It hasn't even been two full calendar years since the Kansas City Royals won their first World Series title in 30 years, but it sure does feel like a long time ago right now.
Manager Ned Yost watched his club play to an 81-81 record in 2016 and miss the playoffs, but instead of tearing everything down and starting from scratch, the front office decided to try and compete this year with players like Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, Lorenzo Cain and Alcides Escobar all on the verge of free agency.
The results so far? Well, they haven't been stellar, and a lot of it has to do with a struggling offense.
Another scary Royals tidbit: They're hitting .199 as a team. Last team with an AVG under the Mendoza Line in April: 2003 Tigers - lost 119!
— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) April 25, 2017
It's hard to win baseball games when you can't put runs up on the board, that's for sure. They've also helped bail out the Toronto Blue Jays from holding down the last spot in our weekly power rankings, all while watching their playoff odds sink from 11.3% to just 5.9% at the moment, per our models.
Who else has seen their stock rise or fall over the last week?
Unlike some other power rankings around the interwebs, ours here at numberFire aren't influenced by hype or the latest narratives. We put faith into our algorithms and use nERD to see which team is the best, which is a metric that represents runs scored above or below a league-average team per game.
Our rankings will include each team's nERD, their current record and playoff odds, along with how much their spot has changed over the past seven days.