Response to a Royals Review Topic

As a Royals addict and blogger, I love reading other Royals blogs (obvious statement of the century). So I was going through some old posts at the fantastic Royals Review and saw this one. In a good way to kill some offseason time, they posted these questions:

1. Who do you want the Royals to play in the 2010 World Series?
2. What is your worst experience at the K ever?
3. Do you watch any of the variations of Bravo's Real Housewives of...
4. ESPN hires you as a consultant, what is your first recommendation?
5. What was the best album of the '00s?
6. Who was the sexiest male of the '00s?

So I figured I would answer them, and do it here.*

* Is it against blogger etiquette to respond to these questions on my own blog instead of in the comments of theirs? I don't know, I hope not.

1. Who do you want the Royals to play in the 2010 World Series

My first inclination is the Cubs. They've always been my NL team, so in a way it is a win-sortawin. But I don't think I could enjoy a Cubs WS win over the Royals. It would have the ancillary benefit of forcing some of the Cardinals fans to root for the Royals though.

Another thought I had was the Pirates. They are a small market club with some history, and so it would be kind of nice. The Brewers could be a fun old school AL re-match.

But for me it would have to be San Diego. Why? Well, my brother lives in San Diego and so I would have a place to stay out there to go to some of the away games. It would be a no-brainer.

2. What is your worst experience at the K ever.

Oh, this is easy. Once in college I came back to KC with a buddy who is a twins fan to go to a weekday Royals game, mid season. The heat was extremely hot and we bought upper deck tickets and decided to sit in the lower section. We were broke, the sun was hot and there was NOBODY there.

So we saunter down to our lower seciton seats and instantly an usher kicks us out. Now, I know that is their job....but come on. Nobody was even there. So we got up, slid down a few sections to an even lesser populated section and tried to sit down. Same thing happened again! Ok, now I was getting annoyed. So we moved to the opposite side of the stadium and tried one more time. Again we got booted, and not even nicely.

So we went up to the railing and stood there watching. Some usher kept coming up to us and asking "Let me see your tickets...where are your tickets...yadda yadda". At this point, I am standing so who cares? I tell them I have SRO tickets and to leave me alone. They continue to berate us, yell at us and eventually tell us that if we don't go up to the upper deck they will kick us out of the stadium!

I was in shock. THIS is how you treat a customer when you clearly have so few to begin with? You wont even let us sit in some empty seats or even STAND in the concourse? We eventually went upstairs and baked in the upper deck seats, but I was steamed. It was my worst experience at the K by far.

3. Do you watch any of the variations of Bravo's Real Housewives of...

No.

4. ESPN hires you as a consultant, what is your first recommendation?

When I first saw this question I thought it said MLB not ESPN. So because I feel like it, let me answer both.

If mlb hired me, one of the things I would love to see happen is to allow the video and audio replays of games to be in the creative commons. I would harness the blogs, vlogs, podcasts and fans out there to create thier own highlight shows out of the footage. Maybe just allow some of the footage to be in the public, but at least some of it. ESPN and MLB teams could identify some real talent out there to hire and it would be immensely entertaining.

If ESPN hired me, I would suggest having a set of announcers who were very stat intensive to broadcast some games. Make them your #2 or #3 squad behind Miller and Morgan. Let them dissect the game to the nth degree. Yeah it may turn off some casual fans, but who watches an A's vs Rangers game in late August anyway?

1. A's and Rangers fans who will watch whoever calls the game regardless
2. Diehards who might already have the MLB package anyway but could be drawn to the stat nerds broadcasters because they are kindred spirits.

5. What was the best album of the '00s?

Wow, this is difficult. I am tempted to say Grizzly Bear - Veckatimist. But it is so new, that it could be why I am leaning towards it. But honestly, it has to be

My Morning Jacket - It Still Moves

The album spoke to me the second I heard it. I made every one of my friends buy it and they loved it too. It was rock and it was country and it was roots. For me it made me realize how much I loved this kind of music and how it just wasn't around. It popularized this country kind of rock and spawned all kinds of great music in what is my favorite genre not called Jazz. Without that album I don't know if Veckatimist happens.

6.Who was the sexiest male of the '00s?

Ross Gload

Greinke's effect on attendance

Sam Mellinger of the Kansas City Star suggested on his blog a novel idea of the Royals having a Greinke ticket plan. It's a good idea, even with the clear logistical problems (which he mentions). However, one thing he said gave me a moment to pause:

"We ran numbers last summer, and with a few exceptions, the “Greinke bump” in ticket sales wasn’t quite what you might expect."

Now, "what you might expect" is clearly very open to interpretation but the suggestion is that Greinke starting didn't have much of an effect on attendance. So I decided to dig into the numbers. Here is a quick line chart of every home games attendance. Greinke starts are highlighted in red.


So it looks like Greinke's starts are in most cases high points, but some are oddly low points, especially that game early in the season. But lets get into that later. So what were the average attendance of home games with and without Greinke?

In Greinke's 17 starts: 24,707
In the other 63* games: 21,871

* On Tuesday July 2st the Royals staged a double header to makeup a game. The attendance of game 1 is officially 0, but there were more than 0 people there, so I just ignored that game.

So Greinke starts averaged 2,836 more people or a 13% increase. Clearly a noticeable difference. Is that all atributalbe to Greinke though?

Greinke had 4 of the 13 Friday starts at home in 2009. Considering he is only one of 5 pitchers he clearly got a little lucky in that Friday is a great attendance night. So how did Greinke's Friday starts compare to the rest of the Fridays at home?

Greinke's 4 starts: 34,647
Other 13 Fridays: 28,991

That is a 20% increase in attendance, but it is a relatively small sample size. Still, the numbers indicate that Greinke has an even better pull on Fridays, and the Royals got lucky to have him out there 4 times. I didn't think initially there would be this big of a spread, but it does make sense that his pull with casual fans who are more likely to attend on a Friday is pretty obvious. But that should also be the case on Saturday, right?

Greinke's 3 Saturdays: 27,578
Other 10 Saturdays: 31,178

This time Greinke seems to have a negative effect, but looking at the data two of his three starts took place in August and September, when fan interest as a whole drops off.

The oddest game of the year Attendance wise has to be Monday, April 13th. It was only the teams 4th home game and the attendance was 9,967 and it was Greinke's first home start of the season. On the next day the attendance was 11,663, so why was the attendance so lowsy? The weather on that day seems pretty normal, it was 43 degrees and it wasn't raining. I guess it might have been some fatigue from the home opening weekend. Also, fans were not yet fully on the Greinke bandwagon, at that point he was a fantastic pitcher but not yet the best pitcher in baseball. But still, that is a pretty big outlier in the Grienke attendance average. If we remove that game from his average, it jumps up nearly 1,000 people per game.

It is pretty clear that Greinke was a big draw to the ballpark in 2009. With some crude math, I estimated that Greinke drew about 48,212 people to the park. I would conservatively estimate that the Royals can net an average of $20 per person, which is about $964,240 in revenue from Greinke alone. Not bad for a guy who made about $3.7m.

Since a Greinke home start is worth an additional $56,000 by my estimation, the Royals would probably do well to try and find a way to get him a couple more home starts by resting him an extra day here and there, or shortening his rest.

In conclusion, I do agree with Mellinger that the Royals could certainly do very well by selling a Zack Pack up front. Money up front is ALWAYS better to have, plus you lock people into his starts. But as to whether the attendance bump is or is not what I think. I have to say it was about what I thought.

Some Less than Positive news regarding Arguelles

The Havana Times baseball writer has a big writeup on Cuban defectors Aroldis Chapman and Noel Arguelles. The Royals signed Arguelles and the article has this to say about him.

"Chapman is certainly more of a genuine prospect than 20-year-old Noel Arguelles, whose slick agents recently milked a $7 million, five year contract from the risk-prone Kansas City Royals. But that speaks more to the folly in Kansas City than to any wisdom in Cincinnati. A one-time junior national team ace, Arguelles had no real success at all in the Cuban League, despite laboring with one of that circuit’s best clubs in Habana Province (last season’s league champions).

There he was buried behind the top starters on one of the National Series’ top mound corps (Yulieski González, Yadier Pedroso, Jonder Martínez, and Miguel Angel González) and thus never enjoyed the same chance to impress he might get with the pitching-thin Royals. In Cuba, nonetheless, Arguelles suffered from a debilitating walks/Ks ratio (49/40 over two seasons) and was never in the picture when it came to the senior national team. At least Chapman can boast a smattering of heavy-duty international tournament experience."

Young prospects, particularly Latin American prospects are usually showered with praise and the upside is always talked about. It is refreshing to see some honest commentary from someone on these players. I think the Royals realize that the signing is a risk, as is any free agent signing. I still am hopeful that Arguelles works out for the Royals and even more than that I am very happy to see the Royals taking risks in Latin America, which they haven't for quite some time.

Some Royals Links

The Lampoc Record has some Duffy quotes on his Spring Training invite.

The Bleacher Report has an article on whether Zack was the best Royal Cy Young winner.

The Omaha World Journal has a Gordon article about battling for his job.

TAG Magazine covers the Royals Caravan with some video interviews.

Baseball-Reference.com blog has stats that say the royals were the 2nd worst team of the decade.

2009 Left Field Position Review

Onward we go, this time to the left field position in 2009. Here are the players and how they fared when they played left field.

Name	G	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	H	R	HR	RBI	BB	SO
David Dejesus	139	.281	.344	.430	.775	153	71	12	69	48	85
Mitch Maier	17	.194	.200	.200	.400	12	6	0	6	13	17
Willie Bloomquist	9	.290	.378	.355	.733	9	4	0	2	5	4
Jose Guillen	4	.200	.235	.400	.635	3	3	1	2	0	5
Josh Anderson	1	1.000	1.000	1.000	2.000	1	1	0	0	0	0
Ryan Freel	1	.200	.333	.226	.559	1	0	0	0	0	2
Tug Hulett	1	.000	.000	.000	.000	0	0	0	0	0	0

Basically we are talking about David Dejesus. Personally I am a huge fan of David Dejesus. I think he is one of the most underrated Royals, at least to Royals fans. I thought he was a fine center fielder, particularly considering his offensive output. Moving him to left was not something I opposed but more something I just didn't get. He went from being a very good CF bat and a decent CF defender to a below average LF bat and an elite LF defender. First, lets see how our position compared to the rest of the league.

Team	Split	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	sOPS+
Red Sox	as LF	.267	.378	.535	.913	132
Rays	as LF	.308	.371	.472	.843	116
Yankees	as LF	.276	.353	.486	.839	114
Blue Jays	as LF	.270	.349	.461	.810	107
Rangers	as LF	.271	.334	.472	.806	105
Twins	as LF	.290	.338	.452	.790	102
Orioles	as LF	.261	.344	.436	.779	100
Tigers	as LF	.254	.326	.445	.772	97
White Sox	as LF	.263	.342	.421	.763	96
Royals	as LF	.273	.345	.412	.756	95
Angels	as LF	.272	.323	.431	.754	93
Athletics	as LF	.260	.336	.408	.744	91
Indians	as LF	.253	.313	.417	.730	87
Mariners	as LF	.219	.276	.333	.609	57

Offensively, the Royals were below average, however a .756 OPS would have been the 4th highest in the AL at CF. But being at least somewhat close to average at LF is something to appreciate on this team.

It is pretty clear from the chart how most teams utilize the LF position. They usually have guys with some power out if left field, presumably to hide their less than stellar defense. The Royals on the other hand take a capable center fielder who is good at getting on base and great defense, and put him out in left. The Royals had a very high average and on base percentage for the position, but only outslugged the Mariners LF.

The Royals look to continue the trend of playing Dejesus in LF in 2010, which isn't the worst thing in the world, particularly on this team. But of course that is in a vacuum. Would the Royals have been better served in putting Dejesus back in CF and picking up a LF on the free agent market? Possibly. However, it didn't happen.