Kansas City Royals: PECOTA projects Royals as the worst team in 2018

Kansas City Royals fans aren’t going to be happy when they see the PECOTA projections for the 2018 season. The Royals are supposedly going to have the worst record in all of Major League Baseball.

This is nothing new for Kansas City Royals fans, as the team has always been under appreciated heading into a new season. This season, however, the projection probably isn’t too far off.

PECOTA has the Royals winning just 66 games in 2018, which would be their worst win total since 2009 where they had 65 wins. It’s no secret that the Royals won’t be all that competitive this year, so this really shouldn’t be that upsetting.

In seasons past, it was easy to get frustrated, as the projections would doubt the Royals even with talent on their rosters. The year they won the World Series, PECOTA had the Royals winning just 72 games. Obviously that was incorrect, but in their defense, the Royals have always been a hard team to peg.

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PECOTA had five of the same six teams from last season winning their divisions in 2018, with the only newbie being the Yankees. The Indians are once again expected to wreck havoc in the American League Central, though the Twins will end the year with a winning record, according to the projections.

Fans shouldn’t be surprised at these results at all. The Royals are in rebuild mode and with or without Eric Hosmer, they’re going to be a bad team in 2018. While most of us are used to this (I went 23 years without seeing the Royals in the playoffs), some of the newcomers might be jumping off the bandwagon after the first couple of weeks.

At what point do fans care if the Royals win just 66 games or 76 games? A bad season is a bad season and that will give the Royals a high draft pick in 2019 and likely the opportunity to trade some better players at the deadline to teams in the playoff hunt. That, in return, could bring prospects to Kansas City.

PECOTA projections have very rarely given Royals fans any reason to celebrate, but this year the prediction could be right on the money. It’s going to be a bad season, but at least we’re expecting it this time around. That “Raised Royal” slogan is going to make it seem like we’re back in the 1990s and 2000s again.

Do you think the Royals projected win total is accurate or do you think they could win more games than 66?