2003 Kansas City Royals Baseball Graphs Review

Kansas City had a Cinderella run, but faded as Cinderella teams usually do. Actually, the Royals hung around first place much longer than seemed possible earlier in the year. They got off to a tremendous start, thanks to some great young pitching, won their first nine games and were six and a half games over .500 by April 24th. From that point on, they played 4.5 games under .500. However, they stubbornly hung on and refused to bow out of the pennant race until September.

The first thing to note is that they won 5 games more than their run differential would project.

The Royals were slightly worse than average in runs allowed per game, despite the best efforts of their defense. Really, the team pitching was not up to snuff and their team FIP was fourth from the bottom of the pack.

Leskanic, Affeldt and MacDougal were the only pitchers with good FIPs, and only Leskanic also had a decent DER behind him. You can view all pitchers' ERA, FIP and DER here.

In the field, Carlos Beltran topped off his tremendous year with excellent fielding stats. And rookie Angel Berroa did a fine job in the field too.

Really, KC followed a great April with a lousy May, and then stabilized from there. As good as the pitching and fielding were in April, they were that bad in May. And oy, that offense in May -- anytime a team OPS is below .700, they are officially bad.

By the way, one of the reasons for the fast start was the schedule. In April, they played in division (including the Tigers, Indians and pre-good White Sox). May was spent playing teams like Toronto and Boston.

Kansas City Royals' Win Shares

Player          Team    Pos     Hit     Field   Pitch   Sum     WS 	
--------	-----	----	----	----	-----	-----	---	
C Beltran       KC      OF      21.48   6.50    0.00    27.98   28	
D May           KC      P       0.00    0.00    17.20   17.20   17	
A Berroa        KC      SS      9.64    6.09    0.00    15.73   16	
R Ibanez        KC      OF      11.81   3.57    0.00    15.38   15	
M Sweeney       KC      DH      13.96   0.74    0.00    14.70   15	
J Randa         KC      3B      10.83   3.40    0.00    14.23   14	
J Affeldt       KC      P       0.44    0.00    11.63   12.06   12	
A Guiel         KC      OF      8.90    2.58    0.00    11.48   12	
D Relaford      KC      2B      7.09    3.63    0.00    10.72   11	
B Mayne         KC      C       2.22    7.74    0.00    9.97    10	
M Tucker        KC      OF      7.11    2.34    0.00    9.44    9	
M MacDougal     KC      P       0.00    0.00    8.70    8.70    9	
K Harvey        KC      1B      5.16    1.58    0.00    6.74    7	
R Hernandez     KC      P       0.00    0.00    6.30    6.30    6	
M DiFelice      KC      C       3.05    2.67    0.00    5.72    6	
D Carrasco      KC      P       0.00    0.00    5.71    5.71    6	
J Lima          KC      P       0.00    0.00    5.38    5.38    5	
C Leskanic      KC      P       0.00    0.00    4.83    4.83    5	
B Anderson      KC      P       0.00    0.00    4.68    4.68    5	
R White         KC      OF      3.70    0.70    0.00    4.40    4	
J Grimsley      KC      P       0.00    0.00    4.19    4.19    4	
K Wilson        KC      P       0.00    0.00    3.75    3.75    4	
K Snyder        KC      P       0.00    0.00    3.66    3.66    4	
J Gobble        KC      P       0.00    0.00    3.21    3.21    3	
M Asencio       KC      P       0.00    0.00    2.56    2.56    3	
A Levine        KC      P       0.00    0.00    2.52    2.52    3	
P Abbott        KC      P       0.00    0.00    2.19    2.19    2	
C George        KC      P       0.22    0.00    1.87    2.09    2	
D Brown         KC      OF      1.09    0.90    0.00    1.98    2	
M Lopez         KC      1B      1.17    0.71    0.00    1.88    2	
N Field         KC      P       0.00    0.00    1.78    1.78    2	
J Wright        KC      P       0.00    0.00    1.62    1.62    2	
C Febles        KC      2B      0.00    1.43    0.00    1.43    1	
K Appier        KC      P       0.00    0.00    1.38    1.38    1	
S Lowe          KC      P       0.00    0.00    1.27    1.27    1	
B Berger        KC      OF      0.34    0.24    0.00    0.59    1	
D DeJesus       KC      OF      0.38    0.02    0.00    0.40    0	
J Matos         KC      3B      0.06    0.32    0.00    0.38    0	
J Gilfillan     KC      P       0.00    0.00    0.28    0.28    0	
B Abernathy     KC      2B      0.00    0.18    0.00    0.18    0	
J Hill          KC      P       0.00    0.00    0.16    0.16    0	
G Dawkins       KC      2B      0.00    0.04    0.00    0.04    0	
T Prince        KC      C       0.00    0.04    0.00    0.04    0	
J Patterson     KC      3B      0.00    0.02    0.00    0.02    0	
M Burkhart      KC      DH      0.00    0.02    0.00    0.02    0	
R Bukvich       KC      P       0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0	
R DeHart        KC      P       0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0	
R Johnson       KC      OF      0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0	
G Lloyd         KC      P       0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0	
A Lopez         KC      P       0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0	
S Mullen        KC      P       0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0	
B Voyles        KC      P       0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0	
L Walrond       KC      P       0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0	

Carlos Beltran had an All-Star year. And Darrell May came out of the blue to rack up a good share of pitching Win Shares (though he was more of a DER pitcher than a FIP pitcher).

Mike Sweeney might have gotten over 20 Win Shares if he hadn't missed over a month. And Affeldt stepped into a key bullpen role when Mike MacDougal lost it the second half of the year. Actually, it's hard to tell if MacDougal maybe just wasn't having DER go his way.