Kansas City Royals: Four positives from April of 2019 season

Positive #1: The New Core

Fifty years ago, arguably the best Western hit the movie theaters: The Wild Bunch. The Sam Peckinpah classic is in part about a group of bandits living out of time, still doing their thing after the world has moved on.

In the end (spoiler alert for a movie that debuted in 1969), only one member of the titular wild bunch survived: Old Man Sykes. Sykes utters the movie’s finale line to his former companion-turned-hunter, Deke Thornton: “It ain’t like it used to be. But it’ll do.”

That line pretty much sums up the Kansas City Royals’ newest core. Led by the likes of Whit Merrifield, Hunter Dozier, Adalberto Mondesi, Brad Keller, Jakob Junis, and Jorge Soler, none of whom were around for 2015’s glory, the Royals’ core really isn’t like it used to be with Salvador Perez, HDH, an in-his-prime Alex Gordon, Mike Moustakas, and Eric Hosmer.

But you know what? This new core is doing just fine.

Dozier continues his breakout season as he’s fourth in the American League in WAR at 1.6, which is third for positional players behind only the Angels’ Mike Trout and Jorge Polanco of the Twins. In the American League, he ranks fifth in batting average (.337), fourth in on-base percentage (.441), third in slugging (.663), and second in OPS (1.104). Of his 31 hits, 14 are for extra-bases, including five doubles, two triples, and seven home runs with 17 runs batted in.

Mondesi ranks in the top-ten in 11 offensive categories, including: hits, total bases, RBIs, extra-base hits and sacrifice flies. He leads the league in triples and is tied for American League lead in stolen bases.

Merrifield, meanwhile, is slashing .291/.345/.488 for an .834 OPS as he’s scored 25 runs in 31 games. And then there’s Soler, who actually has a negative WAR (-0.3) at the moment, but he’s providing decent pop as he’s hit eight doubles and seven home runs, raising his slugging percentage to .479.

A couple of pitchers round out this next, young(ish) core, as Jakob Junis and Brad Keller are posting what are solid and consistent numbers. Junis had a strong outing Wednesday afternoon against a superb Rays club, holding them to two runs in just over six innings as the Royals won Game 1 of the doubleheader, 3-2.

Keller’s had back-to-back rough goes of it against that same Rays club, but against teams not based in Tampa Bay, he’s allowed no more than three earned runs in a single game.

No, this isn’t your World Series winning core of players. But it’ll do.