I think the best way to show what I'm thinking about the Royals is to actually post a couple probability distributions, where each box is 2.5%. This has both how I felt about the team before the 2013 season began, and how I feel now about 2014.
I didn't calculate anything, this is just how likely I think each win total roughly is based on my gut feel. (I could break it up more finely to smooth it out and also get the edge cases beyond the 95% interval, but I wanted to keep it simple)
Last year I picked 86, and thats where they hit. I believed there was some upside maybe to 90 or so, but I also felt that if things went bad, it could go drastically bad.
This year I think the range is narrower, its a better team and the upside is a little better (though I'm just not seeing 98+ even if everything goes right), but I think the floor is now a lot higher. This also means that a better team on paper could easily do worse than the 2013 squad just due to luck and we all know that, but this is how I'd quantify it.