The Royals And Indians

These two teams are not good.

Yes, I know they have a combined 21-9 record. And I know that the Royals are the best hitting team in baseball and the Indians are 3rd (the Sox are 2nd). Oh yeah, and the Indians are 4th in the AL in pitching, Royals 6th.

But let's look at how they are doing this.

I'll start with Cleveland.

Justin Masterson and Josh Tomlin are a combined 6-0 with ERA's of 1.33 and 2.75. Closer Chris Perez has 5 saves in 5 opps and has allowed only 2 hits in 7.1 IP. Asdrubal Cabrera and Travis Hafner have 4 HR's a piece. And, Orlando Cabrera has 11 RBI.

Great start to the season for all of them. But if you project these numbers over 162 games, every single number I just posted is at least 30% better than any of their BEST year in the bigs.

Now to the Royals.

Wilson Betemit, Alex Gordon, Billy Butler, and Jeff Francoeur are all hitting better than .325. Only Billy Butler has ever had a season over .305 and Gordon and Francoeur have never eclipsed .300.

The Royals have 6 pitchers with a WHIP of 1.11 or lower. 2 of these are under 1.00. But the fact that 4 of the 6 are 1st or 2nd year pitchers with no more than 60 IP under their belt, would lead the normal prognosticator to expect the league to catch up, and those numbers to balloon in the near future.

I haven't even mentioned yet that Jeff Francis and Bruce Chen have ERA's at 3.00 or lower. Chen's career ERA is 4.59 and Francis' is 4.72.

Sure, both of these teams have had solid starts to the year. And yeah, they are both playing great ball right now. But I would still be willing to bet that neither makes it to 75 wins. And I would not find it to be a long shot bet to say that 1 doesn't even make it to 70.

The Twins are 5-10 and are hitting .235 as a team.

Things will change. Believe me... things WILL change.