Kansas City Royals Hitters: 2015 Team Preview
Oct 28, 2014; Kansas City, MO, USA; Kansas City Royals outfielders Alex Gordon (4) , Jarrod Dyson (1) and Lorenzo Cain (6) celebrate after defeating the San Francisco Giants during game six of the 2014 World Series at Kauffman Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports
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The Kansas City Royals may have had an absolutely magical October, but that does not change the fact that the Royals are not a great fantasy team. The Royals only hit 95 homers during the 2014 regular season, which ranked dead last in the Majors. In runs and RBI’s, the Royals were league average. On the other hand, the Kansas City Royals had the fourth best team BA of .263 and their 153 steals were the most in MLB.
Even though the team was great in two standard fantasy categories and average in two more, they are not an offense with illustrious fantasy options. Jarrod Dyson stole 36 of the 153 bases on the team this season, but he has absolutely no fantasy value outside of this category. Plus, there will not be many players on this roster with big counting stats due to the lack of overall power.
Alex Gordon is my favorite offensive option on the Royals by far because he is a terrific counting stat option. Gordon was hailed as the franchise savior after being selected overall in the 2005 draft, but he was considered a bust after a few seasons of poor production and unreasonable expectations.
In 2011, Alex Gordon turned the corner and has been a remarkable and wildly underrated player for the past four seasons. He has averaged 92.75/19/78.5/12.5/.283 from 2011 to 2014. Gordon will be 31 this year, and I would expect more of the same from the best hitter on the defending AL Champs.
Besides Alex Gordon, I am doing a lot of selling on this roster besides taking a flyer on Alex Rios as a high upside bench bat. Alcides Escobar will be over drafted big time because he can steal bases and he hit for a high average that will likely drop. You could replace the name Alcides Escobar with Lorenzo Cain and the sentence would be just as true.
Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas are probably considered breakout candidates once again. I think the last time that these two hitters were not hyped up was before the strike. Avoid them and save yourself the pain when your “power-hitting” corner infielder has four homers at the All-Star Break.
Kendrys Morales is old, declining, was terrible in 2014, and he has an unnecessary letter in his first name. He is not even a fraction of 2009 Morales unless you are talking about his large frame.
Tanner Bell of Smart Fantasy Baseball has created all of the projections seen in this post. You can read about how he develops his projections here. His projections are invaluable to this site. You can also visit his site at www.smartfantasybaseball.com.