jeffrey Braden Francoeur was swinging significantly less than he ever had in his career. I finished that post off by saying, "Six full years of data certainly carry more weight than the 84 plate appearances his 2011 rates are based on, and he is a near-lock to regress towards his career norms. But these early numbers are surprising, and something to watch as the season marches on." Not sure what took me so long, but I finally got around to analyzing his final 2011 numbers. His plate discipline did regress a bit, but not nearly as much as I expected. Frenchy will always be a free swinger, but he reigned it in enough last year to turn himself into an offensive weapon. Judging by wRC+, it was the first full year of his career in which he was an above average hitter. And at 117 wRC+/119 OPS+, he was significantly above average. Here are some Frenchy plate discipline numbers for you to chew on.


3.62 pitches seen per plate appearance was a career high:

Year	Pit/PA
2006	3.32
2007	3.44
2008	3.48
2009	3.34
2010	3.58
2011	3.62
7 Yrs	3.46
MLB Avg	3.79

This chart shows his swing percent compared to league average. He swung at a career low 55.5% of all pitches he saw last year, compared to the league average of 46.2%, so it shows on the chart as 9.3% higher than average. O-Swing% means swings at pitches outside the zone, Z-Swing% in the zone:

Just as a hunch, I would expect when a player is swinging less that he is getting better at identifying balls out of the zone to lay off of. But Frenchy actually had a steeper decline in pitches in the zone at which he swung.  Looking at the below heat map of all the pitches he took with no swing in 2011 shows he had a clear plan to lay off certain strikes: those on the outside half of the plate. The plot almost creates a straight line down the middle:

If a pitcher has enough control to live on the outside half of the strike zone, he should be able to get ahead of Frenchy. But Francouer did a good enough job of hammering mistakes on the inner half of the plate to have an excellent season at the plate. With a new two year deal starting this year, Royals fans will be hoping he can keep it up.

March Royals Schedule Desktop

Happy March! It is indeed happy because there are Royals baseball games to be played this month. Why not celebrate with this desktop for your personal computer. Click here for the full size version.

Home

"Sometime after he quit playing...someone asked (Dan Quisenberry) why he settled in Kansas City. After all, he was a California kid. He had played all over the country. He had enough money to live wherever he wanted to live. 

'This is home,' he said quietly. 

'But why?' he was asked. 'Why is this home?'

He smiled and shrugged. 'It's like baseball,' he said. 'You don't ask why home plate is there. You just pitch the ball over it.'" 

— Joe Posnanski

Hall of Famers Vs The Royals In Kansas City

This one came about in a roundabout way. There was some back and forth on the Twitters today about forgotten Royals players, which lead me to look up how many players have played exactly one game with the team. Turns out there are nine such players, only three of whom got a plate appearance, and of those only Matt Tupman got a hit. (Tupman's 1-for-1 with a single in 2008 means he will forever have a career line of 1.000/1.000/1.000. I actually remember watching that single.) I clicked over to the one game Gary Martz played with KC on July 8, 1975, and saw that in Martz's lone career MLB game, he got to play with Hall of Famers George Brett and Harmon Killebrew and against Robin Yount and Hank Aaron. Not too shabby. I was especially intrigued by Hank Aaron playing in KC. I think of Aaron as just an NL guy, forgetting he played '75 and '76 with the Brewers. Turns out the Hammer played at Royals Stadium 9 times, hitting career homer number 737 against Al Fitzmorris there on May 9, 1975. It was his only homer off the Royals. That got me wondering what other Hall of Famers have played the Royals that might surprise me, so I went digging through the modern marvel that is Baseball-Reference.com to come up with this master list of regular season games played by Hall of Famers vs. the Royals in Kansas City. Here is that list (broken down into games played at Municipal and Royals/Kauffman Stadiums):

Would you have ever guessed that Billy Williams, Tony Perez, Fergie Jenkins, Ron Santo, Joe Morgan, Hoyt Wilhelm and Juan Marichal all played against the Royals in Kansas City?

Goose Gossage made his career debut at Municipal Stadium with a scoreless inning pitched on April 16, 1972.

Juan Marichal pitched in 11 American League games in his career, all with the '74 Red Sox, and one of them came at Royals Stadium. The Royals knocked him around for 7 runs in 7.1 innings, with Amos Otis and Cookie Rojas tripling and Fran Healy homering off the past his prime star.

HOFers Mike Schmidt and Ozzie Smith also played in KC in World Series games.

HOFers Willie Mays, Johnny Bench and Willie Stargell played in the July 24, 1973 Royals Stadium All-Star Game.


Games played by Hall of Famers for the Royals in Kansas City:
1366 George Brett
51 Harmon Killebrew
16 Orlando Cepeda
7 Gaylord Perry

Pic Dump III

Wathan & Bo argue with replacement umps at a spring training game

1888-89 KC Cowboys manager Bill Watkins

1922 Blues