Royals offense lacks discipline at plate

How bad has the Royals’ offense been?

Well, so far, Kansas City is scoring 3.28 runs per game. That’s 72.5 percent of the league average. By that measure over a full season, the Royals would be the worst offensive team in the American League in the era since the franchise came into existence.

Now would be a good time to check out the accompanying chart. It’s like a who’s who of the worst American League teams of the last 30 years.

The offense hasn’t been good in any area, but the most-discussed symptom of the Royals’ anemia is the team’s collective lack of plate discipline. In general, teams have to buy plate discipline or they have to develop it. The Royals have chosen not to do the former and haven’t been very good at the latter.

When the Royals signed José Guillen, they got a player who has struck out three times for every walk he has drawn in his career. This season, Guillen is on pace to strike out 156 times and draw 17 walks.

It would be one thing if Guillen were being added to the middle of a lineup full of patient hitters. That’s a mix that can work. But the Royals were next to last in the AL last season in both walks and on-base percentage, and most of those players are back this season.

If you want an offense built around plate discipline, it has to be an organizational mandate. Consider the A’s, who have minimum walk-rate requirements for developing hitters at the lower levels of their organization.

The Royals actually have a polar opposite development philosophy. Dayton Moore has said that he believes a player needs to swing the bat to learn the strike zone. As the player learns which pitches he can’t hit, he’ll lay off those pitches and the walks will increase. That’s the theory anyway.

Let’s take a trip around the diamond.

Ross Gload and Mark Grudzielanek are high-contact, low-walk guys who need a high batting average to justify their place in the lineup. Tony Peña is starting to make people cite Angel Berroa’s numbers in Omaha. That’s frightening. John Buck is fairly patient but is so inconsistent at making contact that he’s unlikely to post a decent on-base percentage. Miguel Olivo is a wild swinger who struck out 123 times last season and drew only 14 walks. We’ve covered Guillen. Joey Gathright has drawn one walk this season.

The Royals do have some players with a semblance of patience. There just aren’t enough of them.

David DeJesus, Mark Teahen and Alex Gordon are all relatively patient hitters. However, the latter pair tend to expand the strike zone when ahead in the count. The average hitter swings at 7 percent of 3-0 pitches. These three check in with career averages of zero, 12 and 23 percent, respectively, according to baseball-reference.com. Teahen and Gordon could take a few lessons from DeJesus. Billy Butler is at 24 percent. Guillen’s figure is 16 percent.

Here’s another pitch-count scenario when the Royals have been too aggressive: KC has swung at the first pitch in 14.8 percent of their plate appearances. That’s 3 percent higher than the AL average.

With the way things are going for KC offensively, Trey Hillman should start flashing the take sign more often if, for no other reason, to get his point across. He could go all Norman Dale on his hitters: “How many pitches are we going to see before we swing the bat? HOW MANY?”

As it is, Hillman will find that it’s going to be a while before his encouraging predilection for on-base percentage is satisfied. He just doesn’t have patient hitters with which to work. That’s not to say the team can’t do a better job of laying off bad pitches. But this group simply is not going to be an above-average on-base team.

To reach Bradford Doolittle, send e-mail to bdoolittle@kcstar.com