After beating the Guardians on Aug. 27, their third straight win over Cleveland, the Kansas City Royals moved into a first-place tie in the AL Central. They were in a playoff spot by 6 1/2 games, a very comfortable position with just over a month remaining in the season.
Since then, the Royals have had two different seven-game losing streaks and have gone 7-16 overall. They are now tied with the Tigers for the second and third wild-card spots with the Twins just one game back. While the Twins and Tigers both finish the season with six home games, the Royals are headed to the road to face the Nationals and Braves. Kansas City is 37-38 on the road so far this year.
Simply, while the Royals’ playoff odds were floating above 90% in late August and they even had a decent chance to take the AL Central, it’s now realistic that they’ll miss the postseason entirely. As things stand, SportsLine gives them a 60.5% chance of making the playoffs.
What went wrong? Well, first off, we have to credit the Tigers for their surge. Still, the Royals have been doing a lot of losing and only three of those came from the Tigers.
The Royals have a very good rotation, one capable of carrying them deep into the postseason. It’s been more average by ERA in the last 23 games, but this isn’t why they are losing. They aren’t getting help from the offense or bullpen.
The offense has been lackluster
As a team, the Royals are hitting .206/.273/.317 while averaging 3.04 runs per game since Aug. 27. They were one of the better offenses in baseball before that: .258/.314/.425 and an average of 4.88 runs a game.
The loss of Vinnie Pasquantino to injury has obviously had an impact here, but it hasn’t been just that. Among regulars, only Bobby Witt Jr. has been above average (by wRC+) in these last 23 games. Yuli Gurriel has been good but that’s in only 13 games. Otherwise, it’s a bunch of sub-par to even bad:
Witt has only been “good” or even “very good” instead of MVP-caliber, too, and that has had an impact. From June 30-Aug. 27, Witt hit .416/.467/.774 with 17 doubles, three triples, 15 homers, 41 RBI and 50 runs in 48 games. In the 23 games since, he’s hit .261/.340/.500 with six doubles, five homers, 14 RBI and 11 runs.
The point is, he needs to be the one carrying this offense with so many players not hitting and this just hasn’t been enough to compensate.
By no means am I blaming Witt. He’s one of the main reasons the Royals are in playoff position. He just either needs to go back to being off-the-charts ridiculous or else his teammates need to step up and contribute.
The bullpen has faltered
The bullpen has been a bit of an issue for a good portion of the season. After he was acquired at the trade deadline, Lucas Erceg became a big-time factor in helping to turn things around. In his first 11 outings with the Royals, he had a 0.00 ERA and 0.49 WHIP with 15 strikeouts against one walk in 12 1/3 innings. Again, that takes us through Aug. 27.
Since then? Erceg has a 7.45 ERA and 1.55 WHIP. He’s blown two saves and taken three losses.
The relief corps as a whole has seven bullpen losses, a 4.33 ERA and four blown saves while only locking down three saves in the last 23 games.
They have faced tough competition, but …
Sure, the Royals in this 23-game stretch have played against a team with a winning record 17 times. Three of those games were also against a 77-79 Giants team that plays in a very good division. Of course, the Royals were swept at home by the Giants and that shouldn’t happen with a playoff-caliber team.
But playoff teams are supposed to be able to beat good teams. They’re supposed to beat the bad teams, but that’s not going to rack up enough wins to get them to October. “We had a tough schedule” and “we lost to a playoff contender” aren’t valid excuses.
The Royals simply need to play better baseball. They’ll have six road games to fix themselves before what would be their first postseason appearance since winning the 2015 World Series.
If they don’t play better, they are in danger of an epic collapse, dwindling away overwhelmingly good playoff odds in just over a month.
