2024 Atlanta Braves Opponents Preview: Kansas City Royals

Can you believe that it’s been ten years since the Kansas City Royals won their first of two consecutive American League Pennants? For the Royals and their fans, that two-year period was an oasis in what’s been an extended period of languishing in the wilderness. Since the turn of the century, the Royals have finished over .500 four times — going 83-79 in 2003 and then the three-year period from 2013 to 2015 that went from them finishing 86-76 in 2013 to winning 95 games and becoming World Series champions in 2015. Other than that, it was rough for the Royals in the past, it’ll likely be rough for the Royals in the present, but... at least they’re hoping that it won’t be as rough in the future.

Where were they in 2023?

Nobody really expected Kansas City to do much of anything last season and they lived up to expectations in that regard. It ended up being a dire season for the Royals where they lost 106 games and matched the 2005 squad for the worst winning percentage in franchise history. It was probably disappointing that they were supposed to be a run-of-the-mill bad team with around 72 wins or so, and had a really easy division to play in, but ended up cratering... but they didn’t exactly ruin anyone’s day by imploding or anything.

There was a major bright spot, though. Bobby Witt Jr. had a huge breakout season where he was one of four players in 2023 to enter the 30/30 club and as a matter of fact, Witt was just one stolen base away from going 30/50 for the season. He finished the season with a .343 wOBA and 115 wRC+ and was essentially the only reason for Royals fans to tune in on a majority of nights. (In fact, Witt was the only Royals position player to exceed 2 fWAR, and the only Royal to do so at all aside from 12 starts from Cole Ragans). One of the best moments of the season (not just for the Royals, and quite easily, at that, but for baseball in general) happened back on July 28, which is when Witt battled flamethrowing Twins closer Jhoan Duran in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded and one out while Kansas City was down 5-4. The two battled to a full count and Duran proceeded to throw a 102-mph heater middle-in. Any normal hitter would’ve been fortunate to even make contact with that pitch if they chose to swing at it. Bobby Witt Jr. ain’t normal, though.

Other than Witt being incredible, hoo boy. This was a rough season even for the Royals’ recent standards. The only team in the AL who had a worse collective wRC+ (89) than Kansas City did was the White Sox and it was still the third-worst mark in all of baseball. The only team in baseball who had a worse ERA- was Oakland. They also finished with the fourth-worst FIP- in all of baseball. Defensive metrics tend to agree that they were middle-of-the-road when it came to fielding, so there’s a slight positive? Still, this team was horrendous on most nights and the record was proof of that.

There were essentially few glimmers in terms of the team putting it together at any point, either. They started 7-21, and then also went 6-20 in June. They did go 12-5 in their last 17 games of the year, but were just 8-26 in the month-plus before that, so it was just dismal all around in Kansas City baseball-wise last year.

What did they do in the offseason?

Let’s start with the big move, which is that they actually shocked the baseball world by being smart enough to realize that Bobby Witt Jr. must stay with them at all costs. The Royals and Witt agreed to a massive 11-year, $288 million contract extension, which shattered Kansas City’s previous franchise record for a single contract (Salvador Perez’s four-year, $82 million contract extension was the previous record) by just over $200 million. While there is an opt-out for Witt in each season from the seventh year through the tenth year, if he does stay for the entirety of the 11 years and the Royals choose to exercise a three-year club option then this contract could end up being for 14 years and $377 million.

It was a massive show of intent from the Royals — especially given that they are also currently in the process of trying to convince the locals to vote to essentially give the Royals and Kansas City Chiefs enough funding for a new stadium and a stadium renovation, respectively. In the renderings for the new stadium, the Royals have dreams and aspirations of one day winning a World Series and having Bobby Witt Jr. as the centerpiece of that World Series team.

With that being said, this very likely isn’t going to be a World Series team in 2024. There was nowhere to go but up as far as their pitching was concerned, so they addressed that by signing Michael Wacha and Seth Lugo to help shore up their rotation. They didn’t stop there when it came to their pitching, either, as they also brought in old friend Will Smith and Chris Stratton in order to help their bullpen. They also spent a fair amount of money on positional players as well, as they signed Garrett Hampson, Hunter Renfroe and Adam Frazier. Overall, that’s a cromulent free agency haul and when you combine that with the Bobby Witt Jr. signing, you’d imagine that things should be looking up, right?

Where are they hoping to go?

Well, if your idea of “things should be looking up” is simply improving on 56 wins, then the Royals should at least accomplish that mission with relative ease thanks to their offseason acquisitions, alone. The problem is that this probably still puts them at around 70-something wins for the season, which is also where they were forecast end up last season. Even with the AL Central once again looking to be very weak, the Royals would still a lot to go right for them while also getting a significant amount of help in order to win this division in 2024. They do now have a 75-win projection and playoff odds of 12 percent, the latter of which is, thanks to expanded playoffs, their best mark since coming off the World Series win in 2015 (when it was 13 percent).

Outside of Bobby Witt Jr., there is still just not a lot going on when it comes to their lineup. If they’re planning on building around their cornerstone superstar, they haven’t exactly gotten started on that just yet. When it comes to the pitching, it should be better thanks to the free agency acquisitions but all eyes should still be on the likes of Cole Ragans and Brady Singer to keep on getting better. If that happens, then the pitching should at least be respectable going forward. As it is, though, this looks like a barely-not-bottom-five position player crew and a bottom-five pitching staff. Somewhat amusingly, the places where the Royals spent money still look fairly weak — second base, the corner outfield, and the bullpen stick out as especially large problem areas, as Frazier and Renfroe were bad last year, and the bullpen really needs guys like Smith and Stratton to be decent-to-good again to just not collapse into a vortex of irrelevance.

All in all, not collapsing is basically Kansas City’s goal for 2024 — simply be a respectable major league team. If they can find a way to float around .500, then that would be seen as a massive success and also give the organization a bit of hope that they may not be too far away from returning to the postseason conversation in the near future. For now, it’s clear that 2024 is another rebuilding year and it’s also clear that they’re probably going to keep on adding talent from outside of their organization since there doesn’t appear to be a lot of help coming from their farm system, either.

Braves 2023 head-to-head

Our Atlanta Braves visited the Royals in mid-April last season and as expected, the Braves took care of business and walloped them over three games during an overcast weekend series. Atlanta crushed five dingers in a 10-3 win on Friday, Sean Murphy had one of his best games of the season in a 9-3 win on Saturday and then Vaughn Grissom plated Ozzie Albies with a go-ahead RBI single in the ninth inning to help push the Braves past the Royals on their way to a 5-4 victory to clinch the sweep.

Interestingly enough, this was the site of what was arguably Kyle Wright’s best start of the 2023 season. Wright finished the day with 5 ⁄₃ IP, four hits, two runs, six strikeouts and three walks on the day. It wasn’t spectacular, but considering how Wright’s season would end up going, it was a masterpiece in comparison to how everything else went for him in 2023. Perhaps Kansas City had this in mind when they traded for him this offseason?

Either way, it’ll be a while until these two teams square off against each other again. The Royals will come visit the Braves in Cobb County in the final series of the regular season.