2009 MLB season in review: Kansas City Royals
The Kansas City Royals have only had one winning season since 1994, last year they rode a hot September streak to finish 75-87 and the thought was the Royals would step up and be a contender in 2009. Let’s face it they have the best pitcher in the American League in Zack Greinke, and actually spent the off season adding payroll instead of deleting it. However this is a team that has no depth, Greinke’s 16 wins was double the amount of every other pitcher on the Royals staff. If they want to be legit players in the American League Central, the worst division of baseball, they will need to add more pieces.
Their final record was 65-97, and that is particularly bad because of the state of their weak division. The Royals finished last in their division by 21.5 games, but they did spend 27 days in first place in May and April. In fact through the first week of May this team had a three game lead in their division. At one point they were seven games over .500, but finished the season 17 games under .500.
This is a team that just couldn’t play with any consistency. They were able to win six games in a row, while building their spring time three game lead, but they also lost ten games in a row through the midpoint of the summer. They scored 686 runs, but gave up 842. Their team batting average was .259 and the team ERA was 4.83.
In all 1,797,887 fans traveled to Kaufman Stadium to watch Royals home games. For their 80 homes games they averaged 22,473 fans and were able to sell 58.9% of their ticket inventory.
