Quote:
Originally Posted by Prison Bitch
Our rotation is 20th FIP and our pen is 3rd. Pretty stark. Obv no small market can have it all (nor can a big market for the most part)....but we are paying $20m to Varg-Guth and they need to be at least serviceable which they haven't been. It's a cause for concern, sure. Good thing our defense & pen has been so lights out.
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The fact the starter ERA is 20th and the FIP is also 20th is interesting... there was about a 1/4 run differential last year (when the Royals rotation was 17th/19th, respectively) and nearly a 1/2 run differential in 2013 (19th, 21st).
It will be interesting to see if the Royals rotation ERA stays so close to its FIP all season, or if it comes back to what we've seen the past two seasons, with the team overperforming its FIP.
I'd expect the latter, personally, based on the most recent large samples, but time will tell.
Either way... the Royals won an average of 87.5 games with a below-league-average offense and similar SP performances each of the past two seasons. With even a league-average offense, they still are in great shape to be around 90 wins the rest of the way.