It’s going to be impossible for other teams to try and emulate the Royals

It took nine seasons, but Dayton Moore’s “process” finally worked. The Kansas City Royals have won the 2015 World Series.

[Get your Royals World Series Champions gear now]

Early in his tenure, Moore told fans to “trust the process,” referring to the way in which he was building the team. It took years, but eventually that process produced a championship.

That means, in the coming days, weeks and months, there will be a number of articles suggesting other teams should emulate the Royals. This isn’t a new development, these types of pieces always get published shortly after a team wins a World Series. Just ask Theo Epstein.

“The only thing I know for sure,” Cubs president Theo Epstein said Monday, “is that whatever team wins the World Series, their particular style of play will be completely en vogue and trumpeted from the rooftops by the media all offseason — and in front offices — as the way to win.”

What’s particularly interesting about the Royals is that their style of play is extremely unique, especially in today’s game.

(Getty Images) Most teams are built on power and patience at the plate. You want home run hitters who can get on base. And if they can’t do both of those things, they should be able to do at least one. If they happened to strike out a lot but provide one of those skills, that’s absolutely fine. Strikeouts are just another out, mostly. No different than a fly out to left, or a ground out to third.

On the mound, you want strikeouts. You want that ace who is going to punch out nearly a batter per inning. Pitchers are throwing harder than ever, and matchups in the bullpen are stressed more now than in the past. Strikeout rates, among both hitters and pitchers, are at an all-time high.

The Royals, as constructed, are pretty much built to counter all of that. At the plate, the team eschewed power and patience in favor of a contact-oriented approach. The Royals ranked 24th in home runs during the regular season and had a 6.3 percent walk rate, which tied for dead last.

The team’s 15.9 percent strikeout rate, however, ranked first in the league. This aided them in a number of ways. The Royals not only made contact better than every other team, but they weren’t as susceptible to dominant pitching due to their approach. That is definitely important in the playoffs, when teams have to face a murderer’s row of Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, Jake Arrieta, Jon Lester, Matt Harvey, Noah Syndergaard and Jacob deGrom in consecutive games.

The Royals did plenty of other things well, of course. They mostly built through the draft, had a strong defense and assembled a lights out bullpen. We know building through the draft is beneficial at this point, and we’ve already seen articles on teams trying to build strong defenses or great bullpens on the cheap.

[Brown: Matt Harvey decision haunts Mets after World Series collapse]

For that reason, it’s the contact-oriented approach that stands out for Kansas City. When writers draw up their think pieces on whether other teams should build like the Royals, it will be the team’s approach at the plate that gets mentioned the most.

It doesn’t seem like a bad strategy based on many of the reasons we’ve already outlined. And though the Royals didn’t hit a ton of home runs, and weren’t a strong on-base team, they still ranked seventh in the league with 724 runs scored. That contact-oriented approach worked.

Problem is, the Royals were able to assemble these types of players on the cheap. Many of the team’s prominent players were drafted by Kansas City, and are either arbitration-eligible, or signed cheap deals that buy out some of their arbitration years. Alex Gordon, Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Lorenzo Cain and Salvador Perez all fit in this category.

The Royals main free-agent adds were Kendrys Morales, a power hitter who doesn’t strike out as much as you might think, and Alex Rios. Morales was coming off a down year, and was seen as a buy-low candidate. It’s tough to justify the Rios deal, even after you adjust for some of his playoff heroics. During the season, the team brought in Ben Zobrist, another low-strikeout guy. That only cost them a few minor prospects.

The point is, the Royals didn’t have to go out and spend millions in free agency to get these guys. Even when they found guys they liked on the market, they didn’t have a pay a ton because contact hitting wasn’t necessarily a skill that was sought after.

After Kansas City’s success, that could change, and that doesn’t bode well for clubs trying to build the Royals way. Trying to get hitters who make better contact isn’t a bad thing, but when a club hands Daniel Murphy a $90 million deal, that’s a problem. If contact hitters, like Murphy, start to receive inflated contracts based on one team’s postseason run, that skill is no longer going to be undervalued.

(AP Photo) Speaking of the Royals’ postseason run, we have to acknowledge a few things here. This is not a knock against what the Royals were able to accomplish. They proved they were a fantastic team, and they deserved to win a championship.

With that said, we have to acknowledge how much luck played a role in the team’s numerous comebacks as they marched for a title. As Grant Brisbee of SBNation pointed out, the Royals won six games this postseason where they had a win probability of under 20 percent. That’s astounding.

You can attribute some of that to the team’s approach. Being able to make contact and string together hits may lead to more innings like we saw the Royals put together. There’s also some value in putting pressure on defenses and hoping you come away with some errors. The Royals did both of those things so well during the postseason.

But putting together ridiculous comebacks like this just isn’t sustainable. Luck, or devil magic, undoubtedly played a role in the team’s run. How else can you explain a strange hop leading Carlos Correa to misplay a ball at short, or Daniel Murphy missing an easy grounder? Without those things, the Royals may not win a World Series. Yes, their approach aided in those things happening, but the team was fortunate as well. That has to be recognized.

When you see a team dominate the way the Royals did over the last 15 games, it’s easy to try and push that stuff aside. A club utterly destroyed their opponents in dramatic fashion game after game. You want to believe there’s a bigger reason for that. You want to believe that your team can do the same thing if they build themselves like the Royals.

That’s just unlikely. If teams truly attempt to emulate the Royals, contact hitters will start being valued at a premium. And once teams start handing out huge contracts to those players, any type of edge will be lost. On top of that, the Royals needed a lot of devil magic in order to come away with a title.

[Look: Paul Rudd celebrated with the Royals]

In an alternate world, the Royals didn’t catch as many breaks and we’re here writing about how power and patience still dominate the game after the Houston Astros or Toronto Blue Jays win the title. Or we’re pondering whether teams ought to build through their rotation if the New York Mets pulled things off.

There are a number of ways to build a great team. Now that the Royals have won a championship with a such a unique approach, people will suggest that’s the only way to win. That’s simply not true, and now that everyone knows the Royals’ secret, it’s going to be impossible to truly reproduce their essence.

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Chris Cwik is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Chris_Cwik

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