Kansas City Royals Rotation Review: James Shields
Before the 2013 season, the Royals made drastic changes to their starting pitching. As a result, Royals starters finished the season with a 3.87 ERA, up from the 5.01 they posted last year. In addition to this, Royals starters pitched 96 2/3 more innings than last year. This allowed an excellent Royals bullpen to have plenty of rest.
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In general, the starting pitching was better than it has been in many years, but how did the Royals rotation perform individually? In total, nine pitchers made starts for Kansas City this year. For the purposes of this review, Will Smith‘s one start in a doubleheader will not count, nor will the starts made by Yordano Ventura and Danny Duffy. Though Ventura’s stuff is exciting and a healthy Duffy will make the Royals better next year, the sample size on these pitchers is too small to give any real evaluation.
For the Royals sake, that will hopefully not be the case at this time next year. We’ll work out way down the rotation in a five part series starting with Royals ace James Shields.
James Shields
Pros
Shields was an absolute workhorse for the Royals this year, as his 228 2/3 innings lead all American League starters. In addition to this, Shields posted the second lowest ERA of his career at 3.15. When Shields came over from Tampa Bay, his home/road splits were worrisome.
This led to some speculation that Shields would struggle outside the friendly confines of Tropicana Field. However, Shields was pretty much the same pitcher as he was in Tampa with a few exceptions. Shields actually allowed fewer home runs this year than any full year in his career. This went against many projections because prior to this year, Shields’ home run numbers spiked noticeably when on the road.
This drop in home runs could be due to not having frequently pitch in Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, Camden Yards and the Rogers Centre. Outside of Tampa, all the AL East ballparks are homer friendly. In addition to this, Kauffman isn’t exactly a great ballpark to hit homers in. There’s nothing in his numbers to indicate that he won’t be a stud again in 2014.
Cons
Mandatory Credit: John Rieger-USA TODAY Sports
The word “con” is a little misleading here because Shields was excellent and will likely continue to be excellent. There were, however, some concerning trends in his performance that might indicate that his numbers will decline a little next year.
The first concern is a declining strikeout rate. From 2010-2012, Shields has progressively stuck out a higher percentage of batters, moving from 20.8 to 23.1 to 23.6. This year, however, Shields dropped back down to 20.7%, his lowest percentage since 2009. This dramatic increase of balls in play means that Shields needed more help from his defense.
What’s strange is that Shields’ BABIP for the year was .298, or exactly his career average. This happened despite playing in front of one of the best defenses in baseball. So, if Shields posted a career average BABIP and a career average K%, how were his stats dramatically better?
Part of this is due to an uncharacteristically high strand rate. This year, Shields stranded 79.5% of all baserunners. For his career, Shields has stranded 73.6% of baserunners. This number will likely regress towards his career average.
Lastly, Shields saw a drop in his groundball rate. These batted balls didn’t turn into popups, either. Shields saw his Line Drive rate rise to a career high 23.2%.
There are two factors which could be working in Shields’ favor on this one, however. The first is that the PitchF/x system which gathers batted ball data is gathered from different points in each stadium. Thus, a ball that may look like a soft liner in Kauffman may appear to be a fly ball in Tropicana. This point is supported by Shields having an ordinary BABIP despite the apparent increase in liners.
Of course, this might be where the Royals defense comes into play. The second point working in Shields’ favor is that Line Drive% doesn’t correlate very well between seasons. It wouldn’t be surprising to see fewer liners hit off Shields next year, though all in all, Big Game James probably won’t be quite so big next season.
Overall
James Shields was an absolute horse for the Royals this season. In terms of innings pitched, quality of innings, and peripheral numbers, Shields was excellent. Additionally, Shields will likely continue to be great next year, though probably not to the degree that he was great this year. Shields provided a stabilizing force atop the Royals rotation this and will look to guide this team towards a playoff berth in 2014.