Looking at the Royals’ AL Central competition
Four teams still ostensibly have a shot, but are all of them actually contenders?
The White Sox are clearly not going to win much of anything this season, but there are reasons to believe that all four of the other teams have a shot at the division. I wanted to take a deeper look at each team and see who I believe will really be in the hunt and who won’t based on how their season has started.
Cleveland Guardians
After a torrid start, the Guardians have jumped into first place and the Fangraphs playoff odds now have them as the favorite at 38.4% to win the Central. Are the Cleveland players all playing way above their heads to streak out to a 17-6 record? No, they are definitely not.
A few guys are outperforming their preseason projections significantly. Josh Naylor is hitting better than expected for sure. His 2023 wRC+ was 117 and right now he is sitting at 182, which almost certainly won’t continue. He looks like he will be a solid hitter though, and as he comes back to earth a bit, you would expect Jose Ramirez to start hitting more as he is off to a pretty bad start. The other hitters off to a better-than-expected start are Steven Kwan, Tyler Freeman, and David Fry. Fry is a bench player, so his performance is mostly a small sample thing. Steven Kwan’s line so far is just not for real, expect him to turn back into himself. Kwan has a .381 BABIP and his xwOBA is 33 points below his current wOBA, so he is probably closer to league-average than the 152 wRC+ that he is sporting now.
Tyler Freeman is the one that might actually be taking a step forward. It is hard to tell as his slug is really the only place he is over-performing last year’s numbers and that is a little higher due to a couple of homers that might have been a bit lucky. He has three home runs, but xHR of 1.4, so park and placement contributed a lot to two of them. It doesn’t matter that much, he has been a little better than expected, but not enough to push the team expectation up multiple wins.
The pitching is really confusing as well. They lost Shane Bieber to TJ. Ben Lively has filled in admirably, and looks way, way better than he ever has in his career before, but you cannot expect him to be an ace the whole way or to maintain the 0.79 BB/9 rate that he has so far. Tanner Bibee, Logan Allen, and Triston McKenzie are all struggling to varying degrees. How is this team winning while not having much of anything bounce positively from expectation?
It seems to be mostly schedule-driven. They have beaten the A’s in six out of their seven matchups. They caught Minnesota and Seattle early when both teams were struggling. They also had a series against the White Sox. The only series win they have against a .500 or better team is against Boston, who they just started another series with, and they are now 4-1 against the Red Sox. Actually, their first half schedule is kind of soft throughout and then after the All-Star Break they are going to go through some tough stretches. I am not sold on the Guardians being the obvious favorite here, though they are probably going to be in the conversation unless something drastic changes.
Minnesota Twins
The favorite to win the division for most coming into the season has gotten off to the slowest start of the contenders. Their odds of winning the central have fallen to 25.2% and they are four games below .500. A few of their position players are off to pretty solid starts. Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton, Alex Kirilloff, and Edouard Julien are all doing what you would expect or better. Unfortunately, Correa is hurt so that leaves just three out of your nine main bats performing well.
Royce Lewis is also hurt and several players they may have been planning on not using a lot have gotten more time than expected. Carlos Santana, Christian Vasquez, Jose Miranda, Willi Castro, and Max Kepler are off to rough starts of varying degree. They cannot continue to be this bad. Ryan Jeffers is splitting time behind the dish and doing well at the plate, so he will likely take more time from Vasquez if trends continue. The others are all old enough that falling off a cliff is possible except for Miranda. This lineup just might be worse than we thought going into the season, and injuries have exacerbated the problem.
The front three of their rotation look about how you would expect. Pablo Lopez’ peripherals look fine and he has a relatively inflated ERA. Ditto for Bailey Ober. Joe Ryan is the only one who looks way different than last season. His strike-out rate is up and walks are down. The ERA and peripherals have all followed by being down a full run or more pretty much across the board. It’s the back end of the rotation that has really failed them. Both Louie Varland and Chris Paddack have struggled mightily. Varland’s walk rate is way up and Paddack’s strikeouts are way down along with his velocity. If they can figure something out in the fourth and fifth starter spot it could help them a lot.
The lineup’s struggles, injury risk, and lack of depth make me think this beginning could be more real than fake, but you should not write them off just yet. Again, schedule has played a part. Until their current series, they had only played teams that are .500 or better so far this year. Now they are fattening up on the White Sox a bit, just like everyone else has. I’m not sure they are as good as many thought before the season, but they are probably better than they have been so far.
Detroit Tigers
Some analysts picked Detroit as the dark horse for the division to begin the season. They can really pitch it. Tarik Skubal, Reese Olson, Jack Flaherty, and Casey Mize are all off to better starts than ZIPS was expecting. Skubal looks like a dude in every way so far. Mize is not likely going to be at a sub-3 ERA the whole way, but he is looking way better than his projections because his ground ball rate has gone back to its 2021 level when he put up a 3.71 ERA. Flaherty has his best peripherals since 2019 and seems to have been a little unlucky so far on BABIP and LOB%. This is looking like a solid rotation, except for Kenta Maeda, but if only your fifth guy is struggling that is usually a good spot to be in.
The bats are the complete opposite. Only three regulars are hitting at a wRC+ of 100 or more; Riley Greene, Mark Canha, and Kerry Carpenter. None of them are BABIP-driven, and only Canha’s xWOBA is significantly lower than the actual, so they have three good hitters. Everywhere else in the lineup it has been “all aboard the struggle bus.”
The Tigers are not generally hitting the ball well either. Based on batted ball profiles, none of their guys, be it Spencer Torkelson, Parker Meadows, or Gio Urshela, seem to be hitting it well enough to expect them to be above average the rest of the way. Only two of them seem to be getting pretty unlucky. Colt Keith has a .206 BABIP and his .186 wOBA is way below his .279 xwOBA, but even that expected wOBA is below league average.
The other guy is the aforementioned Parker Meadows who has a .100 BABIP, but his xwOBA is so bad that I think his BABIP is low due to poor batted ball quality rather than luck. I just can’t find much in the offense to even be optimistic about. They have managed four runs per game exactly, so they have not been atrociously bad, but I think they are going to struggle throughout the year to score runs.
Again, their record seems to be schedule-driven to a large extent. The Tigers have only played the Mets of the teams currently above .500, and they played the Rangers who are are 12-12 currently. I want to see them play a little higher level of competition to see if the pitching can continue to be successful against better lineups.
Prognosis
Are the Royals in contention, and will they continue to be? I don’t see why not. None of these teams look poised to run away and hide. The Royals have the same weak schedule caveats as the Guardians and Tigers. On a rotation basis, as long as they stay mostly healthy, the Royals are probably the best in the division from one through five. Alec Marsh has really solidified that last spot in a way that none of the other teams can boast about.
There are holes in the lineup, but not as many as Detroit or Minnesota has currently. Maybe once Correa is back you could argue who is better, but is Buxton actually going to play a full year for once? The Guardians probably have a bullpen edge over everyone else, but the Royals look like the most solid defensively, especially in the infield.
Am I starting to believe this team will contend the full year? I think I might be doing exactly that.