Kansas City Royals: Who Cares About The Projections
The Kansas City Royals continue to be disrespected by season projections. At this point, why do fans even care anymore?
Every offseason, FanGraphs, PECOTA, and USA Today all make their projections for how each MLB team will fare in the upcoming season. Every offseason, these sites always disrespect the Kansas City Royals, and every offseason, fans seem surprised.
While it sucks that national outlets don’t see the Kansas City Royals the way that we (the fans) do, they’re not watching the Royals every day like we are.
The Royals aren’t a big market like the Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees. They’re a small market ball club and even with two consecutive American League pennants and two straight World Series appearances under their belt, they still can’t command respect from these guys.
PECOTA projected the Royals to win 72 games and finish in dead last in the American League Central. FanGraphs said they’d win 79 games and finish in 4th in the division. Lastly, USA Today predicted the boys in blue to post a winning record, but lose out on the division to the Chicago White Sox.
One would think that after winning the freaking World Series that the KC Royals would earn some national respect, but it just doesn’t work like that around here.
While all of these projections are irritating to read and have to look at, why should fans care? Fans have seen first hand how much these bad projections motivate the Kansas City Royals. Last season, the Royals were projected to do quite poorly in 2015, and they proved all of the naysayers wrong by winning their second straight American League pennant and winning the World Series.
One would think that after winning the freaking World Series that the KC Royals would earn some national respect, but it just doesn’t work like that around here. The Royals will always be the underdogs no matter how dominate of a showing they put on.
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While the projections certainly hurt our ego a little bit, it’s all talk. There is no way in hell that these same KC Royals who came back down multiple runs more times than I can count are going to finish anywhere below second place in the division. They sure as hell aren’t finishing in fourth or in last place.
Even donning a World Series patch on their sleeves this season won’t sway the national media when it comes to the Kansas City Royals. I guess it will take more than three straight seasons of winning baseball to convince everyone just how good our boys in blue really are.
When it comes down to it though, these are just numbers. None of these sites can predict the future (and if they can, they did a pretty bad job of doing so last year) and when it comes down to it, the Kansas City Royals have proven that they’re a force to be reckoned with in the major leagues.
Next: Ten Best Seasons in Royals History
What do you make of these projections? Do you think they’re silly or is there some truth to them?