Royals’ path to success isn’t easily duplicated

The sincerest form of flattery is upon the Royals.

Imitation, or at least teams employing some of the methods that shaped the Royals’ World Series-championship season, was inevitable. Copying from the champion is a time-honored sports tradition.

Not that following someone else’s plan is always possible or even recommended. For instance, copying the Golden State Warriors would require this first step:

1. Get a guy like Steph Curry …

Not going to happen. But NBA teams can and have employed a small-ball attack similar to the Warriors’.

Or how about blueprinting the Super Bowl-champion Denver Broncos? First, assemble the NFL’s best defense with a ferocious pass rush.

On paper, perfect. In practice? Another Von Miller in his prime isn’t there for the taking, or drafting.

The Royals are baseball’s current study, and they don’t have a position player who is considered the game’s best, like Curry. Nor does concentrating on one side of the attack — offense (hitting) or defense (pitching, fielding) — like the Broncos work for the Royals, although they’ve been very good at both during consecutive World Series appearances.

What has worked in Kansas City, and makes sense for any team considering its direction, is the Royals’ commitment to an approach that reflects their environment, from ballpark to market and payroll. And a willingness to adjust.

For example, the Royals have put together a superior bullpen that has allowed starters no more than three trips through the lineup. Relievers come cheaper than top-line free-agent starters, although the Royals opened the vault this offseason for Ian Kennedy.

The Royals didn’t create their dominant pen in a laboratory. The club took the live arms of former starters Wade Davis, Kelvin Herrera and Luke Hochevar, turned them into relievers and maximized their abilities.

On offense, they have scoffed at the idea of deep counts, preferring a free-swinging approach that favors putting the ball in play and pressure on the defense rather than piling up strikeout totals.

Winning a championship draws admirers, and the Royals have their share.

“The way Kansas City has constructed the club is phenomenal,” Angels general manager Billy Eppler said during spring training. “And I like their brand of baseball.”

Eppler spent the previous 11 seasons with the Yankees and became a top assistant to general manager Brian Cashman. The Yankees put together 23 consecutive winning seasons and reached the playoffs 18 times during that stretch largely thanks to power and payroll, qualities that don’t fit the Royals’ plan.

“In a different environment, maybe you want seven or eight guys in the lineup that can put 20 in the seats because of the ballpark,” Eppler said. “That doesn’t work everywhere.”

It never has in Kansas City. Seven or eight in a lineup who can hit 20 home runs? Only 10 times has a Royals player hit as many as 30 home runs in a season, none more than Steve Balboni’s relatively modest 36 in 1985.

Kauffman Stadium factors into the Royals’ way.

The spacious ballpark has influenced Royals’ rosters since the decision was made to return the dimensions to their original 387 feet in the power alleys and 410 to center in 2004.

Speed and athleticism are musts in the outfield, the largest among major-league parks in square footage, and left fielder Alex Gordon, center fielder Lorenzo Cain and right fielders Jarrod Dyson, who will open the season on the disabled list, and Paulo Orlando all fit the bill.

Covering gaps and getting to the warning track to flag down fly balls that would be over the wall in other ballparks has served the Royals well.

Rusty Kuntz, the Royals' sage of spring training 

It also means the Royals don’t seek expensive bashers, often outfielders, in the free-agent market. Free swinging and contact hitting work just fine for the Royals. Recall the approach of leadoff man Alcides Escobar in last year’s postseason, when he swung at the first pitch in his first plate appearance and wound up hitting a team-best .329 for the postseason, capturing the American League Championship Series MVP.

Few baseball metrics approve of the approach. Royals hitters had the fewest strikeouts in baseball, but the team also ranked 29th in walks.

“Before we started going to the playoffs, I kept hearing, ‘Why don’t you take more walks?’” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “Now, people ask me about why our approach works like it does.”

It may be as simple as this: Players prefer swinging to not swinging. But they also prefer home runs above all, and that’s just not going to be the Royals’ modus operandi in Kauffman Stadium.

Not that it’s wrong to covet power and forgive whiffs. The top two homer-hitting clubs last season were the Blue Jays and Astros, playoff teams both. The Dodgers, also a playoff team, led the National League.

The Cubs, a playoff team as well, and Astros topped baseball in strikeouts.

The Royals were 24th in home runs and struck out 130 fewer times than the 29th-ranked team, and only one team took fewer walks. The top four base-on-balls teams made the playoffs.

But the Royals were seventh in runs scored.

“That’s really all that matters,” Eppler said. “You can get it done by putting the ball in the seats. You can have high on-base guys in front of them that can get you a crooked number on the scoreboard.

“But you can also do it by having high-contact guys who can run and do different things. Hit and run and play the situational game. There’s not a right or a wrong answer, just what works for you.”

What has worked for the Royals on the defensive side is an adequate starting rotation and lights-out bullpen, supported by three Gold Glovers in each of the last three seasons and others who could have been.

Royals starters ranked 22th in ERA (4.34). Their relievers ranked second (2.72) and had the game’s lowest opponents’ batting average (.214).

In this way, the Royals resembled the team that defeated them in the 2014 World Series, the Giants. That year, San Francisco’s starters ranked 16th in ERA and its bullpen ranked fifth, strange as that seems with starter Madison Bumgarner dominating the 2014 Series.

Also, in their World Series triumphs of 2012 and 2014, the Giants were below the league average in home runs, finishing dead last in 2012.

“The game is dynamic, the ways to build a team are dynamic,” said Giants general manager Bobby Evans. “There are things to be learned every day and different ways to digest and utilize that information. But we’ve certainly won (with) pitching, and a common denominator to our championships is a good defense behind it.”

The Royals’ success doesn’t occur without a critical concept that is unlikely to work in other markets, especially larger ones with higher team payrolls. The Royals have practiced patience and a commitment to their younger players and their growing pains. This was especially difficult for a fan base that experienced just one winning season between 1994 and 2013.

Gordon arrived in the majors with great fanfare in 2007, but four seasons later his future was in doubt as he shifted from third base to left field.

Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, Escobar and others have benefited from the organization’s willingness to live with their mistakes because it trusted the judgment of those who scouted and acquired them.

Art Stewart, in his 47th year with Royals, describes the toughest job in baseball: scouting 

General manager Dayton Moore was hired by owner David Glass in 2006. The team didn’t turn a winning record until 2013. Could that much time elapse with the Yankees or Dodgers or most other organizations?

Long-range goals guided the Royals’ construction, and now they are being used to shape the future. And here the team has a model of its own.

The Royals, for good reason, have looked toward the Atlanta Braves of a quarter-century ago. From laughingstocks, with three straight last-place finishes during 1988-90, to division champions by 1991, the Braves began one of the most dominant streaks in the game’s history with 14 straight division titles in non-strike years.

Who wouldn’t want to mimic that success?

The Braves kept together their core players, such as Chipper Jones, Javy Lopez, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine. And they collected key acquisitions like Fred McGriff and Greg Maddux along the way.

Yost was a member of the Braves’ staff during much of this stretch. Moore worked in Atlanta’s front office under John Schuerholz, who was the Royals’ general manager for the 1985 World Series team.

The Royals have already started shaping their future for beyond 2017, when contracts for several key players expire. Gordon, Salvador Perez and Yordano Ventura are signed for the long term.

Hosmer, Moustakas and Cain are among others who figure to be targeted for extensions.

The Royals could create their own version of what the Yankees called their “Core Four.” Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter came up with the Yankees in the early 1990s and made their major-league debuts in 1995. Posada, Rivera and Jeter played together for 17 years. Pettitte was there for all but three. The group helped the Yankees win five World Series.

Can the Royals get that far? It’s too early to tell, but two AL pennants and a World Series banner at least puts them on a path that is envied, if not copied.

This story was originally published April 1, 2016 at 8:16 PM with the headline "Royals’ path to success isn’t easily duplicated."