What truly distinguishes the Kansas City Royals, positively?
Leaving aside their lights-out relief trio and their record-breaking postseason run, it's the contact-hitting and their running.
The Royals struck out only 985 times this season, which was the fewest in the majors. By a lot. In a Bill James Online article, Dave Fleming calculates the Royals' strikeouts relative to Major League Baseball average as .236 ... the highest figure in the majors. The Royals also finished atop this list in 2013 and '12, though with significantly lower figures. That .236 ranks fourth since 1994; the 2002 Angels top that list with .260 figure (and yes, American League teams have a huge advantage here, because their pitchers so rarely hit and strike out).
As Fleming also notes, the Royals also led the majors in steals. They were last in in the majors in homers and last in the American League in walks, but they were first in (fewest) strikeouts and stolen bases. And their relative difference in steals, just like their relative difference in strikeouts, was No. 1 in the majors both this season and last season.
And it's this combination of very few strikeouts and very many steals that sets the Royals apart. "While the 2014 Royals don’t have an uniquely low strikeout rate or a uniquely high stolen base total," Fleming writes, "the combinationof those two poles on the 2014 Royals is historic, at least in the twenty years of the Wild Card era... No team in the Wild Card era has managed to avoid strikeouts and steal bases to the degree that the 2014 Royals have. The closest team to them was last year’s version of the team, the 2013 Royals. We’re seeing the greatest contact/speed team of the Wild Card era."
Of course, we might see none of this in the World Series. The Royals might hit nine home runs and steal two bases, strike out a ton. But it's nice to know we're watching a unique sort of team.
