What They Need - Kansas City Royals: Learn how to take a walk

Look we all know that the Royals aren’t that good this year, just as they haven’t been good for about 20 years now. But the Royals are not without some talented players. They have a pretty nice rotation, headed by Gil Meche, Zack Greinke, and Brian Bannister, they have some nifty arms in the bullpen such as Joakim Soria, Ron Mahay, and Leo Nunez, and they have two future star hitters in the lineup in Alex Gordon and Billy Butler.

But it is hard to see how the Royals can ever be very good unless they learn how to take more walks. Currently, the Royals are last in the entire major leagues with 145 walks, and they recently had a string of 38 consective innings, in other words, more than 4 games and nearly 200 plate appearances, without a single Kansas City Royal drawing a walk.

While it is true that in recent years the Angels have proven that you don’t necessarily need to draw a lot of walks to have an effective offense, not drawing walks means you really have to have a very high team batting average, and you also have to run the bases very effectively and efficiently to make the most of the fewer runners that you have. These are two things the Angels do very well, but the Royals would be well advised to try to include the ability to take walks as part of the organization’s hitting philosophy.

Otherwise they are just not going to win many games.

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