Is the Royals Defense really Bad?

by John Viril—One of the more interesting questions regarding the Kansas City Royals this winter was their defense. As I wrote about earlier, their poor defensive metrics did not match up with apparent fielding abilities of their individual players. Taking a quick glance at Baseball Prospectus’ Defensive Efficiency metric, we see the Royals defense is again rated below average through their first nine games (19th). What’s the deal? Well, it’s only nine games—which is about 6% of the season. Aside from that caveat, the Royals defense no longer has the excuse of limited games from  standouts like C Salvador Perez and CF Lorenzo Cain. In fact, the team has been completely healthy through the first nine games. We can’t blame sabermetric whipping-boy Yunieski Betancourt—who disappeared into the aether last season. During the winter I explored the possibility that the Royals poor defensive ranking was due to terrible starting pitching. The Royals defense can no longer make that claim, sin...