The Kansas City Royals went from riding the high of a winning week against division rivals last week, to falling to the low of losing four straight at the hands of AL Central rivals, following a sweep from the Chicago White Sox on Thursday to start their six-game road trip. It’s not the first time the Royals have fallen victim to a losing streak this season, but at 19-25 in the middle of May, lengthier losing streaks seem to weigh much heavier.
Kansas City went from holding an AL Wild Card spot and sitting just 1.5 games back of the Cleveland Guardians for top in the AL Central on May 9, to now sitting six games below .500, 2.5 games out of a Wild Card spot and 4.5 games back of top spot in the Central. At only 44 games in, there’s still time to turn things around. However, with some teams reportedly already putting a deadline on getting back in the playoff race, such as the Mets and their June 1 deadline, the Royals season could be decided sooner than some want to admit.
This is why postgame comments like Bobby Witt Jr.’s on Thursday seem somewhat empty and not grasping the weight of their record compared to where they’re at in an already mature state of the schedule.
“We can’t let these series happen,” shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. said to MLB.com’s Anne Rogers. “I believe we’re the better team. We’ve got to go out there and show it.”
“Just how sometimes we go through spurts of really good baseball and – not bad baseball – but it’s just not where we are or should be,” Witt said to Rogers. “It’s not the type of team that we are.”
Mid-may is here and the Royals simply haven’t looked like a playoff contender
The problem is, Witt and the Royals may not want to admit it, but this is the team they’ve been more often than not this season. At six game under .500. At 6-15 away from home, the Royals continue to be the worst team in baseball when it comes to playing on the road.
After leaving runners in scoring position to end the fifth inning at a crucial spot in trying to get back into a 6-1 ball game, Kansas City remains one of the worst teams in MLB with runners in scoring position. Their 84 wRC+ places them dead last, their .666 OPS sits 29th and their .234 AVG ranks 25th.
Then, their offense in general, while it’s taken strides of improvement over recent weeks after a 7-15 start to the season, it still sits below average with a 96 wRC+ and features multiple floundering key regulars such as Salvador Perez and his 54 wRC+ and Vinnie Pasquantino and his 74 wRC+. And all in all, four of the starting nine positions sit below the league average .708 OPS this season in first and second base, left field and designated hitter, and their center field production sits just one point above it at .709.
With an offense like this, no matter how good their pitching staff looks, the struggle to win ball games will always be present. And when the starting rotation stumbles like they have in recent days, as Anne Rogers pointed out on X after Thursday’s loss – the Royals have had just one quality start in their last eight games – then there’s even less hope to get into the win column.
Again, never say never, but performances like what we saw in this series against the White Sox only strengthens the argument that perhaps the season is getting away from the Royals. They’re going to need to do more than play better. In many ways, they need to undergo a complete 180-degree shift.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source kingsofkauffman.com ’
