Royals

Stats: The Universal LanguageZack Greinke won the ALCY today in somewhat of a landslide over second place Felix Hernandez. Although I predicted Greinke to win easily (see below), the winning margin was even greater than I expected. What makes it historical? Well, that’s easy.

Stats: The Universal LanguageAt UFR, we have discussed for some time the desire to post analyses done by readers. There are lots of advantages to this, but first and foremost, we want it to be an interactive and participatory site. There are a number of very sharp posters who have the ability to post about something they have an interest in. Naturally, we only ask that they support their position with all the facts available. If you have an interest, send me an email and I will work with you on the project. mmanley@kcstar.com

Stats: The Universal LanguagePart II will be by a UFR reader – Jonathan Tucker (next week). This will be a new feature on UFR – reader contributions. I’ll discuss that in a little more detail before his post… While the ALCY jury is still out on Zack, we can compare him to Bret Saberhagen’s great 1989 season – without a doubt the best in Royals history – at least up until 2009. As you may recall, Saberhagen won the Cy Young award with 27 of 28 votes. Of course Sabes had a few huge advantages over Greinke… 23-6 vs 16-8, 92 team victories vs 65 and, perhaps most importantly, a name. Saberhagen had been successful for several years prior to 1989 – including being 20-6 and World Series MVP in 1985. All that has to be worth a lot of votes – irrespective of the rest of the stats. Nevertheless….

Stats: The Universal LanguageThis is the fourth (and final) part of my ALCY series since the season ended. I’m going to attempt to tear apart every facet of the battle between Zack Greinke and Felix Hernandez. It’s my opinion that they are the only two in this race that matter. Any discussion about C.C. Sabathia is a waste of time. Nevertheless, I will go ahead and very briefly explain why he has no chance. In fact, I can’t even see how he would get a single first place vote.

Stats: The Universal LanguageIf you read Part II, you realize I indicated that there are examples of pitchers who have been screwed out of the ALCY in the past. As to whether that would include Greinke (if he loses) is the subject of tomorrow’s post where I will cast my vote for either him or Hernandez. In the meantime, there are a couple of cases that I want to concentrate on and one of them is close to home.

Stats: The Official LanguageThis is the second part of a series on Greinke (post season). The first part (yesterday) was about understanding what really matters to ALCY voters and what a mountain Greinke has to climb. The short version is that he is tied for #7 in most wins and the worst any ALCY starter ever ranked was #4 (twice). I’ll get back to what makes him special among the rest of the AL in Friday’s Part IV. In the meantime, here is how special he is in Royals history.

Stats: The Universal LanguageIt seems everyone is fond of reporting the fact that Greinke leads the league in ERA - among other things, but this analysis is going to take it far beyond that – in some cases, I suspect, where no man has gone before. Of course, that is always my goal. Actually, this will be a four-parter. I can’t imagine any stone about the ALCY issue that I will leave unturned. But, I’ll tell you one thing right off the top…

Not what the batter wants to see!Each day I’m going to update where the finalist pitchers are it in their chase for the ALCY. Greinke pitched Tuesday and probably won’t pitch again until Sunday. In the meantime, Hernandez, Sabathia and Lester may have pitched on any given day. If so, I will update this post. Either way, it will be at the top of the blog for easy reference.

FlawlessI’ve written quite a bit about Zack’s attack on the ALCY in the past few weeks. I had narrowed down the list from eight to six contenders in my last post. Greinke took a huge step toward nailing down the award by beating the Red Sox last night – his first look at Boston this season. He still hasn’t faced the Yankees and as it looks now, he will pitch the day before KC travels to New York on Monday. That might be a negative.

Comebacks happen when you least expect them.Wow. What a comeback by the Royals! That makes 11 wins in the last 14 games and the similarities to last September continue. The club scored in double digits for the third time in the last seven games – September 15th, 18th and 21st. Last September the same thing happened. KC scored in double figures on the 14th, 18th and 24th. Even more amazing is that both last season and this, the club only had two double digit scoring outbursts from July 4 to mid September (60+ games)!

11-0 doesn't tell the whole storyOf course, the number one translation is “win”. That’s nine of the last 11 – not exactly unfamiliar territory for KC in the month of September. Last season, the club went 18-8 –  the best record in the majors. Although it is doubtful if their 10-6 will translate into a league-leading September in 2009, it certainly puts them in a position to once again go into the next season on a positive note. Back to the game, a lot of interesting things to mention.

The REAL Zack GreinkeThe good news is that Greinke got a win – and a shutout at that! The bad news is that he only went five innings, was removed because of an injury and didn’t get a chance to pad his SO numbers… although he still had eight! As to his injury, the only thing I know as I type this is that he should be back for his next start. If he has to miss any time, kiss the ALCY good-bye.

The Olivo MentalityWell, I finally got around to doing an analysis of catchers. What prompts me to do so are a couple startling stats for Miguel Olivo. The first is that he has a 9.50 strikeout-walk ratio (astronomically high), while on the positive side of things he has 20 home runs (just one short of being tied for second in the majors for catchers) – all the while playing at the K!

Robinson TejedaIt’s hard to make much out of what Robinson Tejeda is doing, but it’s even harder not to. Because KC has won seven of eight games and because Butler has been on a tear and because Greinke is still in the ALCY race, and because there is no downside left in 2009… perhaps it makes it easier to look for hidden nuggets. Perhaps. But, you don’t really have to look very hard to see signs of what could be a consistent Royal’s starter in 2010.

I’m reusing the “no support” image because what else is there to say? On Friday night, the Royals scored one run during his seven innings. He gave up one run as well. Result? No decision. Over the last six games, Greinke has pitched at least seven innings in all of them, but has seen only 12 KC runners cross the plate. Despite an ERA over that span of 1.37, his record is 2 wins, 1 loss and 3 no decisions. That won’t win you the Cy Young.

If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.Obviously, they aren’t (losing on purpose) – having won four in a row for the first time since June 16th! However, it does bring up an interesting question to ponder. If KC were to finish below Washington, they would have the first pick in the draft. In this case, that would mean getting Bryce Harper – the “LeBron James – Tiger Woods of baseball”. That should wet your appetite, but do you really want to lose games to get him?

EDIT: Updated through Thursday. Back on August 19 (Part I) and 20 (Part II), I took a look at a variety of issues related to Billy Butler. If you want to see how he stacks up against some of the best Royals of all time in his third year or how he compares by baseball-reference’s similarity ratings to some greats in their third year, please click on those stories. I figured that would be it for Butler for 2009, but he’s on a tremendous hot streak and is batting .347 with a SLG% of .547 just since those posts. So, here’s some more cool stuff – especially about three doubles in a game.

There's no place like home!I’m introducing a stat called Run Efficiency (REFF). The simple premise is that a team has X base runners, but scores Y runs. The higher the ratio, the better job they do of getting the runners home. What brought this to mind was a recent question by a reader (WichitaChiefsfan) about runners left on base, coupled with the fact that in the first three games of the Angels series it seemed like KC was doing a poor job of getting runners home – 30 hits, 4 runs.

he'd have no luck at all.How much worse can it get for the poor guy? He goes 8 innings and allows no earned runs. Still, he doesn’t get a decision. In his only other start against the Angels this season, he also went 8 innings, allowing 1 run... and a loss. As much as you and I want to harp on his lack of support, it’s starting to kill him in the ALCY win column.

Keeping PaceThe reason why I say “keep pace” is that on Friday four of the eight pitchers that are realistically in the ALCY race all pitched and won. Along with their game scores, they were Halladay (91), Verlander (76), Feldman (62) and Weaver (60). All of them were better than their seasonal average GMSC. Greinke is the only one of the eight pitching today, so he has a chance to shine independently of the others. It’s important to erase that Halladay complete game, 1 hit, 9 SO, 0 run gem from voters’ minds.