KC hit parade

Last night, the Royals went to Pound Town and laid wood all over Progressive Field in Cleveland. They had 11 runs and 18 hits, giving them 216 hits on the season, which leads all of baseball. For the second straight night, 8 of the 9 Royals players got at least one hit. Yesterday, I pointed out some individual performances driving the Royals’ success, but today, I thought I would highlight the team as a whole. I wanted to take a closer look at some of the team's hitting stats so far in this young season and see what might be interesting:

The Royals average the most hits per game, by almost one full hit over the next closest team, and they average 3.5 more hits per game than the Phillies, who average the least. That is incredible. The chart below shows some of the best and worst hitting teams, along with the league averages:

The Royals have the highest Batted Balls in Play (BABIP) in the MLB (.341), which is a measure of the batting average of all at-bats minus strikeouts and home runs, since a ball is not in play during those. What this means in reality is that they are hitting the ball hard, resulting in more hits. 

The Royals have 9 players who have at least 10 hits, and the Padres have 8, Rockies have 8, Orioles have 10, Tigers have 9, White Sox have 7, Angels have 7, Rangers have 6, and Phillies have 7. 

The Royals have 65 extra base hits, meaning they are not solely relying on singles and sacrifices to advance runners like they have in the past. 

To go along with those hits, the Royals have scored 106 runs, which is the fourth most in the MLB, and more than every team in the National League. Of those 106 runs, 99 were batted in, which is also the fourth most in the MLB. I made another chart of the runs in the MLB for a closer look at some teams, as well as the league averages:

The Royals have a run differential of 40, which is by far the best in baseball. St. Louis is second with a run differential of 28.

The Royals still have the fewest strikeouts in baseball (110), which is 17 fewer than the next closest team, (ATL). It is also a full 4 fewer strikeouts per game than the league leader (HOU).  

Since the Tigers lost to the Twins last night (thanks Minnesota!), the Royals are back in first place. Even better, the Royals just defeated the Indians' two best pitchers. Hopefully the Royals continue their winning ways into the weekend’s series against the Tigers. Saturday night's Royals-Tigers matchup is certainly more important to me than the Mayweather-Pacquaio fight.