Kansas City Royals' early season problems not necessarily a sign of things to come

David Eulitt / The Kansas City Star

How bad have the Kansas City Royals started this year? Going 4-7 and being dead last in runs, runs per game, slugging, OPS, and home runs in the AL is not a good start no matter how you slice it. But good news everyone, it’s baseball! There are 162 games and we are 6.17% done with the season (for comparison, that is 59.5 minutes of one NFL game). We can think back to last year when the Royals had an atrocious May (6-20) and were still in the race at the end of the year.

Obviously the Royals need to hit more, but if you look at career averages, and in baseball looking at anything else is foolish, our offence will hit. Will the Royals lead the league in home runs? No. The Royals are not built for power so stop expecting to see it. Butler will hit and most likely lead the Royals in RBI’s this year (like he has his whole career). Moose will most likely have a better year than he did last year, because he simply has too much talent to keep an average like that in back-to-back years.

As it is in life, so it is in baseball. There are multiple reasons why the Royals have been disappointing so far this year. The biggest is obviously hitting with runners in scoring position; a .209 average ranks them as 9th in the AL. For teams expecting to make the playoffs this is simply not acceptable. But to repeat myself, this is just the start of the year, and looking at the career stats of the Royals players leads one to believe that the team will pull out of this slump and be an exciting team the rest of the year.

One of the bright spots and biggest reasons the Royals are 4-6 and not 2-8 is the starting pitching. The biggest question for me coming into this year was: how do the Royals replace Santana? Well, after three games, Vargas has been spectacular, making a lot of fans say – Santana who? The others in the rotation have been the motor behind this team for the first 10 games and have only allowed 2.73 ERA witch ranks 3rd in the AL. You cannot ask for much more.