The Kansas City Royals have been a very interesting sports team to root for. On one hand, they\u2019ve had a lot of great postseason moments. The franchise has two World Series wins\u2013as much or more than 15 other franchises\u2013and is one of very few teams in recent memory to boast back-to-back league championships victories.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
On the other hand, the Royals have often been truly awful. The team has lost 90 or more games 14 times since the turn of the millennium, with seven of those seasons at more than 100 losses. That\u2019s a lot of losing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
But this year, the Royals have been a secret third thing: mediocre. The Royals have been above .500, below .500, and at .500 all season, and have settled into a playoff longshot at about one-in-eight odds. That\u2019s not great, but it\u2019s not zero, and there\u2019s still something to be said about relevance late into the season.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Fan reactions to this mediocre team with modest success has been\u2026bizarre. I know that sports fandom is illogical and that talking about sports online is an exercise in passion and as much venting as anything else. Still, the amount of folks who are talking about the team like they\u2019re the Colorado Rockies right now is way higher than you\u2019d think, and fans seem to be particularly emotional and shortsided.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
It seems to me that fans should be happier. Don\u2019t you think fans in one of those 14 90-loss campaigns would have killed to have a one-in-eight shot at making the playoffs in mid-August? But I can explain it, I think, with three reasons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
First, and biggest, is that Royals fans have had so little experience what a run-of-the-mill, mediocre team looks like that everyone is sort of shorcircuiting trying to comprehend what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
There\u2019s no official designation of what \u201cmediocre\u201d is, but I think I\u2019ve got a pretty good definition: a mediocre baseball team is a team that ends up between 78 and 84 games. In winning percentage, that\u2019s between .475 and .525. These are teams that generally don\u2019t sell at the trade deadline, still have some sort of chance at the playoffs in August, and have sustained flashes of talent throughout the year but don\u2019t make the playoffs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
This year marks the 31st Royals season since the 1994 strike. The \u201cmediocre\u201d range is very common, and on average, about a quarter of teams end up there every year. But if this year holds as a \u201cmediocre\u201d season, it would only be the sixth such season in those 31 years, and more poignantly, would only be the third since 2003.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Mediocre Royals teams since the \u201894 strike<\/h2>\n
\nYear<\/h3>\n<\/th>\nWins<\/h3>\n<\/th>\nLosses<\/h3>\n<\/th>\nWin%<\/h3>\n<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n\n2025<\/td>\n | 63<\/td>\n | 61<\/td>\n | 0.508<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | 2017<\/td>\n | 80<\/td>\n | 82<\/td>\n | 0.494<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | 2016<\/td>\n | 81<\/td>\n | 81<\/td>\n | 0.500<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | 2003<\/td>\n | 83<\/td>\n | 79<\/td>\n | 0.512<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | 2000<\/td>\n | 77<\/td>\n | 85<\/td>\n | 0.475<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | 1995<\/td>\n | 70<\/td>\n | 74<\/td>\n | 0.486<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n | \n The Royals just aren\u2019t in this position very often. Historically, their season has usually been over by Memorial Day. And when they\u2019ve been good, they\u2019ve been good enough that Royals fans haven\u2019t been too concerned that the Royals would miss the playoffs. So fans haven\u2019t been in this position. They don\u2019t know what to do with their hands. Can you blame them?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \n Second, I do think that there is a sort of Kansas City Chiefs effect here. No, not all Royals fans are Chiefs fans. But a lot of Royals fans are Chiefs fans, and the Chiefs have been nothing short of a dynasty with some of the best football players at their positions of all time. With the Chiefs, fans expect them to, at minimum, make it to the conference title game. I don\u2019t think that expectation slides over to baseball. But I do think those feelings can seep into baseball, especially during the period of time when the two seasons overlap.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \n Third, it seems to me that fans are just scared. For pretty much anybody born in and after the 1980s, rooting for the Royals has meant that success is fleeting and that losing is quick to return. The Royals have only posted three consecutive winning seasons on three occasions in the last 45 years (\u201879 through \u201882, \u201887 through \u201889, and \u201813 through \u201815). The Royals have gone through rebuild after rebuild. They\u2019ve been bad so often.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \n In other words, I think Royals fans are waiting for the other shoe to drop, because in their lifetimes, the other shoe has always dropped. For every 2003 comes a 2004, so to speak.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \n I want to be clear here that I\u2019m not telling fans to cease being critical or being positive or whatever it may be. You do you. All I\u2019m trying to do here is to explain a trend. Hopefully we\u2019ll all be more used to mediocre teams and good teams in a few years and we\u2019ll be able to calibrate our excitement levels to be a little more healthy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n |
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