The Royals Today, April Wrap Edition

So, as the first month of the baseball season drifts into the rear view mirror, the Royals find themselves alone in first place. The bad news, it's only by 1/2 a game and four-fifths of the division are within a game. But there's lots of good news. The Royals lead the central and are tied with the Red Sox for the 2nd best mark in the AL in Expected W-L. There are a couple of reasons for that, but mainly it boils down to the Royals being just 1-4 in one run games...due to a combination of being a little bit unlucky and the aforementioned handling of the bullpen. If the Royals continue to be unlucky in 1 run games, they're not good enough to make much noise in the division. If that regresses to the mean a bit, you never know. After 22 games, we know the Royals aren't a great team, but we also know that there aren't any great teams in the division.

The pitching, particularly the starting pitching and what should constitute the back end of the bullpen, has been outstanding. The Royals are 3rd in ERA, 4th in strikeouts, while being just 23rd in walks issued and 24th in home runs allowed. All the peripherals are there for the pitching to contine to be awfully good if everybody stays relatively healthy. But we knew the pitching could be pretty good. The offense has been startlingly...average, which is a huge improvement from the last couple of seasons. After being dead last in walks last year, they've wiggled their way up to 17th. They're 16th in OPS. They're 15th in home runs, and 17th in strikeouts (which is better than it sounds because guys are going deeper into the count with an apparent newfound focus on drawing walks). Some guys have hit better than they're going to (Callaspo, Buck, Bloomquist) but some guys haven't hit as well as they should (Gordon, DeJesus, Guillen).

Are the Royals good enough to win the division? It's hard to say. But for the first time in a long time, the answer isn't a resounding "No".