Atlanta Braves

Kansas City's pitching staff suddenly a Royal concern for October

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 6:15 p.m. ET

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The current version of the Kansas City Royals is primarily known for two things: playing amazing defense and having a dominating bullpen. That combination of elite glove-work and unhittable relievers carried them to the World Series a year ago and helped them run away with the AL Central this season; they entered the month of September with a 13-game lead over the second-place Twins.

But despite a pre-punched playoff ticket, September has provided plenty of reason for Kansas City fans to worry about their chances headed into October. After an 11-2 drubbing at the hands of the Mariners last night, the Royals are now just 7-13 this month, thanks to a pitching staff that apparently is coming apart at the seams. In those 20 contests, the Royals have allowed 120 runs for an average of 6.0 runs allowed per game. Through Aug. 31, they allowed just 484 runs over 130 games, or 3.7 runs allowed per game.

This month, opponents are hitting .290/.364/.474 against the Royals; only the Phillies and A's are allowing opponents to do more damage in September. And it's not just a couple of guys; nearly the entire staff is getting lit up.

Johnny Cueto's highly publicized struggles since coming to Kansas City have included a .935 OPS allowed in September. This is even including his last performance, which was quite good. Yordano Ventura, the team's presumed No. 1 starter heading into the year, has allowed an .802 OPS this month. Edinson Volquez? .905. Jeremy Guthrie is at an avert-your-eyes 1.057, not that far off Bryce Harper's OPS for the season. And down in the bullpen, instead of coming to a struggling rotation’s rescue, Kelvin Herrera (.976), Franklin Morales (1.262) and Luke Hochevar (.972) have poured gasoline on the fire, while Greg Holland (only a .713 OPS allowed) continues to struggle with diminished velocity and command and has officially been removed from the closer's role for the rest of the season.

So, yeah, there are some problems on the Royals pitching staff. Of course, we can't ignore the fact that the team hasn't had anything to play for this month, with the division title all but wrapped up long ago. So perhaps the lack of urgency has caused the poor performance, and the team's pitchers will respond to the situation when their games start to mean something once again. Though ever since the MLB added the wild card and changed the playoff format in 1995, no postseason qualifier has allowed opponents to hit this well in the final month of the season.

Certainly, other teams have struggled at run prevention in the final month of the year, but not quite to this extent. The Royals pitchers have allowed a 133 OPS+ this month — the current high of any postseason qualifier since 1995 is 125, a mark somewhat shockingly put up by the 1996 Atlanta Braves. While that team had Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz at the front of its rotation — and all three pitched well for the Braves in that September — their bullpen was an unmitigated disaster, allowing a 158 OPS+ in the final month of the season.

Which brings us to the good news part of this column: The 1996 Braves made it to the World Series. Their disastrous final month of the season on the mound wasn't a harbinger of impending playoff failure — they went 9-7 in their 16 postseason games following their September struggles. And here's a list of how other postseason qualifiers performed in the playoffs after watching their pitching staffs implode in the final month of the regular season:

Team	September OPS+	Postseason Record	Result
1996 Braves	125	0.600	Made WS
2006 Tigers	120	0.615	Made WS
1997 Marlins	120	0.688	Won WS
2004 Dodgers	119	0.250	Lost in NLDS
2006 Athletics	117	0.429	Lost in ALCS

Maybe the Royals are on to something here: The three worst pitching-and-defense units in September all went on to make the World Series, and the 1997 Marlins got to throw a parade when it was all over. While this is only five teams, it certainly doesn't suggest that late-season pitching problems are a sign of impending doom for a team's chances in October.

Perhaps this shouldn't be that surprising. In most cases, when we look even at extreme performances in small periods of time, we find that there's little predictive value; it is almost always better to take a long view of a team's performance, and not overreact to what happened in the last couple of weeks. And the way the postseason schedule works, teams get to reduce the number of pitchers they have to rely on, so pitchers who are legitimately having issues can be hidden in October. Guthrie probably isn't going to draw a start for the Royals this postseason, so the fact that opposing batters are torching him every time out likely doesn't matter much for the team's October chances.

But I would stop short of saying the Royals shouldn't be concerned. Realistically, this isn't just a single-month problem; the Royals have allowed a .757 OPS (111 OPS+) since the All-Star break. Again, no postseason qualifier since 1995 has allowed opponents to hit that well in the second half of the year. And some of these problems are unlikely to fix themselves overnight; Holland, in particular, looks like a damaged pitcher who might not be able to contribute at all to the team's postseason run. And by shifting Wade Davis into the ninth-inning role, the team is now weaker in the middle innings, and will be counting on guys like Ryan Madson to bridge the gap between Davis and what has always been a mediocre starting rotation.

Last year, the Royals were able to ride their relievers heavily, but if Holland's lingering elbow problems don't get resolved in the next couple of weeks, this year's bullpen won't be nearly as deep as last year's group. And the team's rotation just isn't very good; on the season, they rank 24th in ERA, 24th in FIP, and 28th in xFIP. Cueto will likely turn things around, and allocating innings from the back-end of the rotation to the better starters up front will help. But the loss of Holland and the weakening of the team's bullpen could exacerbate a problem that has actually existed all year.

So, yeah, the Royals should be a bit concerned about their pitching staff. They just shouldn't be concerned because of how the group has melted down in September. September performance doesn't really carry over to the postseason, and things like momentum are mostly a myth. But the Royals really do have some pitching problems, and they only have a few weeks left to get them sorted out.