The narrow path to the playoffs

Much ado has been made about the Royals’ remaining strength of schedule – specifically about how weak it is. And it’s true, the Royals have one of the easiest remaining schedules. Of course, what that actually means in a league where every single team has looked like a bull terrier one week and a Jack Russell terrier the next is an open question. Just because the Royals get the Nationals and White Sox for the next six games doesn’t necessarily mean the Royals have nine games against bad opponents following the three against the Twins. The Royals weathered the Twins’ attempt at playing upstart for a weekend, but if the Nationals or White Sox decide to get frisky, the Royals could seem like they’re in a dire position unless they face the Guardians and Rangers in eight games later and sweep all eight games because those teams are in a ghost phase.

Following the Twins series, the Royals are 58-60. They’re four games back of the final wild card and 9.5 games back of the division. The division seemed completely out of reach weeks ago, but the Tigers finally began their American League-Mandated Inexplicable Tailspin, so now it’s just exceptionally likely out of reach. You all know I’m a huge fan of Stephen Suffron’s Path to 90 Wins series. Even I have to admit that it does seem like 90 wins are probably out of the picture. At this point, the Royals would have been expected to be at 64-54 at this point of the season if they were on that path. They clearly missed that mark, and badly enough that getting back to it is more than a pipe dream, it’s an utter fantasy.

But that mark isn’t the only mark. The Royals probably don’t need 90 wins to make the playoffs. That hasn’t been the benchmark since the playoffs were expanded to three Wild Card teams. Last year, the Royals and Tigers made it in with only 86 wins. That would probably be enough this year. With the way every AL team has looked both unbeatable and unplayable this year, the Royals might not even need that many. So first, I wanted to go through the remaining schedule and see what my best guess for the Royals’ final record would be. From there, we can figure out how much better they need to be than my estimates to make the playoffs.

Let’s go over some of the assumptions really quickly. First, you’ll notice I didn’t exactly break it down by series, but by opponent. I learned last year the pitfalls of attempting that, and I try to learn from my mistakes. I assume the Tigers are going to spin out for a while longer before righting their ship. I assume the Twins are going to completely fall off the table once the novelty of their new roster wanes. I have a hard time imagining the Royals winning the season series with a really tough Blue Jays team, even though they already took two from them in Toronto.

If the Royals win at the pace I’ve laid out, they would finish the season 25-16. That would make their final record 83-79. That might be enough to squeak into the playoffs, but they could really improve their chances by winning those four-game sets against the Guardians and Rangers. Not only would 85 wins be a better number to try and reach the playoffs with, but those would constitute extra wins against the opponents they are currently battling for that final Wild Card spot. But really, you can find room for them to take an extra game in a lot of places. Maybe they could go 5-1 against the White Sox. Or maybe they can sweep the Athletics in the final series of the season when their guys all just want to be done with it. A sweep of the Nationals and/or Angels doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility either.

Even though they lost an incredibly frustrating series in Minnesota, the Royals aren’t out of this thing yet. And I spent enough years watching 100-loss teams that I’m going to keep looking for happier results until they get too small to see with a microscope.

Credit to the manager and coaches

The Royals wouldn’t be in this spot without the guys behind the scenes doing amazing work. Ryan Bergert came in and looks like a stud after promising but not exceptional results in San Diego. And not only might he not be in a playoff rotation because of how many “aces” the Royals have, but he might not even be in the rotation by the end of the regular season because Cole Ragans and Michael Lorenzen could come back healthy and be even better. Manager Matt Quatraro has done a fantastic job of mixing and matching his new players – Adam Frazier, Randal Grichuk, and Mike Yastrzemski – to get the absolute most out of them. They’ve simultaneously contributed and taken pressure off of other guys. John Rave is a much better fourth or fifth outfielder than he is a second outfielder. Moving Jonathan India out of the leadoff spot has given him a chance to finally rebound from what has been a very rough season for him. Maikel Garcia is still playing everyday but seems refreshed to not have to be the only guy carrying the team.

The hitting coaching staff took a lot of flak when the Royals weren’t hitting in June. I won’t say it was undeserved, but it seems clear now that while they were perhaps not a large enough part of the solution, but almost certainly weren’t the largest part of the problem either. The Royals were in a tailspin, and they got tilted. (Being tilted is a term that comes from Poker and means a player gets so frustrated that they become overly aggressive.) The hitting coaches didn’t cause that. Now that the hitters are out of tilt, you can see they’re having much better plate appearances on average, and it’s leading to generally better results. It’s clear that the coaches were advocating for that all along; they just weren’t able to get through to the players.

That said, I don’t think it was wrong for people to call for the removal of the hitting coaches. That kind of action could have been the shock necessary to get the players out of the tilt. Fortunately, the Royals found a different path by being patient and adding veteran hitters with good plate approaches – yes, even Adam Frazier.

I’ll still hope that the Royals make some moves to change some things up with the hitting coaching staff in the offseason to find someone or multiple someones who can help the guys get out of tilt faster, but hopefully we can all agree that the hitting coaches who were taking the blame for the awful April-June offense should also get the credit for the terrific July-August offense.