Angels’ Jerry Dipoto won’t copy Royals’ blueprint

It wasn’t just shrewd management in the front office and on the field that enabled Tampa Bay to overcome its small-market limitations to win two American League East titles and two wild-card berths from 2008 to 2013.

“Part of our success is we came around at the right time, when baseball was putting the kibosh on steroid and amphetamine use,” said Joe Maddon, who recently opted out of his contract after nine seasons as Rays manager. “We were ahead of everybody else with the metrics, defensive shifts and data. We needed a level playing field when it came to human beings.”

Now along come the pitching-and-defense-oriented Kansas City Royals, who have outdone even the high-efficiency Rays in their march to the World Series. The Royals trail the San Francisco Giants, 3-2, and play host to Game 6 on Tuesday night.

Not only have the mid-market Royals thrived in an era of declining offense, using superior speed and consistent contact to extract more from a lineup that ranked last in the AL in home runs and walks, they’ve tailored their team to their home park.

Kauffman Stadium, with its expansive outfield, has 2.63 acres of fair territory, the largest of any AL stadium, according to a Business Insider survey. Angel Stadium, with 2.55 acres of fair territory, is the second-largest in the league.

The Royals have baseball’s best defensive outfield with Lorenzo Cain in center, Alex Gordon in left and the sometimes-adventurous Nori Aoki in right, a trio that improves when speedy late-game replacement Jarrod Dyson pushes Cain to right.

Kansas City outfielders had a major league-best 46 defensive runs saved this season, according to Fangraphs.

Boosting those run-prevention efforts is a solid rotation and a lockdown bullpen that features three closer-caliber right-handers in Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland.

The Royals’ run-and-gun blueprint would seem a sound one to follow for the Angels, who also play in a pitcher-friendly park and don’t have much to show for a splurge-for-sluggers approach that has netted Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton for $365 million but no playoff victories since 2009.

But when asked whether Kansas City’s success, which included a three-game division series sweep of the AL West-champion Angels, would prompt him to reconsider how he constructs future teams, Angels General Manager Jerry Dipoto said, in a nutshell: not at all.

“We’d like to be as young, athletic and versatile as we can be … and we’ll continue to look for impact athletic players,” Dipoto said. “But we just won 98 games, we led the league in runs scored and put together probably the best pitching staff we’ve had in a number of years. We’re not necessarily looking to re-invent the wheel. We like the model we have.”

Though Angels center fielder Mike Trout does not rate as highly as Cain and Baltimore’s Adam Jones, he has the speed to cover plenty of ground. Kole Calhoun was selected as a Gold Glove finalist in right field, and Hamilton is an adequate and potentially above-average defender in left.

If Angel Stadium is to affect personnel moves, Dipoto said, it would likely be on the pitching side, the team showing a higher tolerance for fly-ball pitchers such as Jered Weaver, Jason Vargas and, yes, even Joe Blanton.

“The square footage in our outfield is part of the reason we feel a little more comfortable going with a fly-ball pitcher over a ground-ball guy,” Dipoto said. “Sometimes they turn out to be really solid performers like Weaver, sometimes it doesn’t go as well. That’s not going to hurt us as long as we have outfielders who can go catch it, and they generally do.”

The Royals have been applauded for manufacturing runs in these lean offensive times, in which AL hitters combined for a .253 average, .316 on-base percentage and .390 slugging percentage in 2014, the lowest average and OBP marks since 1972 and the lowest slugging mark since 1992.

There were 2,161 home runs in the AL this season, a significant drop from the 2,504 in 2013 and the all-time high of 2,742 in 1996.

An expanding strike zone — studies show umpires are calling far more knee-high strikes — and better pitching have pushed strikeouts to an average of 7.54 per game in 2013 and 7.51 this season, the highest two marks in league history.

The Royals ranked last in the AL in home runs (95) and walks (380), but they had the fewest strikeouts (985) and most stolen bases (153), which helped them finish seventh in runs (651).

But that’s not about to move Dipoto to infuse more speed in the lineup or pursue a pinch-running specialist such as Royals blazer Terrance Gore.

Much of Kansas City’s success in October can be attributed to the randomness of playoff baseball — the Royals got hot at the right time — their stout bullpen and a sudden surge in power.

“The Royals look more electric than everyone else because they have three guys who are like roadrunners on base,” Dipoto said. “It’s fun to watch, but I don’t think there will be a ton of copycatting, trying to build teams that are slightly south on the hitting side, who don’t walk at all and don’t hit home runs. It’s going to be very hard for a team like that to sustain unless they find ways to score.”

The eight Angels regulars — Trout, Pujols, Howie Kendrick, Calhoun, Erick Aybar, Chris Iannetta, David Freese and Hamilton — all produced slash lines at or above the league average in 2014. The Angels have superior speed in Trout and Aybar and strong athleticism in Kendrick and Calhoun.

They got hot in July and ran away with the division title. They just need to play better in October.

“If you pin that many guys together who can keep a lineup moving, you’re going to be productive,” Dipoto said. “We’re not as athletic as we’d like to be, but I wouldn’t look at players like Aybar, Kendrick, Trout and Calhoun and say this is a non-athletic team. We’re not as fast on the bases as the Royals, but we find other ways to do things.”