Kansas City Royals: Five Moves for the Offseason
By David Hill
The 2016 season did not go as planned for the Kansas City Royals. As they look to contend once again in the upcoming season, they have quite a lot of work ahead of them.
The Kansas City Royals came into the 2016 season with high hopes, expecting to pick up right where they left off and contend for the World Series once again. Instead, injuries and ineffectiveness worked against them, as the Royals finished the season at exactly .500.
Some of the same problems from the past worked against them. Not known for their patience or power, the Royals ranked 13th with a .312 on base percentage and 14th with a .400 slugging percentage. Even with Kendrys Morales hitting 30 home runs, the Royals were last in the American League with 147 homers.
That lack of power would not have been such a problem had the Royals ability to make contact continued. Instead, they struck out 1224 times, which was 251 more strikeouts than in 2015. All the speed on the Royals did not matter since they could not get on base to cause havoc.
Those failures extended on the pitching side as well. Although the Royals could not hit home runs, they could certainly give them up, with seven pitchers allowing 10 or more homers. Six of those pitchers allowed twenty or more. Kansas City also issued 517 free passes, the tenth worst mark in the AL. They could not score, they could not hit for power, and they allowed the opposition to regularly use their rotation for batting practice. Obviously things need to change.
So what can the Kansas City Royals do to get back to the postseason? Here are a few moves that may help.