Oct 2, 2016; Kansas City, MO, USA; A general view of Kauffman Stadium in the fourth inning between the Kansas City Royals and Cleveland Indians. The Indians won 3-2. Mandatory Credit: John Rieger-USA TODAY Sports
Mandatory Credit: Peter G. Aiken-USA TODAY Sports /
We continue our off-season project with a look at the Kansas City Royals All-Time 25-Man Roster.
The Kansas City Royals came into existence as an expansion team in 1969. They were joined by the Seattle Pilots in the American League and the Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres in the National League. This expansion also marked the first time major league baseball split each league into divisions, east and west.
Before the Royals were born in Kansas City, there were the Kansas City Athletics. The Athletics had moved from Philadelphia to Kansas City in 1955, then moved to Oakland in 1968. The Kansas City Athletics were a terrible team. In the 13 years they spent in Kansas City, they were 829-1224 (.404) and never once finished in the upper half of the standings.
Despite the poor play of the Athletics, Kansas City was not happy when owner Charles Finley bolted for the west coast. Kansas City mayor Ilus Davis and Missouri senator Stuart Symington fought for their team. Symington threatened to challenge MLB’s antitrust exemption with federal legislation. In response to the threat, MLB agreed to award an expansion team to Kansas City that would begin play no later than the 1969 season. On the floor of the United States Senate, Symington described Finley as “one of the most disreputable characters ever to enter the American sports scene” and said that “Oakland is the luckiest city since Hiroshima.”
One the 1969 season rolled around, the Royals had a better first year than the other three expansion teams. The Expos and Padres finished with identical 52-110 (.321) records and both finished in last place in the NL East and NL West, respectively. The Royals finished in fourth place in the six-team AL West division with a record of 69-93 (.426). They were two spots and five wins better than the Seattle Pilots, who went 64-98 (.395).
The Pilots fled Seattle for Milwaukee after the 1969 season. It would be nine years before the now Brewers franchise had their first winning season. They have played in one World Series but lost it in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals in 1982. It took the San Diego Padres 13 years until they finally finished over .500. They’ve been to the World Series twice but lost both times (1984 to the Tigers and 1998 to the Yankees). The Montreal Expos had their first winning season in year six. They made the playoffs once while in Montreal, then were ripped from the city and moved to Washington in 2005. Expos fans have still not forgiven major league baseball.
The Kansas City Royals are the most successful of the four 1969 expansion teams. They’ve been to the playoffs nine times, the World Series four times, and have two World Series titles. In fact, they are the only team of these four to win the World Series.
The best stretch in Royals history was the decade from 1976 to 1985 when they made the playoffs seven times in 10 years. Their arch nemesis in the 1970s were the New York Yankees, who beat them in the ALCS three years in a row from 1976 to 1978. They finally beat the Yankees in the ALCS in 1980, then lost the World Series to the Philadelphia Phillies. The strike-shortened 1981 season was another successful year for the Royals, but it ended in disappointment when they lost in the playoffs to the Oakland Athletics.
After a two-year hiatus, the Royals made it back to the playoffs in 1984, but were swept by the 104-win Detroit Tigers in the ALCS. They finally reached the promised land in 1985. They won the AL West, beat the Toronto Blue Jays in seven games in the ALCS, then beat the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games in the World Series (thank you, Don Denkinger).
Royals fans had to savor that World Series title because they wouldn’t get another one for a generation. They didn’t make the playoffs for the next 28 years and only finished within seven games of first place five times during that stretch. They finally surged back to contention in 2014 by claiming a wild card spot. They rode a dominant bullpen, timely hitting, and strong base running all the way to the seventh game of the World Series, but couldn’t overcome the San Francisco Madison Bumgarners and lost Game 7 with the tying run on third base and two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning.
Luckily, Royals fans wouldn’t have to wait long to make it back. In 2015, they won the AL West, beat the Houston Astros in the ALDS, the Toronto Blue Jays in the ALCS, and the New York Mets in the World Series.
As you might expect, the Royals all-time 25-man roster has many players who were key members of the team in their very successful decade in the late 70s to mid-80s. They also have players from their most recent World Series-winning team. Here is the Kansas City Royals all-time 25-man roster.
Salvador Perez is only 26 years old and is already third all-time among Royals catchers in plate appearances. He also has five years remaining on his current contract with the Royals. If he finishes out the contract with the Royals, he’ll be head-and-shoulders above any catcher in franchise history. As it is, he is very close in value (FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference WAR) to the team’s catcher in the late 70s, Darrell Porter.
Perez grew up in Venezuela and often played baseball with fellow major leaguer Jose Altuve when they were kids. The Royals signed him for $65,000 when he was 16 years old and he began his professional career in the Arizona Rookie League in 2007.
After four-plus years in the minor leagues, Perez was called up to the Royals in August of 2011 and had the best hitting numbers of his career in a small sample size of 39 games (.331/.361/.473). Part of his success was an unsustainable .362 Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP). In the ensuing five years, Perez has put up a .286 BABIP, which is more in line with what you’d expect from a big, slow-moving, pull-hitting, right-handed hitter.
Despite Perez having only played 39 games in the big leagues at this point, the Royals had seen enough to sign him to a five-year contract for $7 million, with three club options. Unfortunately, Perez tore the meniscus in his left knee during spring training and would play only a half season in the big leagues in 2012. He hit .301/.328/.471 in 76 games.
Perez finally got a full season in at the major league level in 2013. He hit .292/.323/.433 and made the first of four straight all-star teams and won the first of four straight Gold Glove Awards. He quickly became one of the core members of the team, despite his young age.
Over the last four years, Perez has been a mainstay behind the plate. He’s appeared in more games and had more plate appearances than any other catcher in the American League. The only catcher in baseball with more playing time over the last four years than Perez is San Francisco’s Buster Posey. Perez is also third among all catchers in home runs and RBI. His success has allowed him to grow more comfortable with his teammates. He’s really enjoyed social media also, as can be seen in this video he posted on Instagram with regular partner in crime, Lorenzo Cain:
Perez is so good on defense that the Royals can tolerate a bat that hasn’t been nearly as good the last three year as it was during his first three years. From 2011 to 2013, Perez hit .301/.331/.451. After adjusting for the league and his home ballpark, Perez was 12% better than the average hitter. Since then, he’s hit .256/.286/.421 and has been 12% worse than the average hitter. He’s never been one to take a walk but had better contact ability early in his career. Last season, he struck out a career-high 21.8%. His career rate is 14.7%.
Despite posting ugly on-base percentages in each of the last three years, Perez hits for enough power and is so good defensively that he has generally been a league average or better player. When it comes to power, he’s increased his home run total in each of the last five seasons. If he can hit more than last year’s 22 homers this year, he’ll make it six straight seasons with an increase.
Perez has also had some big moments in the post-season. In 2014, when the Royals broke their 28-season streak without making the playoffs, they faced the Oakland A’s in the one-game wild card playoff. The game went 12 innings and was won by the Royals when Perez drove in the winning run with a single down the left field line.
In Game 1 of the World Series that year, Perez hit a home run off of 2014 Post-season Pitching God Madison Bumgarner. It was the only run Bumgarner would allow in 21 innings during the World Series. Unfortunately, Perez was also the final out of that series. With the tying run 90 feet away, Perez popped out to Pablo Sandoval in foul territory to end the series.
When the Royals made it back to the World Series in 2015, Perez was one of the keys to their success against the Mets. He hit .364/.391/.455 and had key hits in the Series-clinching win. He was unanimously named the World Series Most Valuable Player. With his positive attitude and interesting Instagram posts, he’s become a fan favorite in Kansas City.
It was a tough call deciding between Mike Sweeney or John Mayberry for the all-time starting spot at first base for the Royals. Ultimately, Sweeney’s longer tenure and more playing time with the Royals put him over the edge.
Sweeney was on the Royals during a particularly bad time for the franchise. He got his first significant playing time in 1996 and left the team after the 2007 season. During this 12-year stretch, the team finished last or second-to-last 10 times. They had just one winning season.
After being drafted in the 10th round of the 1991 amateur draft, it took a while for Sweeney to establish himself in the big leagues. He had a cup of coffee with the Royals in 1995, then played 50, 84, and 92 games with the team over the next three years. His first full season was 1999, when he hit .322/.387/.520, with 22 homers and 102 RBI. Those look like great numbers, but 1999 was a very good hitting year. Sweeney’s 22 home runs placed him tied for 35th in the American League in long balls. His 102 RBI put him in a tie for 26th in the league.
The 1999 season was the beginning of a four-year peak for Sweeney. From 1999 to 2003, he was worth an average of 4.1 WAR (per Baseball-Reference) while hitting .324/.396/.535. He made the all-star team four years in a row from 1999 to 2003 and got some MVP votes in the first three years of that four-year stretch.
Unfortunately, even during this good stretch Sweeney began to have troubles with injuries that would plague him over most of the last decade of his career. He was put on the Disabled List for the first time in 2002, but it wouldn’t be the last time. He was in the big leagues for 16 years but played more than 130 games in just three of them. He also rated poorly on defense. Sweeney began his career as a catcher, but was moved to first base and Designated Hitter as he aged and injuries to his back, hip, and legs increased.
Sweeney was a very popular player in Kansas City. Three times he was named the Royals player of the year. He was also named the Players Choice Marvin Miller Man of the Year in 2005 and won the Hutch Award in 2007. This award honors players who exemplify a fighting spirit, honoring Fred Hutchison, who died of cancer in 1964. After playing just 134 games over his final two seasons in Kansas City, Sweeney played his final game with the Royals on September 30, 2007 and the fans gave him a standing ovation.
After leaving the Royals, Sweeney played three more years in the major leagues with three different teams. He continued to be an above average hitter for the most part, but was not good on defense and was no longer a regular in the lineup. In the spring of 2011, he signed a one-day contract so he could retire as a Kansas City Royal. He then threw out the first pitch of the 2011 season for Kansas City on Opening Day.
In the early 1970s, Royals owner Ewing Kauffman had an idea to develop major league-caliber players from good athletes. With the help of Syd Thrift, he created Royals Academy, which was located near Sarasota, Florida. The best player to come out of the Academy was Frank White. At the Academy, Seven former major league players were part of the team of instructors, along with two track and field athletes. The players at the academy were some of the country’s best athletes, but athletes who had not shown any particular skill in baseball. Kauffman thought a great athlete could be molded into a great baseball player with the proper coaching.
The players took college classes that were mainly focused on skills they could use, like nutrition and balancing a checkbook. They also learned how to speak in front of large groups. Unless you’re at the top of the pyramid, baseball is not going to be a long-term profession. These athletes hoping to become professional baseball players were also given other skills along the way.
The Academy was also a place where the Royals could innovate. On scouting reports, major league teams had a spot where the scout would mark whether or not a player wore glasses. That was the extent of the thinking as far as eyesight was concerned. At the Academy, Royals players were tested for depth perception. An eye doctor came up with exercises that would improve a player’s vision.
Famed hitting instructor Charlie Lau implemented video work at the Academy. This was long before major league teams were using video to help hitters work on their craft. Lau had a 200-pound video machine that needed to be pushed around the field on a dolly.
The Royals would bring in guest instructors, like Wes Santee, an Olympic track star, and Ted Williams, one of the greatest hitters who ever lived. Santee would help athletes develop their speed. Williams would talk for hours about hitting. Another innovation was the use of visualization. Players were given routines to go through before each at-bat and taught to envision success before the game started.
In a time when baseball players were actively discouraged from lifting weights because of the belief that baseball players shouldn’t get too “bulky”, the players at the Academy used elastic bands for resistance training. Officials from NASA came to the Academy and ended up using this idea so astronauts in space could exercise without traditional gym equipment.
In five years, the Academy developed 14 players who would eventually get big league playing time. Two of those players formed the Royals’ double-play combination in the late 70s and early 80s—U.L. Washington and Frank White. Years after the Academy closed and his playing days were over, Frank White said of his time at Royals Academy, “I wouldn’t have played baseball at all, I know that. I think I’d be working at Hallmark or something.”
Royals Academy graduate Frank white is the easy choice as the all-time second baseman on the Royals. He has more than double the plate appearances of the next-best Royals second baseman (Cookie Rojas) and five times the WAR. White played his entire 18-year career with the team. He was an all-star five times and won the Gold Glove eight times.
White had good power for a second baseman. He hit 160 home runs in his career and twice hit more than 20. That’s not bad, but compared to all second basemen the Royals have had in their history, White is Babe Ruth. The Royals have had only nine seasons in which a second baseman hit 10 or more home runs and White did it seven of those nine times. His career high is 22 homers in a season. The next-best single season home run total for a Royals second baseman is 11, by Alberto Callaspo in 2009.
Five years after his career ended, White was inducted into the Royals Hall of Fame and had his number 20 retired by the team. In 2004, a statue of White was dedicated outside of Kauffman Stadium. It is one of four statues at the stadium, along with former player George Brett, manager Dick Howser, and the founders of the Royals, Ewing and Muriel Kauffman.
White was a color commentator for a few years with FSN Kansas City and has spent time working in the Royals front office. He is currently on the coaching staff of the Kansas City T-Bones of the American Association of Independent Professional Baseball.
The 1970s was an era of baseball in which shortstops were prized for their fielding with little regard for their hitting. Good-glove, no-hit shortstops were the norm. Some of these light-hitting shortstops could steal a base or lay down a bunt, but you didn’t see guys who could generate offense at a high level. You rarely saw guys who could hit at a mediocre level.
One way to measure hitting is a metric from Fangraphs called wRC+. It stands for “weighted runs created-plus” and adjusts a player’s hitting statistics for the league in which they play and the ballpark they call home. A wRC+ of 100 means the hitter is exactly league average. A hitter with a 150 wRC+ is 50% better than league average. A wRC+ below 100 means that hitter was below league average.
During the 1970s there were a total of 160 player seasons in which a shortstop came to the plate enough times to qualify for the batting title (502 plate appearances in a 162-game schedule). In only 27 of those 160 seasons did a shortstop have a wRC+ of 100 or higher, meaning league average or above. That’s 17% of all shortstop seasons in the 1970s.
In the 1980s, when Cal Ripken, Jr. Alan Trammell, Robin Yount, and others came along, the shortstop position transitioned from a good-glove, no-hit position to a more well-rounded spot where teams increasingly rejected the light-hitting, glove-only guys. Of the 158 seasons in which a shortstop qualified for the batting title in the 80s, there were 47 seasons with a 100 or better wRC+. That’s 30% of all season, a significant increase from the 70s.
The shortstop on the Royals all-time 25-man roster fit in perfectly with the light-hitting shortstops of the 1970s. Freddie Patek never had a wRC+ of 100. His best season with the bat as a Royal was 1971, when he led the league in triples and hit .267/.323/.371. He still finished with a 98 wRC+, which is 2% worse than league average.
Despite being such a weak hitter, Patek hit in the #1 spot in the lineup nearly as often as he hit eighth. He stole 30 or more bases eight times and regularly laid down 10 or more sacrifice bunts. He did things that made it look like he was an adequate hitter, but a .309 on-base percentage and .321 slugging percentage during his time with the Royals showed the reality.
Patek made his bones with his glove. Despite being such a weak hitter, he made the all-star team three times. He helped Royals pitchers with his plays at shortstop and formed a good-fielding middle infield defensive combination with second baseman Frank White. Former manager Whitey Herzog called Patek the best artificial turf shortstop he’d ever managed, placing him higher than the legendary Ozzie Smith.
He was also very productive at the plate in two of the team’s three playoff series with the Yankees. He had 14 hits, six runs scored, and nine RBI in the 10 playoff games against the Yankees in 1976 and 1977.
Listed at 5’5” and 148 pounds, Patek was the smallest player in the big leagues during his career. He was once asked by a reporter how it felt to be the smallest player in the major leagues. He responded, I’d rather be the smallest player in the majors than the tallest player in the minors.”
In the long history of baseball, there are only a few players who are the undisputed face of the franchise. Ask a baseball fan who comes to mind when they think of the San Diego Padres and the automatic response will be “Tony Gwynn.” For the Phillies, it’s Mike Schmidt. As good as Babe Ruth was, the Yankees have so many all-time greats that he might not be the undisputed face of the Yankees. It could be Mickey Mantle or Joe DiMaggio or perhaps Derek Jeter, for a more recent generation of fans. Statistically, Honus Wagner was the best player in the history of the Pittsburgh Pirates, but Roberto Clemente is the first Pirate that comes to mind for many baseball fans.
For the Kansas City Royals, George Brett is The Man. In the history of baseball, there are two players who have more than twice as many Wins Above Replacement as the next-best player on their team. One is Tony Gwynn and the other is George Brett.
Brett was born to a family of athletes. He was the youngest of four boys. His second oldest brother, Ken, pitched more than 1,500 innings in the major leagues for 10 teams over 14 years. His other two brothers, John and Bobby, each spent one year in the minor leagues. In 1985, the four brothers purchased a minor league team in the Pacific Northwest called the Spokane Indians.
Brett played with another future major league player, Scott McGregor, in high school before being drafted in the second round of the 1971 draft by the Royals. He started his career as a shortstop, but 20 errors in 47 games his first year in the minors got him moved to third base. He played two full seasons and most of a third in the minor leagues before getting into 13 games with the Royals in 1973.
The 1974 season was when Brett established himself as a big leaguer, but he came into his own in 1975 when he led the league in hits and triples and hit over .300 for the first of 11 times in his career. He led the league in hits, triples, and batting average the following year, while also making the all-star team for the first of 13 consecutive times. He finished second to Thurman Monson in AL MVP voting even though he had 7.5 WAR to Munson’s 5.3 (rookie sensation Mark Fydrich had 9.6 WAR, according to Baseball-Reference.com).
The Royals went to the playoffs five times in six years from 1976 to 1981 and Brett was the driving force behind those playoff teams. They faced the Yankees three years in a row in the ALCS from 1976 to 1978 and Brett hit a combined .375/.400/.768 in those games. Unfortunately, the Royals lost all three series.
The 1980 season was peak George Brett. Everything came together for him that year. It didn’t start out well, though. At the end of April, Brett was hitting just .259. Aprils can be cold in Kansas City and Brett didn’t like to wear batting gloves. He heated up a bit in May, but it wasn’t until the final day of the month that he got his average over .300. He went into a game against the Yankees on June 3 hitting .300, but after going 15 for 29 over the next seven games, he was up to .337 on June 10. Unfortunately, Brett hurt his ankle and would miss the next month of the season.
As the thermometer rose in Kansas City in July, so did Brett’s batting average. He came back from his injury to hit .494 in 21 games in July, even as the temperature made playing on the stadium AstroTurf almost unbearable. Players would have ice buckets in the dugout so they could submerge their feet, cleats and all, between innings during day games. By the end of the month, his batting average for the season was .390.
He kept it going in August. A 4-for-4 day against the Toronto Blue Jays on August 17 put Brett over .400 for the first time. He stayed over .400 for six glorious days, but an 0-for-3 on August 23 dropped him to .399. He wasn’t done, though. After going 2 for 4 against the Milwaukee Brewers on August 25, Brett went 5-for-5 on the 26th and his average was up to .407. George Brett was hitting .407 on August 26. Imagine if someone is hitting .407 in late August during the upcoming season. Social media would explode.
No player had hit .400 since Ted Williams in 1941, yet there was George Brett attempting the impossible. As Joe Posnanski wrote, when Brett was making a legitimate run for .400, there was nationwide hysteria. The reporters swarmed his locker and Brett did his best to accommodate them. He had always been good with reporters. He was a good-natured guy with a great sense of humor. But hitting .400 with a month left in the season changed things.
The coverage wore on Brett. He grew angry and resentful at the constant questions. It was just too much. He dropped to .396 after going 0-for-3 against Cleveland on September 6 and then missed 10 games with a wrist injury. He came back from the wrist injury on a hot streak by going 6-for-12 and his batting average was up to an even .400 on September 19. With two weeks left in the season, there was still a chance.
Brett was 1-for-8 in two home games, then the Royals flew out to Seattle for a three game series in which Brett was 2-for-11. Next up was a trip to Minnesota for the Royals final road series of the season. Brett went 1-for-8 in the first two games. His batting average had dropped to .384. After the game, he refused to talk to the press. When Kansas City Star columnist Mike McKenzie complained, Brett turned to teammate Darrell Porter and exploded, saying, “Darrell, one (bleeping) day I want to go without the same questions. One (bleeping day). You think there’s anything wrong with that?”
Royals manager Jim Frey gave Brett the next day off, but Brett wanted to pinch-hit in the sixth. He came up with the bases load and hit a pinch-hit grand slam to put the Royals ahead. Over the next five games, Brett was 9-for-18 but it wasn’t enough. He finished at .390. Crash Davis said in Bull Durham that the difference between hitting .250 and .300 was one extra hit a week, “one extra flare a week, just one, a gork, you get a ground ball, you get a ground ball with eyes, you get a dying quail . . . just one more dying quail a week and you’re in Yankee Stadium.” For George Brett, the difference between .390 and .400 was five hits. Five flares, five gorks, five ground ball with eyes, five dying quails, and he would have hit .400.
Along with Brett’s run for .400, the big news in Kansas City in 1980 was the Royals making it to the World Series for the first time in their existence. They got there by finally beating the Yankees in the ALCS, after losing to them three times in the previous four seasons. The Royals lost the World Series in six games to the Philadelphia Phillies, but Brett did his part by hitting .375/.423/.667.
Brett’s quest to be the first .400 hitter in nearly four decades put him in the national spotlight in 1980. He would be there again on July 24, 1983 when he hit a two-run home run in the top of the ninth to (seemingly) beat the New York Yankees. After the home run, Yankees manager Billy Martin asked the umpires to inspect the bat. The umps ruled that Brett had too much pine tar on the bat and ruled him out, nullifying the go-ahead home run. Brett went ballistic.
The Royals got back to the World Series in 1985. Brett hit .335/.436/.585, with a career-high 30 home runs during the regular season. He was second to Don Mattingly in AL MVP voting even though he had 8.3 WAR to Mattingly’s 6.4 (Rickey Henderson and his 9.9 WAR should have won the MVP Award that year).
Brett then hit .348/500/.826 in the ALCS and won the MVP Award. The Royals won the series in seven games over the Toronto Blue Jays. That put them in the World Series once again. This time, they beat the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games to win their first world championship, with Brett hitting .370/.452/.407.
That was the last time the Royals would make the playoffs during Brett’s career. He led the league in hitting for the third and final time in 1990 and picked up his 3,000th hit in 1992. He retired after the 1993 season and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1999 with 98.2% of the vote.
Willie Wilson played 1367 games in centerfield and 676 in left field, but Amos Otis played centerfield almost exclusively, so the Royals all-time 25-man roster has Wilson in left and Otis in center. Carlos Beltran also spent significant time in centerfield, but he’s been moved to right field on this roster. The reality is that this hypothetical Royals team would have three centerfielders in the outfield. They would be terrific on defense
There was a drastic change in baseball strategy in the 1970s. The list below shows the percentage of qualifying outfielders who stole 25 or more bases in each decade (qualifying means getting enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title):
1900 to 1909–47%
1910 to 1919–40%
1920 to 1929–8%
1930 to 1939–3%
1940 to 1949–4%
1950 to 1959–5%
1960 to 1969–9%
1970 to 1979—20%
1980 to 1989—31%
1990 to 1999—28%
2000 to 2009—18%
2010 to 2016—20%
The “Dead Ball” era before 1920 featured base-stealing like no other time in baseball history. That era was the small-ball era, with base-stealing and sacrifice bunting and hit-and-running. Then the ball was made livelier in 1920 and baseball changed its ways. Base-stealing was put on the back burner and it was all about the long ball (which chicks dig, apparently). It took 50 years before baseball went back to stealing bases. This increase in steals started in the 70s and peaked in the 80s.
One of the reasons for the return of the stolen base was the increasing number of ballparks with artificial turf. Baseball in the 70s and 80s became a speed game because the larger, artificial turf stadiums required outfielders who could cover a ton of ground on defense and steal bases in bunches on offense. These players became highly desired commodities. Willie Wilson was part of this mold of outfielder.
Wilson had the unfortunate luck of being a base-stealer in the American League right when Rickey Henderson showed up and monopolized the steals leaderboard for the next decade. From 1979 to 1987, Wilson averaged 53 steals per year but only led the AL in steals once. Wilson’s league-leading 83 steals in 1979 were the most in the American League since Ty Cobb stole 96 back in 1915. The next year, he stole 79 bases and finished 21 behind Rickey Henderson, who set the post-1900 record with 100 steals (Ron LeFlore had 97). In 1982, Wilson stole 58 bases . . . and finished 71 steals behind Henderson’s record-setting 130. That’s how it was for Wilson.
Rickey Henderson led the AL in steals every year but one from 1980 to 1991. He was injured in 1987 and Harold Reynolds captured the league title with 60 steals, one more than Wilson. That led to this story from Reynolds about getting a phone call from Rickey after the season.
Wilson’s best year was 1980, which was also the year George Brett flirted with .400. Wilson hit .326/.357/.421 and led the league in runs scored, hits, and triples. It was one of four times he would lead the league in triples. He finished fourth in AL MVP voting that year.
Scandal hit the Royals in 1983 when four of their players faced drug chargers. Wilson was one of the four, along with Willie Aikens, Vida Blue, and Jerry Martin. They plead guilty to misdemeanor drug charges (attempting to purchase cocaine) and were sentenced to 81 days in jail. Wilson was initially suspended for the entire 1984 season but after an appeal the suspension was reduced and he returned to the Royals on May 15. He was the only player of the four who stayed with the Royals. The others were either traded or released.
Wilson spent seven more years with the Royals but, like most of us, he declined with age. He was regularly a below average hitter as he aged into his 30s and his stolen base totals dropped. He signed with the Oakland A’s as a free agent after the 1990 season and finished out his career with two years with the A’s and two final seasons with the Chicago Cubs.
The Royals acquired Otis in a trade with the Mets before the 1970 season that ended up being a massive steal. They sent Joe Foy to the Mets for Amos Otis and Bob Johnson. Foy would only play another 140 games over the rest of his career, while Otis would play almost 1,900 with the Royals. The team would also trade Johnson for their starting shortstop in the 70s, Freddie Patek.
Amos Otis was a good-hitting, smooth-fielding outfielder. He made it look easy. He seemed to glide across the outfield rather than run. He was also very popular with the fans, who would chant “Aaaaay-Oh! Aaaaay-Oh!” at Kauffman Stadium. Otis was also the first Royal to play in an all-star game when he made the AL team in 1970 (Ellie Rodriguez had made the team in 1969 but didn’t play). Otis is a forgotten part of one of the most famous plays in all-star game history:
Otis was the centerfielder who made the throw to the plate to catcher Ray Fosse when Pete Rose knocked Fosse into next week and scored the winning run. That all-star game was the first of four straight AL all-star teams that Otis would be selected for. The following year, Otis would hit over .300 for the first time and lead the league in steals, with 52. He was coming into his own as a player.
The best power-hitting year Otis had in his career was in 1973 when he hit 26 home runs and had 93 RBI. He also won the Gold Glove for his defense in centerfield and finished third in AL MVP voting behind Reggie Jackson and Jim Palmer.
He couldn’t repeat that kind of power hitting in 1974 and grew frustrated with the perception that he didn’t play with maximum effort. Early in 1975, he talked about this with a Kansas City sportswriter, saying, “Even in 1973, when I had my best year, people said I could do better. Last year I didn’t have the year I wanted to have. I got to pressing. It was just something I couldn’t overcome. Everything I do on this team, I’m first or second. I can’t do much more than that. I know I didn’t have the year I wanted, but you can’t always do it. I got so I hated to come to the park. It was embarrassing. As soon as you came out of the dugout, they were on you. After a while, you just hated to play.”
His frustrations continued in the 1975 season, which was limited by a midseason tonsillectomy. He played in just 132 games, the fewest he’d played in since 1970. Things were better in 1976. Otis played a full season and led the league in doubles while scoring 93 runs and producing 86 RBI. That season ended on a bad note, though. In the first game of the ALCS against the Yankees, Otis sprained his ankle running out a ground ball. He missed the rest of the series.
Despite his rebound and strong 1976 season, Otis was nearly traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates prior to the 1977 season. The Royals and Pirates agreed on a deal that would send Otis and Cookie Rojas to Pittsburgh for Al Oliver, but Rojas used his 10-and-5 veto rights to reject the trade.
Otis spent another seven years with Kansas City. He had a terrific ALCS in 1978 but the Royals lost to the Yankees for the third straight year. They made it back to the ALCS against the Yankees in 1980 and finally got over the hump, beating the Yankees in three straight games and advancing to the World Series. Otis was 11 for 23, with four runs, three home runs, and seven RBI in the World Series. Unfortunately, the Royals lost to the Phillies in six games.
The 1983 season was the last year in Kansas City for Otis. He was 36 years old and had his worst year with the bat as a Royal, hitting .261/.313/.357. He also spent considerable time in right field. The team released him after the season and he signed a free agent deal with the Pittsburgh Pirates, the team he had nearly been traded to seven years earlier. He was terrible with Pittsburgh, hitting .165/.213/.206 in 40 games. They released him in August.
Sabermetric pioneer Bill James wrote about Otis in the 1984 Bill James Baseball Abstract: “Amos Otis was an intensely private man leading an intensely public life. He disdained showmanship—probably he hated showmanship—of any type and to any extent. He could never quite deal with the fact that his business was putting on a show. This is what is called ‘moodiness’ by the media. Yet there was a rare, deep honesty about him that was the defining characteristic of him both as a man and as a ballplayer.” In 1986, Amos Otis and Steve Busby were the first players inducted into the Kansas City Royals Hall of Fame.
The toughest part about making this all-time 25-man roster was right field. The Royals have had three very good centerfielders—Amos Otis, Willie Wilson, and Carlos Beltran. Otis played almost exclusively in center, so he gets that spot. Wilson played more in center than in left, but did play a significant number of games in left, so he goes there. Beltran was a centerfielder with the Royals, but played a good amount of games in right field with other teams later in his career, so he gets moved to right.
The deserving player who gets left out of the Royals’ starting lineup is Alex Gordon. Gordon started his career as a third baseman before moving to left field. He’s not going to start over George Brett at third or Willie Wilson in left. He has more wins above replacement as a Royal than Carlos Beltran, but he’s only played 25 innings in right field in his career. He gets left on the bench. In the hypothetical world in which this team would play the other all-time 25-man rosters, Gordon would be the first man off the bench, filling in at third base and left field whenever needed.
Carlos Beltran played for the Royals when they were in a deep valley between their 1985 World Series title and their 2014 return to relevance. His first year as a regular was 1999 and the team finished in fourth place, 32.5 games behind the division leader. They would finish in fourth or fifth place five times in the six years Beltran was with the team.
Even though the team wasn’t good around him, Beltran excelled. He won the AL Rookie of the Year Award in 1999 when he hit .293/.337/.454, with 112 runs, 22 homers, 108 RBI, and 27 stolen bases. After an injury-marred 2000 season, Beltran bounced back to hit .306/.362/.514 in 2001. During that 2001 season, Beltran stole 31 bases and was caught just one time.
Beltran’s stolen base efficiency is among the best in baseball history. New Hall of Famer Tim Raines stole bases at an impressive 85% success rate. Beltran is at 86% in his career, although he has almost 500 fewer steals than Raines. The great Rickey Henderson was successful 81% of the time. Both Henderson and Raines stole many more bases than Beltran, but Beltran was successful a higher percentage of the time.
Because of the small market ways of the Royals, Carlos Beltran was traded to the Houston Astros during the 2004 season. He ended up hitting 38 home runs combined between his time with the Royals and Astros, a single-season high to that point of his career. He then hit eight home runs in 12 games in the 2004 post-season with the Astros, which must have been frustrating for Royals fans to watch.
One of the very odd results of Beltran being traded mid-season in 2004 was that he was selected to the AL all-star team but replaced Ken Griffey, Jr. on the NL all-star roster. He was the first player to have this happen.
One of the things Hal McRae was most known for during his career was his takeout slides at second base. It’s actually a mistake to even refer to what McRae did as a slide. It was more of a barrel roll. He launched himself into the middle infielder attempting to make the play and often knocked that player halfway into left field. This play from the 1977 ALCS against the Yankees is a good example.
That wasn’t a one-time thing, either. McRae was the king of blowup slides. Any middle infielder looking to turn a double-play with McRae on first was taking his life into his hands. This was perfectly legal at the time, but Major League Baseball has recently changed the rules to prevent this aggressive takeout slide.
Beyond the takeout slides, McRae was a consistently good hitter at the Designated Hitter position for the Royals for many years. He started his career with the Cincinnati Reds but spent 15 years with the Royals from 1973 to 1987. He made the AL all-star team three times, was named Designated Hitter of the Year three times, and hit over .300 six times. He was at his best in 1976 and 1977. He led the league in on-base percentage and finished fourth in AL MVP voting in 1976, then led the league with 54 doubles in 1977.
The end of the 1976 season was an interesting one for McRae. He was leading the AL in hitting with one game left in the season. The Royals were facing the Twins and all four of the leading hitters in the league were playing in this game: Hal McRae, George Brett, Rod Carew, and Lyman Bostock. Brett went 2-for-4 in the game and finished at .333, one point ahead of McRae and two points ahead of Carew.
That 1976 season was the last time McRae would hit .300 until he had a big bounce back year in 1982. At the age of 36, McRae hit .308/.369/.542 with 46 doubles and a league-leading 133 RBI. He made the all-star team for the final time that year and finished fourth in AL MVP voting.
McRae followed up the 1982 season with another good year, but started to slow down when he hit the age of 38. Over the last four years of his career, McRae averaged 87 games per year and a .273/.341/.413 batting line. He hung up his spikes after the 1987 season.
Darrell Porter has a good argument to be the starter on the Royals all-time 25-man roster. If you average his FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference WAR, he was worth more wins above replacement than starter Salvador Perez. Porter earned more WAR in fewer plate appearances also. Because Perez will likely play another few years with the Royals (perhaps more), he will surpass Porter soon enough, so I put him in the starting spot.
Porter started his career with the Milwaukee Brewers. After six years in Milwaukee, he was traded to the Royals prior to the 1976 season. In four seasons with the Royals he made the AL all-star team three times and finished in the top 10 in AL MVP voting twice.
Porter’s 1979 season is one of the best for a catcher in the history of the game. He filled up the stat sheet like few catchers have before him. He started 141 games behind the plate and was the DH for another 15 games, so he had 679 plate appearances. There are only a handful of players who were predominantly catchers who have come to bat more times than Porter did in 1979. He made good use of those times at the dish also. He hit .291/.421/484 with 101 runs, 23 doubles, 10 triples, 20 homers, 112 RBI, and a league-leading 121 walks.
As good as Porter was in 1979, he had big troubles behind the scenes. In the winter of 1979-1980, Porter became paranoid. He was convinced that baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn would find out he was a drug user. He thought Kuhn would sneak into his house and catch him doing drugs, then ban him for life from baseball. Porter often sat up in the night looking out his front windows in fear that Kuhn would show up at any moment.
In spring training before the 1980 season, former Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe visited the Royals clubhouse to talk about drug abuse. He asked the players 10 questions. If a player answered yes to three of the 10 questions, he was considered to have a problem with drugs or alcohol. Porter answered yes to all 10 questions. He realized he had a big problem and checked himself into a rehab center.
Porter’s rehab experienced brought him closer to God. He became a born-again Christian and a spokesman for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He missed the first month of the 1980 season. After hitting .314/.367/.488 through the end of May, Porter hit just .232/.350/.304 over the final four months of the season. It was by far his worst year with the Royals. The Royals let him go to free agency at the end of the season.
The move to St. Louis was good for Porter. He was a big part of their World Series-winning team in 1982. He was the MVP of the NLCS and the World Series that year. After playing five years with St. Louis, he finished his career with two years on the Texas Rangers.
Sadly, Porter died in 2002 at the age of 50. He had left the house to go buy a newspaper and then spend some time in a nearby park. He was later found dead near his vehicle and the autopsy said he died of “toxic effects of cocaine.”
The run of playoff teams for the Royals in the late 70s was the result of some good draft picks, good player development, and good trades. One of those trades was the Royals’ acquisition of Amos Otis from the Mets. Another was their acquisition of John Mayberry from the Astros.
To get Mayberry from the ‘Stros, the Royals sent Lance Clemons and Jim York, neither of whom did much of anything in the big leagues. Meanwhile, Mayberry would be a key power source in the middle of the Royals lineup during the 1970s. He hit 25 home runs in his first year with the Royals. Two years later, Mayberry set the Royals single-season record for home runs with 34. In the 41 years since then, just two Royals players have eclipsed that mark (Steve “Bye Bye” Balboni’s 36 in 1985 and Gary Gaetti’s 35 in 1995).
When Mayberry was at his best he combined big power with a terrific ability to draw a walk. He led the league in walks in his 26-homer season of 1973 and did it again in his 34-homer season in 1975. He also finished second to rookie Fred Lynn in AL MVP voting in that impressive 1975 season.
Mayberry’s production dropped significantly in 1976 and 1977. He went from hitting .291/.416/.547 in 1975 to a combined .231/.329/.370 across the 1976-77 seasons. He didn’t help himself any when he showed up late to Game 4 of the ALCS against the hated New York Yankees. He struck out twice and made two errors. Manager Whitey Herzog pulled him from the game and didn’t start him in Game 5. He later blamed Mayberry for the loss and demanded he be off the team. Herzog got his wish when the Royals sold Mayberry to the Toronto Blue Jays prior to the start of the 1978 season.
Mayberry had some solid years with the Blue Jays, then played one final partial season with the Yankees before ending his career at 33-years-old after the 1982 season. After his playing days were over, he coached with the Blue Jays and Royals. He was inducted into the Royals Hall of Fame in 1996.
Kevin Seitzer had the misfortune of joining the Royals the year after they won the 1985 World Series and were about to go on a 28-year streak of not making the playoffs. He got into 28 games in 1986 before establishing himself with the Royals for good the following season. His best year was his rookie year of 1987. He hit .323/.399/.470 with a league-leading 207 hits. He made the all-star team and finished second to Mark McGwire in AL Rookie of the Year voting. That was the year Mark McGWire hit 49 bombs as a rookie. Even with all the home runs, Seitzer was worth more wins above replacement than McGwire and had an argument for being the AL Rookie of the Year.
Seitzer started that 1987 season as the Royals first baseman. When the 34-year-old George Brett went down with an injury in late April, Seitzer filled in at third base. When Brett came back from the injury, he moved over to first and Seitzer stayed at third. It couldn’t have been easy following in the footsteps of the greatest Royal of them all, but Seitzer handled it well that first year.
One of the more memorable moments of Seitzer’s career happened on June 9, 1987. Seitzer was playing third when Dan Gladden of the Minnesota Twins dropped a bunt down the third base line. Seitzer charged the bunt but saw he wouldn’t have a play at first so he got down on his hands and knees and tried to blow the ball foul. Unlike Lenny Randle, who had successfully blown the ball foul six years earlier, Seitzer was unable to get the ball to move much (the umpires didn’t allow it for Randle, though).
Seitzer followed his .323 season in 1987 by hitting .304 in 1988, .281 in 1989, .275 in 1990, and .265 in 1991. Yep, the first year of his career was his peak year. It was also the best rookie season in the history of the Royals, based on FanGraphs WAR.
His wRC+ and OPS+ both declined in each of the next four years after his rookie year.
At the time, no one was aware of the internal problems Seitzer was having. He would later admit to having an alcohol problem. He had been a passionate, fiery player on the field but his anger carried over to his life off the field. He admitted to pushing his wife against a wall and clenching his first in anger, but said he never hit her. Talking about those times, he said, “I had everything—all the reasons in the world to be the happiest man on the face of the earth. And instead I was probably the most miserable.”
Seitzer claims the turning point in his life was going to a Pro Athletes Outreach Conference in November of 1988. It was a Christian gathering. He said, “If it were up to Kevin Seitzer, I’d probably be in jail or dead now. I can’t take credit for any of it. Being me is very humbling. Everybody has problems, but now I can deal with them and get through them.”
After being an above average player for four years, Seitzer suffered through an injury-marred 1991 season that saw him hit .265/.350/.350 with just 1 home run in 85 games. The Royals released him the following March. He had a few good seasons with the Milwaukee Brewers after leaving Kansas City, but never again reached the heights of the first couple years of his career.
Mandatory Credit: Peter G. Aiken-USA TODAY Sports /
Alcides Escobar is on the Royals all-time 25-man roster simply because I want the team to be realistic and they need a backup shortstop. According to FanGraphs WAR, Escobar is right around the 40th best player in Royals history. It just so happens that he’s the second-best shortstop after Freddie Patek. He narrowly beat out U.L. Washington for this spot.
The Royals acquired Escobar in a trade that would help them end a 28-year playoff drought. In December of 2010, the Royals traded pitcher Zack Greinke and shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt to the Milwaukee Brewers for Lorenzo Cain, Jeremy Jeffress, Jake Odorizzi, and Alcides Escobar. Escobar was immediately inserted as the starter at shortstop in 2011. It would take Cain a few years to become a regular but both players would be keys to the team’s 2014 run to the World Series.
Escobar is a throwback to the good-glove, no-hit shortstops of the 1970s. He could be a Freddie Patek clone. He doesn’t get on base and doesn’t hit for power but does steal bases and lay down sacrifice bunts. Despite his inability to hit, Escobar has spent 43% of his career in the top two spots in the lineup, which is a crime against nature to the sabermetric crowd.
It’s not like he hits better when he’s at the top of the lineup either. When batting first or second in his career, Escobar has hit .254/.289/.324. When he bats anywhere else in the lineup, he’s hit .267/.304/.361.
Of course, many people will remember the 2015 ALCS when Escobar got a leadoff hit in four consecutive games and won the ALCS MVP award by hitting .478. He then hit the first pitch he saw from Matt Harvey in Game 1 of the 2015 World Series for an inside-the-park home run (with help from Mets outfielder Yoenis Cespedes).
That was the first inside-the-park home run in a World Series game since 1929. Escobar followed up that big hit with two hits and two RBI in Game 2. In the series-clinching Game 5, Escobar hit a double that scored Christian Colon in the 12th inning to up the Royals’ lead from 3-2 to 4-2. They scored five runs in the inning and won their first World Series since 1985.
In the entire 2015 post-season, Escobar had 23 hits and scored 13 runs in 16 games. He has a lifetime .311/.326/.467 batting line in 31 post-season games. For that alone, Escobar might deserve a spot on the Royals all-time 25-man roster.
Coming out of Nebraska in 2005, Alex Gordon won the Brooks Wallace Award, the Dick Howser Trophy, and the Golden Spikes Award. The Royals took him with the #2 pick of the June draft, right after Justin Upton went to the Diamondbacks and before Jeff Clement went to the Seattle Mariners. Five of the top seven players taken in that draft have had some impressive seasons. After Upton, Gordon, and Clement were Ryan Zimmerman, Ryan Braun, Ricky Romero, and Troy Tulowitzki. Andrew McCutchen and Jay Bruce were taken 11th and 12th.
Gordon had a strong showing in the Arizona Fall League and was ranked the #13 prospect in baseball on the Baseball America Top 100 before the 2006 season. He then hit .325/.427/.588 in Double-A and moved up to #2 on the Baseball America list and was ranked the #1 prospect in baseball by Baseball Prospectus.
With all of the awards he earned in college, the high rankings on the prospect lists, and great production in the minor leagues, expectations were sky high for Gordon in his rookie year. He didn’t come close to living up to them. He hit .247/.314/.411. He was better in 2008 but really struggle in 2009 and 2010 when he hit a combined .222/.319/.365 in 123 games in the big leagues. His struggles during this stretch got him sent back to the minors and would result in a change of positions from third base to left field. After four big league seasons, Gordon had a career batting line of .244/.328/.405 and was a big disappointment.
Then came the 2011 season. Gordon finally realized the promise he’d shown coming out of college. He hit .303/.376/.502 with 101 R, 23 HR, 87 RBI, and 17 SB. Combine that hitting with a great glove in left field and it was Gordon’s best year of his career so far. He won his first of four straight Gold Glove Awards that year.
Gordon didn’t hit as well over the next few years but his defense continued to be excellent in left field and he averaged 5.7 WAR per year from 2012 to 2014. He didn’t hit well during the Royals’ run in the 2014 post-season, but came up with a clutch hit the top of the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series. Down by one run with two outs and nobody on, Gordon stepped to the plate against the amazing Madison Bumgarner. He lined a single to left center and made it all the way to third on an error by Gregor Blanco. For a split second, Royals fans had hopes that he could make it all the way around to tie the game, but he stopped on third. He very likely would have been thrown out by a mile, but you just never know. Maybe Giants shortstop Brandon Crawford throws it away or catcher Buster Posey can’t handle the throw.
Salvador Perez came up with a chance to tie the game but popped out to third base to end the game with Gordon stranded at third with the tying run. Fortunately, the Royals made it back to the World Series in 2015 and beat the Mets in five games for their second championship. After getting so close in 2014, it would have been difficult for the fan base if they hadn’t won it all the next year.
Over the last two years, Gordon has struggled with injuries. He was still an above average hitter and a 2.8 WAR player in 2015 but was barely above replacement level last year when he hit .220/.312/.380. He has three years plus a mutual option left on his contract with the Royals, so the team is hoping the 33-year-old Gordon can bounce back with a healthy and productive 2017.
Lorenzo Cain gives the Royals all-time 25-man roster yet another good-fielding outfielder, along with Willie Wilson, Amos Otis, Carlos Beltran, and Alex Gordon. Cain was known more for his glove early in his career but his bat has come around and become an asset over the last couple years.
The Royals acquired Cain, Alcides Escobar, Jeremy Jeffress, and Jake Odorizzi for Zack Greinke and Yunieski Betancourt prior to the 2011 season. At the time, Cain had played just 43 games in the major leagues. He spent most of the 2011 season in the minor leagues. In 2012, he appeared in 61 games for the Royals. His defense was good but he was a slightly below average hitter.
In 2013, Cain didn’t hit a lick (.251/.310/.348). He appeared destined to be a part time player because his bat wouldn’t support a full time position. He came around in 2014, though, and got 500 plate appearances in a season for the first time as the Royals made the playoffs. He was 8 for 15 with five runs scored and earned the ALCS MVP Award against the Baltimore Orioles. He followed that up with a good World Series against the Giants, collecting eight hits in 26 at bats.
Cain had the best year of his career (so far) in 2015. He made the all-star team for the first time and set career highs in every major hitting category. His much improved offense and still excellent defense earned him enough votes to finish third in the race for the AL MVP Award (behind only Josh Donaldson and Mike Trout). To top it off, the Royals won the World Series for the first time since “We Are the World” was a top hit back in 1985.
After his best season in 2015, Cain struggled with injuries and poor production last season. He got off to a solid start, and was sitting at .295/.348/.456 at the end of May. Unfortunately, he strained a hamstring in June and it cost him a month of the season. He came back at the end of July and hit .278/.336/.389 over the next month. On August 30, Cain hurt his wrist. After nine days off, Cain played one last game on September 9 but then was shut down for the year. He’s under contract with the Royals for one more year, with free agency looming at the end of the 2017 season.
It’s a tough call between Kevin Appier and Bret Saberhagen as the Royals #1 all-time starter. I believe Appier gets lost in the shuffle among the good pitchers of the 1990s. He wasn’t Roger Clemens or Randy Johnson or Greg Maddux, but he was about as valuable based on FanGraphs WAR as David Cone, Tom Glavine, and Mike Mussina during the decade.
Appier also beats Saberhagen in a number of statistics when looking at each pitcher’s time with the Royals. He has more wins, more innings, and a better ERA+ than Saberhagen (ERA+ compares a pitcher to league average. Appier had a higher overall ERA than Saberhagen but he pitched in an a higher-offense era). Appier also beats Saberhagen in FanGraphs WAR and Baseball-Reference WAR for the time each was on the Royals.
The Royals of the 1980s were a good team. During the decade they went to the playoffs four times and the World Series twice, winning the title for the first time in team history in 1985. In the four years following their world championship season, the Royals finished 3rd, 2nd, 3rd, and 2nd.
Kevin Appier showed up in 1990, just as the Royals were going into a slump that would see them finish 6th, 6th, and 5th out of seven teams over the next three years. Even with a poor team in 1990, Appier pitched well as a rookie. He was 12-8 with a 2.76 ERA and finished third in AL Rookie of the Year voting. Based on WAR, Appier should have won that award. He was worth 5.3 WAR (per Baseball-Reference). The winner was Sandy Alomar, with 2.3 WAR, and Kevin Mass (1.2 WAR) was second.
The two best seasons of Appier’s career were 1992 and 1993. He was 33-16 with a 2.52 ERA while averaging 224 innings in those two seasons. He was recognized for his 1993 season with a third place finish in AL Cy Young voting. Once again, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say Appier was robbed of an award. He had 9.2 WAR but finished behind Jack McDowell (4.3 WAR) and Randy Johnson (6.8 WAR) in the voting. How differently would people consider Kevin Appier’s career if he had a Rookie of the Year Award and a Cy Young Award on his resume?
One area where Appier was recognized was off the field. He was a two-time nominee from the Kansas City Royals for the Roberto Clemente Award, which is given annually to the MLB player who “best exemplifies the game of baseball, sportsmanship, community involvement and the individual’s contribution to the team.”
After reaching such great heights in 1992 and 1993, Appier dropped from elite to just very good. He averaged 5 WAR per year from 1994 to 1996 and made the all-star team for the only time in the middle of that stretch. His last good season with the Royals was 1997. For a team that went 67-94 (.416), Appier was 9-13 with a 3.40 ERA in 235 2/3 innings.
After signing a long-term contract in 1997, Appier suffered a separated clavicle when he fell at his home. The following spring he needed surgery to repair a torn labrum and missed almost the entire season. He started the 1999 season with the Royals but wasn’t the same guy. With a 9-9 record and a 4.87 ERA, Appier was dealt to the Oakland A’s for Jeff D’Amico, Brad Rigby, and Blake Stein at the trade deadline. He gave it one last shot with the Royals in 2004, but gave up eight runs in two starts and that was that.
Watching baseball in the 1980s it was well known that Bret Saberhagen had a bizarre even-year/odd-year pattern during the first part of his career. He was good in odd years and bad in even years. Consider the numbers:
1984: 10-11, 3.48 ERA
1985: 20-6, 2.87 ERA
1986: 7-12, 4.15 ERA
1987: 18-10, 3.36 ERA
1988: 14-16, 3.80 ERA
1989: 23-6, 2.16 ERA
1990: 5-9, 3.27 ERA
1991: 13-8, 3.08 ERA
1992: 3-5, 3.50 ERA
Average season in even-numbered years (1984-1992)
8-11, 3.68 ERA, 23 GS, 161 IP
Average season in odd-numbered years (1985-1991)
19-8, 2.85 ERA, 32 GS, 238 IP
The difference is glaring. Saberhagen was terrific in odd-numbered years, one of the best pitchers in baseball. He was a workhorse (averaging 238 innings) with a great ERA and he averaged 19 wins per year. In even-numbered years, he was often injured (averaging 161 innings) with a much higher ERA and many fewer wins.
Now, many years later, we can look at things with more advanced baseball knowledge and see that the odd year/even year pattern isn’t as stark as it looked at the time. Here are the FIP numbers for those years (FIP stands for Fielding Independent Pitching and uses the three things a pitcher has the most control over—strikeouts, walks, and home runs allowed—to figure the runs per nine innings the pitcher would allow, scaled to ERA).
1984—3.64 FIP
1985—2.89 FIP
1986—3.18 FIP
1987—3.66 FIP
1988—3.08 FIP
1989—2.45 FIP
1990—3.03 FIP
1991—3.09 FIP
1992—2.88 FIP
The odd-year/even-year pattern goes away when looking at FIP. Saberhagen’s ERA in even-numbered years was 3.68, but his FIP was 3.18. His ERA in odd-numbered years was 2.85, but his FIP was 3.02. The ERA difference between even and odd-numbered years was 0.83, but the FIP difference was just 0.16.
Okay, enough with the numbers. Bret Saberhagen was a very good pitcher with the Royals. He was the 21-year-old ace of the 1985 World Series Champions. He won the first of two Cy Young Awards that year and was the MVP of the World Series when he tossed two complete games and allowed just one run in 18 innings.
He was even better in 1989, the second of his two Cy Young Award seasons. He led the AL in wins, winning percentage, ERA, WHIP, innings pitched, and complete games. The Royals went 92-70 but finished in second place behind the 99-win Oakland Athletics.
When you look at Saberhagen’s innings totals, you can maybe see why he struggled in the latter half of his career. He had four years by the age of 25 in which he pitched at least 235 innings, including three straight years with 257 or more innings. That’s a heavy workload for a young pitcher.
Saberhagen had one last great moment as a Kansas City Royal in his final year with the team. On August 26, 1991, he threw a no-hitter against the White Sox. It is still the last no-hitter thrown by a Royal.
A few months later, Saberhagen was traded with Bill Pecota to the New York Mets for Gregg Jeffries, Kevin McReynolds, and Keith Miller. Pecota would go on to be the namesake for a projection system used by Baseball Prospectus. Saberhagen would be inducted into the Kansas City Royals Hall of Fame in 2005.
Mark “Gooby” Gubicza was the Royals’ 2nd round draft pick in the 1981 Amateur Draft. He went from high school to the Gulf Coast League and was 8-1 with a 2.25 ERA in 56 innings. After three seasons in the minor leaguers, Gubicza joined the Royals in 1984 and would be with the team for 13 of his 14 years in the big leagues.
The Royals were a good team when Gubicza arrived. They made the playoffs in each of his first two seasons. Because of his youth and the strength of the Royals pitching staff, Gubicza barely pitched in the post-season in these two years. He started one game in the 1985 ALCS and pitched well enough to earn the win over the Blue Jays (8 1/3 innings, 3 earned runs). He didn’t get a start in the 1985 World Series because the Royals went with a four-man rotation and he was the odd man out.
In his first three years in the big leagues, from the age of 21-23, Gubicza pitched an average of 182 innings with a 3.92 ERA. He would see his workload increase dramatically over the next three years. From 1987 to 1989, Gubicza averaged 255 innings per year with a 3.22 ERA. His 766 1/3 total innings across these three years was seventh in baseball. He was fifth in WAR (FanGraphs) and made the all-star team twice.
In the middle year of this three year stretch, Gubicza finished third in AL Cy Young voting in 1988. Based on Baseball-Reference WAR, he was every bit as good as the Cy Young winner, Frank Viola, and significantly better than the runner-up, Dennis Eckersley.
All of those innings did their damage, though. Gubicza suffered a partial tear in his rotator cuff and missed half of the 1990 season, then had the worst year of his career in 1991 when he posted an ugly 5.68 ERA in 133 innings. The 1991 season was a tough one for Gubicza both on and off the field. He said, “It was frustrating because of numbers. Plus, it’s frustrating to go out there and pitch only five innings at a time. That’s not me. I wanted to be part of the team, part of the action. Instead, I was just in and out of there. It was like I wasn’t even there.”
Off the field, he had to deal with his wife’s miscarriage, followed by the death of his father. Two weeks later, his grandmother died. He lost seven of nine decisions after his father died and admitted, “I was in a fog for a long period of time. I went home and put it together and realized what was going on, to really have a chance to grieve. Before, I didn’t have any time to realize what had happened. I had a job to do, but my head wasn’t totally with it.”
Things got better for Gubciza in 1992. He only started 18 games, but went 7-6 with a 3.72 ERA. After a couple of down years, he had his last good year in 1995 when he was 12-14 with a 3.75 ERA in 213 1/3 innings. That innings total was the most he’d pitched in a season since before his rotator cuff injury. He pitched one final year with the Royals, then a two-game stint with the Angels in 1997. He is currently the color commentator for the Los Angeles Angels and recently tweeted about a new edition to the Gubicza family.
Gubicza was inducted into the Kansas City Royals Hall of Fame in 2012. Among Royals pitchers, he’s second all-time in innings pitched, third in wins, and third in WAR.
The horseshoe mustache of Dennis Leonard would make the American Mustache Institute proud. Facial hair was plentiful during Leonard’s career and he sported a very nice horseshoe mustache that was the envy of his peers. His 1981 Topps baseball card also featured some fine-looking muttonchops.
Leonard was drafted by the Royals in the 2nd round of the 1972 MLB June Amateur Draft. Three years later he was a 15-game winner for the Royals in his first full season in the big leagues. He won 17 games the next year, 20 the year after that, and 21 in 1978. He also led the AL in starts (40) and batters faced (1,218) that season.
The mustached man pitched an incredibly heavy load from 1976 to 1980. Three times he pitched more than 280 innings and twice he was over 290. During this five-year stretch he averaged 273 innings per year. His 1362 2/3 innings were second only to knuckleballer Phil Niekro and only Steve Carlton had more wins.
The baseball strike in 1981 might have cost Leonard another 20-win season. The Royals only played 106 regular season games that year, but Leonard was still able to record 13 victories in 201 2/3 innings. The strike suspended the season in June. Baseball didn’t resume until August. Leonard was 7-4 with a 2.26 ERA in 13 starts over the season’s final two months.
This would be the last extended stretch of excellent pitching of Leonard’s career. He struggled with a 5.10 ERA in 130 2/3 innings in 1982. Then came a devastating knee injury in 1983. The injury kept him out of baseball for all of the 1984 season. He fought hard to get back to the game and was able to rejoin the Royals in September of 1985 for two innings. He ended his career after going 8-13 with a 4.44 ERA in 1986.
Leonard is second among Royals pitchers in wins and third in games started, innings pitched, and strikeouts. His 103 complete games are 15 more than the next guy on the list and 39 more than the number three guy. He also has more shutouts (23) than any other Royals pitcher. He was inducted into the Kansas City Royals Hall of Fame in 1989.
Paul Splittorff should have thrown the split-fingered fastball just so announcers could have said, “Splittorffs’ sensational splitter for strike three!” Unfortunately, his career peak came long before the mid-1980s popularity of the split-fingered fastball.
It’s not often a 25th round draft pick wins 166 games in his career, but Splittorff did just that. The Royals took him with the last pick of the 25th round of the 1968 June Amateur Draft. He played college ball at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. It’s safe to say he’s the best major league pitcher to ever come out of Morningside College because he’s the only major league pitcher to ever come out of Morningside College. Other than Splittorff, the Royals didn’t have much success in that draft. Of the 24 players they took before taking Splittorff, only Lance Clemens, Monty Montgomery, and Dane Iorg made the big leagues. Clemons and Montgomery played 19 and 12 games, respectively, in their major league careers. Iorg played 10 years in the bigs.
Splittorff got into a couple games in 1970 as a 23-year-old, then started 22 games in 1971 and was effective, with a 2.68 ERA in 144 1/3 innings. The next year he became a mainstay in the starting rotation. He was 12-12 with a 3.13 ERA in 33 starts. That led to a 20-11 year in 1973. This was Splittorff’s best season. He started 38 games, completed 12 of them, and pitched 262 innings.
When the Royals made the playoffs three straight years from 1976 to 1978, then again in 1980, Splittorff was one of their best pitchers against the Yankees. He was 2-0 with a 2.68 ERA in 37 innings in the ALCS against the Bronx Bombers. He did this despite not having the “stuff” that you’d expect from a major league pitcher.
Joe Posnanski wrote about Splittorff and how he succeeded with a subpar fastball: “He averaged 33 starts and 14 wins a year from 1972 through 1980. He threw 14 shutouts. He coaxed or induced or forced hitters into 276 double plays. He picked off runners. He rarely gave up home runs. He carefully scouted batters long before video sessions became the vogue. He did what he could do. He was always there, a workhorse, a Clydesdale (as he called himself). He gave everything, and he played his whole career for one team, and he loved it. He loved the Royals, he would not have traded any of it in.”
Splittorff retired after the 1984 season, one year before the Royals would win their first World Series. He took the same dedication he had for pitching to the broadcast booth and was an announcer with the Royals for many years. About six years ago, he was diagnosed with oral cancer and melanoma. He didn’t tell anyone because he didn’t want sympathy or lowered expectations for his performance in the booth. He died in May of 2011 at the age of 64. The Royals honored him with a video tribute at Kauffman Stadium. Last season, the broadcast team spoke about him during a broadcast.
During his career Splittorff was often overshadowed by other Royals pitchers, like Steve Busby, Dennis Leonard, and Larry Gura. He never made an all-star team and he missed out on the Royals world championship by one season. When all was said and done, though, it is Paul Splittorff who is at the top of the leaderboard for games started, innings pitched, and wins among Royals’ pitchers.
You sometimes get the feeling that Zack Greinke would like a do-over so he could go back to the beginning of his career and see if he could have made it as a position player. Greinke won the Gatorade National Player of the Year Award as a high school senior. He was an exceptional athlete not just in baseball, but tennis and golf also.
When he was a teenager, Greinke helped his Senior League team to a World Series title as a shortstop. He continued to play shortstop in high school. In his sophomore and junior years he was used as a relief pitcher. He became a starting pitcher as a senior and was 9-2 with a 0.55 ERA and 118 strikeouts in 63 innings. When he was drafted with the 6th pick of the 2002 Amateur Draft, he eschewed a baseball scholarship at Clemson and signed with the Royals.
Strong pitching in the minor leagues put Greinke at #54 on the Baseball America Top 100 list prior to the 2003 season and #14 on the list prior to the 2004 season. He made his major league debut in 2004 and was 8-11 with a 3.97 ERA in 145 innings. He followed that up with the worst season of his career in 2005. He was 5-17 with a 5.80 ERA. His 17 losses was the most in baseball.
Greinke almost quit baseball after that 2005 season. Then he came to spring training in February of 2006, but didn’t stay long. It was later revealed that he was struggling with social anxiety disorder and depression. In order to let him work on his problems the Royals put him on the 60-day DL. He saw a sports psychologist and started taking anti-depressant medications.
When the 2007 season rolled around it was clear early on that Greinke was not ready to help the team as a starting pitcher. In his first seven starts, he was 1-4 with a 5.71 ERA. The Royals moved him to the bullpen and he found success, posting a 3.54 ERA in 53 1/3 innings. He was put back in the starting rotation in late August and was very good down the stretch, going 2-2 with a 1.85 ERA in 34 innings.
Greinke was back in the starting rotation to start the year in 2008 and he had a solid season, going 13-10 with a 3.47 ERA in 202 1/3 innings. He ended the year with 15 scoreless innings. Then he started the 2009 season with 24 more scoreless innings to run it up to 39 straight innings without allowing a run.
The 2009 season was a coming out year for Greinke. He led the league in ERA and WHIP, made the all-star team for the first time and, most impressively, won the AL Cy Young Award. Unlike many players, Greinke even embraced modern statistical analysis. He credited some of his performance to his use of “modern pitching metrics.” He specifically mentioned Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) as his favorite statistic. FIP uses strikeouts, walks, and home runs allowed to determine the number of runs a pitcher should be credited with allowing. It was created by sabermetrician Tom Tango. Greinke said of his theory on pitching, “That’s pretty much how I pitch, to try to keep my FIP as low as possible.”
Many old-school baseball fans recoil at the mention of FIP and WAR and BABIP. In Greinke’s case it makes sense. A pitcher with a high strikeout rate, low walk rate, and few home runs allowed will earn a good FIP. He should also have a low ERA. Variables that are somewhat beyond his control can make his ERA higher than his FIP (like a high Batting Average on Balls In Play or a high Left On Base percentage), but generally the better the FIP, the better the ERA.
After reaching the pinnacle of pitching with the 2009 AL Cy Young Award, Greinke struggled in 2010. He was 10-14, with a 4.17 ERA. Of course, his 3.34 FIP suggests he wasn’t nearly as bad as his ERA made him look. Greinke’s strikeout rate dropped from 26.5% of the batters he faced to 19.7%, but he still had a good walk rate and didn’t allow many home runs. A drop in Left On Base percentage (LOB%) was the biggest difference between 2009 and 2010 (79.3% to 65.3%).
In December of 2010, Greinke reportedly asked for a trade. He didn’t want to play for a team that was in rebuilding mode. The Royals traded Greinke and Yuniesky Betancourt to the Milwaukee Brewers for Alcides Escobar, Lorenzo Cain, Jeremy Jeffress, and Jake Odorizzi. Two of the players the Royals received for Greinke would be key parts of their World Series teams in 2014 and 2015. Since leaving the Royals, Greinke has pitched for four teams. He’s currently with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Dan Quisenberry wasn’t supposed to pitch 12 years in the major leagues. He wasn’t supposed to save 244 games or have a 2.76 career ERA or finish in the top five in AL Cy Young voting five times. Dan Quisenberry was signed as an undrafted free agent after pitching at Division III University of La Verne in La Verne, California. He was less than a marginal prospect. He was a 6’2”, 180-pound pitcher with a bushy red mustache that made him look more like an accountant than a professional athlete. He was supposed to be roster filler.
The Royals sent him to A-ball in 1975 and he pitched well as a relief pitcher. He spent four-plus years in the minor leagues and had a 2.00 ERA in 279 innings. He was called up to the major leagues in July of 1979 and had a good rookie year, going 3-2 with a 3.15 ERA and five saves in 32 outings.
Quisenberry was already a sidearm pitcher but he was encouraged by Royals manager Jim Frey to learn the submarine style deliver of Pittsburgh Pirates reliever Kent Tekulve. Quiz embraced the pitching style and flourished. He was the American League’s best reliever from 1980 to 1985, averaging 35 saves per year with a 2.45 ERA. He won the Rolaids Relief Man Award five times in six years.
Unlike most relief pitchers, Quisenberry did not possess a blazing fastball. With his submarine style deliver he relied on pinpoint control and deception. In 405 innings from 1982-1984, Quisenberry walked just 35 batters. He threw just four wild pitches in his entire career, He came from down under and got batters to pound the ball into the ground. He also threw a curveball, changeup, and occasional knuckleball. And he was durable. Modern relief pitchers throw around 60-65 innings per year. Quisenberry had five seasons in which he pitched 128 or more innings. In his best years, he pitched twice as many innings as the modern closer.
Off the field, Quisenberry was known for his many thought-provoking quotes. Of his pitching style, he once said, “I found a delivery in my flaw.” He praised natural grass by saying, “Natural grass is a wonderful thing for little bugs and sinkerball pitchers.” At one of the Rolaid Relief Award ceremonies, he said, “I want to thank all the pitchers who couldn’t go nine innings and manager Dick Howser for not letting them.”
After being the league’s best closer for the previous six years, it didn’t take much for Quisenberry to lose his job halfway through the 1986 season. Royals manager Dick Howser turned to a bullpen-by-committee after Quisenberry blew a few save opportunities in May (tragically, Howser would be removed as manager later that year when it was revealed he had brain cancer). After averaging 40 saves per year from 1982 to 1985, Quisenberry had just 12 saves in 1986. He was still a good pitcher, though, with a 2.77 ERA.
He followed up the 1986 season with a 2.76 ERA in 1987 but only had eight of the teams 26 saves. Seven pitchers on the team had at least one save, with Quisenberry, Gene Garber, and Jerry Don Gleaton having at least five each. By the middle of the 1988 season, he was a rarely used man sitting lonely in the bullpen. A guy who had pitched in 69 or more games five times in his career was used just 20 times in the Royals first 80 games and just four times in all of June.
The normally upbeat, perpetually positive Quisenberry was in a funk. He wanted a chance to pitch, so he asked for a trade. When he was told there were no teams interested, he said, “Okay, if you won’t pitch me, and if I can’t be traded, then give me my release.”
The Royals finally released Quiz on the Fourth of July. Ten days later he was signed by the St. Louis Cardinals. He really struggled in the 1988 season with the Cardinals, but came back to post a 2.64 ERA in 78 1/3 innings in 1989. After just 6 2/3 innings with the San Francisco Giants in 1990, Quiz was released and his career was over.
Some years after his career ended, Quisenberry did poetry readings in the suburbs of Kansas City. Sportswriter Joe Posnanski wrote about the first time he ever really talked to Quisenberry. This was in a small library in Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City. Posnanski wrote, “And you know how sometimes you meet someone and you are struck by how wonderful it is to talk with them, how awesome it is to be around them, how good they make you feel not only about them but about yourself? Yeah, it was like that with Dan… Dan was this gentle man who wanted to know, really wanted to know, how you were doing, how your family was doing, how you were handling life. There are people who ask those questions. There are people who really and truly care. It’s a gift, caring, and Dan Quisenberry had that gift.”
Sadly, just eight years after his career ended, Dan Quisenberry died at the much too young age of 45. For all the interesting, quirky, and thoughtful quotes he was known for, the words he said to his wife at the end of his life summed up his philosophy. As he held her hands in the weeks before he died, he said, “I never ask, ‘Why me.’ Why not me?’”
Jeff Montgomery allowed a 6.52 ERA in 19 1/3 innings in his first year in the major leagues with the Cincinnati Reds. They didn’t think much of his future, so they traded him to the Royals for outfielder Van Snider, who would end up getting 36 plate appearances in his major league career.
After going 7-2, with a 3.45 ERA in his first year with the Royals, Montgomery really got going in year two. He pitched 92 innings in 63 appearances, with a 1.37 ERA and 18 saves. This was the start of an excellent stretch of pitching for Montgomery. From 1989 to 1993, he averaged 89 innings pitched and 32 saves per year with a 2.22 ERA. He was an all-star twice and led the league in saves in 1993 with a career-high 45.
Montgomery was 32 years old in 1994 and started to fade as he aged. It didn’t help that baseball was experiencing a big increase in offense. Over the last six years of his career, Montgomery had a 4.44 ERA in 340 1/3 innings. Home runs were a big part of the problem. After allowing just 0.5 home runs per nine innings in his first six years with the Royals, he gave up 1.3 home runs per nine innings in his last six years with the team. He retired after going 1-4 with a 6.84 ERA in 1999.
No pitcher in Royals history has pitched in more games than Montgomery (686). He also leads the team in career saves (304) and is third in ERA (3.20).
Joakim Soria had a roundabout journey to the big leagues. He began pitching professionally in the Mexican League. The Dodgers signed him as an amateur free agent in 2001, but released him after the 2004 season. He went back to the Mexican League for the 2005 season, then signed with the Padres. In December of 2006, the Royals selected him out of the Padres organization in the rule 5 draft.
Because Soria was a rule 5 pick, he had to be kept on the Royals’ major league roster for the entire 2007 season. Sometimes this can backfire on a team if the player isn’t ready to contribute, but Soria pitched quite well. He saved 17 games and had a 2.48 ERA. By the end of the season he was the Royals’ closer.
In 2008, Soria made the AL all-star team. He saved 42 games and had a 1.60 ERA. Despite missing some time with an injury, he was good again in 2009 (30 saves, 2.21 ERA). In 2010, he made the all-star team again and had a career-high 43 saves and a terrific 1.78 ERA.
After being so good the previous four years, Soria suddenly lost it at the beginning of the 2011 season. Through the end of May, he had a 6.55 ERA and had blown five of his first 12 save opportunities. He lost his closer’s job briefly, but came back to post a 2.58 ERA and pick up 21 saves in 23 attempts over the last four months of the season. It looked like the old Joakim Soria was back.
Unfortunately, Soria experienced elbow trouble during spring training in 2012 and ended up undergoing Tommy John surgery to repair his damaged UCL. He missed the entire season. The Royals declined to pick up his 2013 option and he was a free agent. Soria came back in 2013 with the Texas Rangers. He pitched for the Rangers, Tigers and Pirates from 2013 to 2015 before returning to the Royals last season. As a middle reliever in the Royals pen in 2016, he was 5-8 with a 4.05 ERA in 66 2/3 innings.
Soria is back with the Royals for the 2017 season. With Wade Davis now with the Chicago Cubs, Soria is expected to be the set-up man for new closer Kelvin Herrera.
Greg Holland’s dominance as a closer for the Royals was bright but brief. He struggled in his rookie year in 2010 and spent the start of the 2011 season in the minors. He came up in May and pitched well in a set-up role. In 2012, he started as the team’s set-up guy but took over the closer’s role when Jonathan Broxton was traded on July 31. Over the last two months of the season, he saved 16 games in 18 opportunities and had a terrific 1.98 ERA in 27 1/3 innings.
Based on FanGraphs Wins Above Replacement, Holland was the best reliever in baseball over the 2013-2014 seasons. He pitched 129 1/3 innings with a 1.32 ERA and earned 93 saves. His 47 saves in 2013 are the most in a season for the Royals. His 46 saves in 2014 are the second-most for any reliever in team history.
At the end of that 2014 season the Royals made the playoffs for the first time since 1985. Holland and the other Royals relievers were terrific in the playoffs. He pitched in 11 post-season games and had seven saves with a 0.82 ERA. Unfortunately for Royals supporters, the team lost the World Series to the San Francisco Madison Bumgarners in a well-fought seven games.
Holland wasn’t his usual excellent self in 2015. After two straight years with an ERA below 1.50, Holland had a 3.83 ERA in 2015. He still saved 32 games, but his fastball velocity was down more than 2 mph. The reason for his struggles became clear in September when it was announced that he had a significant tear in his right ulna collateral ligament and would need Tommy John surgery. The injury caused him to miss the 2015 post-season run to a World Series title. He sat out all of last year rehabbing the injury. The Royals released him and he recently signed with the Colorado Rockies, where pitchers’ ERAs go to die.
Bo Jackson doesn’t really belong on the all-time 25-man roster of the Royals. His career, a like burning meteor shooting rapidly across the sky, went by much too quickly. He only played 511 games with the Royals and didn’t come close to the career value of the outfielders who made the all-time team.
That being said, if a Royals fan wanted to watch one hypothetical game with the most exciting players in the history of the team, Bo Jackson should be in the lineup or, if not in the lineup, at least an at-bat. Maybe he could pinch hit during an important moment or be a defensive replacement when the team needed to have a runner thrown out at the plate with a laser beam from his right arm. Harold Reynolds would agree.
Bo made that throw on Reynolds in June of 1989. He hit 32 home runs and had 105 RBI that year. Because of his NFL career, this was the only season in which Bo had more than 500 plate appearances. This throw happened about a month before he would play in the all-star game for the only time in his career. In the all-star game, batting against Rick Rueschel, Bo did this on the first pitch he saw:
He later stole a base in the game, becoming the first all-star to hit a home run and steal a base since Willie Mays. He was also named the MVP of the game. That fall, Bo went back to his other sport, NFL football, and ran for 950 yards in 11 games, averaging 5.5 yards per carry. He made the Pro Bowl, becoming the only athlete to be named an all-star in baseball and football. There were times on the football field that Bo Jackson seemed unstoppable.
From 1987 to 1990, Bo’s average season consisted of 27 home runs, 76 RBI, and 20 steals in 122 games. Despite never playing more than 135 games in a season, Bo had two 20 HR/20 SB seasons and is 12th on the team’s all-time list for home runs. He also once hit home runs in four consecutive at-bats, with the fourth home run coming after a stint on the Disabled List.
Another time he put up his hand to call for time out just as the pitch was being delivered, then brought his hand back to the bat and hit the pitch over the wall for a home run. In a game against the Orioles in 1990, Bo made a catch in deep left-center then ran up the outfield wall after making the catch.
That catch may have been inspired by this performance in 1987. Bo played five seasons with the Royals and had numerous memorable moments. He’s on the short list of the greatest athletes of all time. Unfortunately, a football injury shortened his career in both sports. His last season with the Royals was in 1990. He played three partial seasons after that, but his best days were behind him because of the hip injury. He may not have been one of the best Royals ever, but he was one of the most exciting.
George Toma got his first job working on baseball fields when he was 13 years old. He lived across the street from a man who worked as the groundskeeper for the Wilkes-Barre Barons of the Class A Eastern League and the man gave Toma a job when he was just a teenager. Three years later, Toma was hired by Bill Veeck as a groundskeeper in Cleveland.
Toma’s affiliation with Kansas City began in 1957. The Kansas City Athletics offered him the job of head groundskeeper at Municipal Stadium, which was the home field of the Athletics in baseball, the Chiefs in football, and the Spurs in soccer. He was warned against taking the job by the groundskeeper he worked with in Cleveland, Emil Bossard. Bossard told Toma, “Don’t go to Kansas City. It’s a very bad field. In the springtime it will flood you out, in the summertime it gets so hot it’ll bake you out.” Toma took the job anyway. He went to work on the baseball field on November 1, 1957. He didn’t have a full-time crew, so he did the work of multiple men by himself.
Sod farms had yet to be invented, so Toma and his mentor, Dr. James Watson (an agronomist for the Toro Company) had to figure it out for themselves. They used a combination of bluegrass, fine fescues, and ryegrass from March to May. Around Memorial Day, they added Bermuda. After nine months of care from Toma, the Kansas City field was considered the best in baseball.
Toma was an artist when it came to crafting a playing surface. He had little money, inadequate equipment, and limited manpower, but was resourceful enough to maintain the turf at a level never seen before in professional sports. His success with the field in Kansas City attracted the eye of NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle. Soon after, Toma was brought on board to prep the field for the league’s first championship in 1967. The NFL championship would be re-named the Super Bowl in 1969. Toma was the groundskeeper for that game and every other Super Bowl for the next 45 years. He was also hired to supervise the grounds crews during the 1984 and 1996 Olympic Games and the 1994 World Cup.
Through the evolution of playing surfaces, from grass to artificial turf and back again, Toma kept the fields he worked in in pristine condition. In 1997, he passed the torch to a member of the Royals ground crew named Trevor Vance. Vance said Toma’s perfectionism rubbed off on everyone he worked with. Toma was known for saying “and then some”, which signified the extra effort needed to maintain exceptional fields.
Vance said of Toma’s mantra, “It’s so true, that’s what separates people. What separates the great from the good is the ‘and then some’. It was really about taking your time and doing the job right the first time, because we might not have time to do it a second time. He really instilled that in everybody: if you’re gonna do it, do it right. Your work is the signature of you, so do it right.”
Toma and his mentor, Emil Bossard, were inaugural inductees into the Major League Baseball Groundskeepers Hall of Fame on January 8, 2012. Later that year, he was inducted into the Kansas City Royals Hall of Fame.
