Royals' Starters Excelled With Runners In Scoring Position

I looked at the following 7 pitchers on the Royals. These guys were primarily starters and the vast majority of their innings were from starting. I found their weighted average of OPS allowed with none on and with RISP (weighted by PAs-maybe that is not quite right since SLG is TBs over ABs).

Chris Young
Danny Duffy
Edinson Volquez
Jason Vargas
Jeremy Guthrie
Johnny Cueto
Yordano Ventura

With none on, they allowed an OPS of .731. With RISP it was .691. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the team staff as a whole did .032 better with RISP (.668 vs. .700). So the starters had an even bigger edge. A comment was made at the Hardball Times that mabye that .032 differential existed because they brought in good relievers with RISP and their relievers were much better than their starters.

From 2010-14 for all of MLB, OPS with none on was .702 and with RISP it was .733. So normally it goes up with RISP yet the Royals’ starters managed to have it go way down. For the AL in 2015, OPS with none on was .702 and with RISP it was .746.

Here are the OPS allowed stats with none on

Chris Young	0.608
Danny Duffy	0.782
Edinson Volquez	0.720
Jason Vargas	0.609
Jeremy Guthrie	0.889
Johnny Cueto	0.844
Yordano Ventura	0.639

Now with RISP

Chris Young	0.643
Danny Duffy	0.728
Edinson Volquez	0.506
Jason Vargas	0.585
Jeremy Guthrie	0.851
Johnny Cueto	0.759
Yordano Ventura	0.755

How Might The 1906 Cubs Compare To The 1927 Yankees In OPS Differential?

The 1927 Yankees have the highest OPS differential since 1914. Their batters had an OPS of .872 while their pitching staff allowed .676. That gives them a differential of .196. See my post on The 25 Highest And Lowest Team OPS Differentials From 1914-2014.

Before 1914, we don't know SLG allowed by teams. The Cubs had an OPS of .667 and allowed an OBP of .280. With SLG unknown, we can't get OPS.

But I can estimate it using their AVG allowed (.207) and HR% allowed (.00244 ). I ran a regression using all the MLB teams from 1914-1919 with SLG allowed being dependent on AVG allowed and HR% allowed. Here is the equation

SLG = 2.497*HR% + 1.257*AVG + 0.00264

That predicts that the Cubs would allow .269 and given them an OPS allowed of .549. Then their differential would be .118, far below that of the 1927 Yankees.

Now the team that fell the farthest below their prediction for 1914-19 was the 1919 Giants (.012). That was equal to about 2 standard errors of the regression. Even if we lower the SLG allowed by the Cubs by .012, their OPS differential is .130, still far below that of the 1927 Yankees.