Royals gain ground on Mariners despite brutal series loss

A day doesn’t seem to go by without discussing the Kansas City Royals current push for the postseason. Given how chaotic the AL Wild Card race has become, it’s become all consuming for Royals fans to constantly check the standings and opposing scoreboards to see whether or not the Royals have made up any ground.

Fortunately for the Royals faithful, they can say that even with a disappointing series loss to the Los Angeles Angels this week, they still managed to actually gain a bit of ground on the holders of the third and final Wild Card spot, the Seattle Mariners.

Royals manage to gain ground on Mariners despite embarrassing series loss to Angels

Losing two of three to the perennially disappointing Angels didn’t do the Royals any favors per se in their hunt for their second consecutive postseason. That being said, it did actually do any real damage either.

With four teams chasing down Seattle for that coveted final spot, the M’s allowed the field move closer to them after getting swept by the Tampa Bay Rays.

This means for the Royals, going 1-2 against Los Angeles actually puts them a game up on what they were entering the month, as they move to within 2.0 games back of Seattle rather than the 3.0 started off September with.

Now going 1-2 to start the week also brought some the rest of the field closer to Kansas City. The aforementioned Rays and their sweep of the Mariners and then winning their first of a four-game weekend set against the Cleveland Guardians on Thursday means they’ve catapulted themselves into a tie with the Royals at 2.0 game games back.

Elsewhere, the Royals are still 0.5 games behind Texas after the Rangers also went 1-2 against the Arizona Diamondbacks this week. Then there’s the Guardians, who sit 1.5 games back of the Royals after they went 1-2 against the Red Sox to start the week and then, as mentioned already, dropped their weekend opener to the Rays.

While it’s never bad to know where all of your competition sits, the only true team that matters to the Royals is Seattle.

The Mariners who’ve gone 6-14 in their last 20 have an easy matchup on paper against the 63-win Atlanta Braves, but the Braves still have plenty of star power despite their down year, so a late-season trip to Truist Park isn’t as easy as it may seem.

The Royals also have an easier matchup on paper, with a three-game home set slated to start Friday night against the Minnesota Twins. That being said, the Angels were supposed to be a winnable series and we all saw how that went.

For the Royals’ sake, they’ll hope to carry that momentum from their comeback victory on Thursday to fuel some better baseball this weekend to salvage an overall disappointing road trip so far.