shinatoo wrote: ↑Wed May 22, 2024 2:27 pm
TheUrbanRoo wrote: ↑Wed May 22, 2024 12:48 pm
It's not the expense. It's really just people aren't fully bought in yet still, and all the sports fans still live in Chiefs gaga land now.
I mean the dude above on this very forum just said he knows they're on pace for 100 wins but thinks they'll only win 82.
82 wins was my pre season prediction and I'm sticking to it. Baseball is very streaky. 2014 we were on pace for close to 100 wins at the all star break and barely made the wild card with 89 wins.
Hasn't stopped me from going to games and I'll be thrilled if we get 100 wins. Will be the first team ever to go from 100 losses to 100 wins in one season.
The Royals were two games over .500 at the ASB in 2014, on pace for 82 or 83 wins. They actually fell back under .500 coming out of the break. It was a hot streak that got them up to 89 wins, not a cold streak that brought them down to that.
I do agree that it's way too premature to extrapolate the current pace to a final season win total, though. These Royals tied with Cleveland 1988 for the best fifty game start by a team coming off a 100 loss season, and that Cleveland team finished with only 78 wins. There is a lot to like about this team, not least of which being the wins they've already banked (they didn't win their 32nd game last year until July 30, in the middle of that wildly improbable seven game winning streak), but there are also some red flags. Sooner or later, both corner outfielders batting below the Mendoza line will catch up to them, and the large splits between batting with men on [.304/.366/.481/.848] vs. with the bases empty [.215/.272/.360/.632] will regress, but baseball
is streaky, like you said, so there's no telling whether that's going to start happening tomorrow or if they can ride it out all season long.
I want to be optimistic and call 82 wins too conservative, but I would be very (pleasantly) surprised to see this team reach 100 wins, despite their current pace. I think 82 wins could be too conservative because the pitching looks comparatively legit, even if there are question marks around the offense. I want to believe the pitching is strong enough -- and will remain strong enough -- to at least defend the cushion of games over .500 that they've already built up even if the offense regresses. If they went only .500 from here on out, that would put them at 87 or 88 wins, which would still be a dramatic improvement over last year (an improvement that I 100% did not believe was possible coming into the season, and I probably posted as much in this very thread). That would have won the division last year (probably won't this year unless Cleveland stumbles) and has been good enough to capture a wild card in some seasons. I don't really know what I think the final win total will be, but Fangraphs puts the Royals at 61.8% to make the playoffs in some capacity, which feels about right at this point in time.