The Kansas City Royals have begun their 2024 season shocking everyone. They have a record of 13-10 and are 3.5 games behind the Cleveland Guardians in the American League Central.
Going into the 2024 season, mlb.com experts picked the Royals to win the division, despite coming off a 56-win season (second fewest in the MLB) a year ago. So far they are living up to that expectation starting the season very hot and being ranked #6 in the mlb.com power rankings.
The Royals have been led by stellar starting pitching, Salvador Perez, and young stars Bobby Witt Jr., and Vinnie Pasquantino.
The starting rotations has been one of the best in the league so far this year. Leading the staff is Cole Ragans who was picked by some as a CY Young Award favorite for 2024. Ragans had been stellar with a 1.93 ERA and 29 strikeouts in 23.1 innings. In his last outing, he was very unlucky giving up seven runs in 1.2 innings after the Orioles hit seventeen foul balls leading to nine hits off the Royals ace. The Orioles only hit one ball above 92mph but that’s the way the game works, sometimes being lucky is all you need.
The rotation seems to get better as you go down the line. Starters Seth Lugo and Brady Singer are in the top twenty-five in the MLB in ERA with a 2.03 and 2.76 respectively. On April 22, Singer became the nineteenth Royals pitcher to reach 500 career strikeouts and he did it in career game number 100. He struck out Davis Schneider to garner this milestone.
Offensively they have been paced by veteran catcher and captain Salvador Perez, the new face of the franchise, Bobby Witt Jr., and young first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino. Perez leads the team in average, home runs, and RBIs. He is hitting .341 with six home runs and twenty-two RBIs.
In his first season after signing an 11-year, 288.7-million-dollar contract extension (the largest in franchise history) Witt has shown why he deserved that. Witt Jr. is hitting .298 with four home runs, 8 RBIs, and an OPS of .911 (league average is between .700-.800). He is also in the 100th percentile in six different hitting and base running categories and in the 90th or better in five others.\
After getting off to a very cold start, the Royals have benefited from the emergence of Vinnie Pasquantino. On April 9, he was hitting .108 with no home runs before beginning his current eleven-game hitting streak. During this streak, he is hitting .421 with four home runs and eleven RBIs. His season totals now sit at a .267 average with four home runs and eleven RBIs.
With players bound to cool off, is the Royals hot start sustainable for an entire 162-game season or will we see what we have recently and the team fall apart?
