SURPRISE, Ariz. | The Royals&#8217; pitching staff has never led the American League in strikeouts. That might not mean a whole lot to you. What does mean something is that until recently, the Royals seemed to believe that pitchers getting strikeouts was a bad thing.</p><p>Former Royals pitching coach Al Nipper: &#8220;We&#8217;ve got to teach our guys to induce contact.&#8221;</p><p>Former Royals manager Tony Muser: &#8220;Our pitchers can&#8217;t be afraid of contact.&#8221;</p><p>Former Royals manager Tony Pe&#241;a: &#8220;You got seven guys behind you; let them hit it.&#8221;</p><p>And so on. The Royals kept stressing contact, but getting contact really wasn&#8217;t a problem: Hitters made contact against the Royals season after season. For nine long years, from 1999 to 2007, the Royals never finished better than 12th in strikeouts. They finished dead last in the league three times. One of those years, Jimmy Gobble led the team with 80 strikeouts, and he was a middle reliever. Two of those years, the Royals&#8217; leading strikeout guy was Darrell May, a lefty whom you might best remember for his complaint that he did not get enough no-decisions.</p><p>You could argue that the Royals back then simply could not find or afford big strikeout pitchers, and that&#8217;s probably true. But it&#8217;s also true that the Royals&#8217; organization did not emphasize strikeouts. Looking back on those tough years, it&#8217;s kind of hard to see what the Royals emphasized.</p><p>That&#8217;s the thing about bad baseball teams: They drift and hope. Those Royals pitchers did not strike out batters, but they also did not have pinpoint control. The batters did not hit with power, but they also did not get on base. The Royals did not play good defense, but they also did not have great speed.</p><p>This may sound obvious, but it&#8217;s something baseball teams miss all the time: You cannot be a winning baseball team unless you do some things better than other teams.</p><p>And so here&#8217;s something exciting about this Royals team: The Royals should be really good at something. The pitchers should get a lot of strikeouts. This is the starting point for Kansas City baseball in 2009. The Royals&#8217; staff last year set a team record with 1,085 strikeouts. That was only good for seventh in the American League, a big jump from the year before.</p><p>And there are reasons to believe that they will break that record this year. The reasons start with the Royals&#8217; top two starters, Gil Meche and Zack Greinke. They each struck out 183 batters last year (tied for fifth in the American League), and both seem a good bet for even more strikeouts this year.</p><p>Meche is 30 years old, and he seems to have figured out how to harness his stuff and finish off batters once he gets two strikes.</p><p>&#8220;I have a lot more confidence,&#8221; he says. &#8220;I have four pitches, and I feel like I can get a strikeout with any of them at any time.&#8221;</p><p>Greinke is just 25, and with his mid-90s fastball, his outstanding secondary pitches and the peace of mind that comes with a big-money contract, he seems ready to become one of the elite pitchers in baseball. Greinke struck out 127 batters in his last 121 innings last year. The Royals have never had a starting pitcher strike out a batter an inning for a full season.</p><p>Then there&#8217;s the Royals&#8217; bullpen. Royals general manager Dayton Moore has put together, perhaps, the most overpowering bullpen in the league and by overpowering, we are talking strikeouts.</p><p>Moore signed Juan Cruz, who throws a mid-90s fastball and last year struck out 71 batters in 51 2/3 innings. He signed Kyle Farnsworth, who throws in the high-90s and has struck out more than a batter per inning for his entire career. The Royals already have Robinson Tejeda, another power pitcher who struck out 41 batters in 39 innings and allowed hitters a puny .171 batting average.