The Stats Are In

Time to tool around Baseball-Reference.com and find some interesting year-end numbers. As an ode to my Kansas City homies let's start with the Royal offense. Twenty-two Royal position players took a turn at-bat during the '07 season. Only two of them produced an OPS+ above the league average. Reggie Sanders led the team with a 131 in twenty-four games and Billy Butler put up a 102 in 365 plate appearances.

Every other Royal batter produced an OPS under 100. Here's the tail of the tape for the starting lineup.

C John Buck 87
1b Ross Gload 92
2b Mark Grudzielanek 97
3b Alex Gordon 84
ss Tony Pena 63
lf Emil Brown 66
cf David DeJesus 86
rf Make Teahan 95
dh Billy Butler 102

The Royal offense combined had an OPS+ of 82. That's the lowest team total since Detroit's 81 OPS+ in their 119 loss season in 2003.

Despite these horrid numbers the Royals boast two very good (possibly great) projectable hitters in Gordon and Butler, an additional solid one in Teahan and an average one in DeJesus. If they can produce at the level they're projected to reach and the rest of the offense can stop being horrendous and just plain old below average the Royals could make a big offensive move into the top half of American League teams in 2008.