Anatomy of a revival: How the KC Royals went from 56 wins to MLB postseason berth
At his locker during spring training in Surprise, Arizona, Royals relief pitcher Will Smith pondered the nucleus of young players he perceived to be coming of age.
And he considered the infusion of veterans that general manager J.J. Picollo said Smith had “jump-started” into joining the team as free agents during a momentous few weeks in the offseason.
“I feel like we got almost a whole new team.” pitcher Brady Singer said in February.
Then Smith, 34 at the time, said something that seemed far-fetched about a team seeking to purge not merely a 106-loss season, but the drag of averaging 99.6 losses in the previous five full ones.
“Why not us?” Smith said. “We could surprise some people. We could do some stuff.”
Never mind that Smith came by the notion with a certain conviction after a 2023 season with the Texas Rangers in which he became the first player in MLB history to be part of three straight World Series winners with three different franchises.
Only two teams in major-league history (the 2017 Twins and 2020 Marlins), per Elias Sports, had shrugged off the albatross of a 100-or-more-loss season to make the postseason. And the Royals seemed a remote way from flipping any such switch.
So just, say, a 20-win improvement would have been a monumental step forward for the Royals — and a far more realistic hope.
But fanciful as it might have seemed then, and dubious as it might have looked just days ago, the Royals on Friday night made good on the stuff that dreams are made of despite their 3-0 loss in Atlanta.
With Minnesota falling to 82-78 after a 7-2 home loss to Baltimore later Friday, the Royals (85-75) clinched an American League Wild Card berth to secure their first playoff appearance since winning the 2015 World Series.
They hold a place in the postseason for just the third time since 1985.
Why not them, indeed?
A team that proved to be not just a figment of Smith’s imagination instead captured the imagination of playoff-parched fans.
Because, why not us, they have every reason to believe in the possible again. Monday marks the 10-year anniversary of the Royals’ epic AL Wild Card win over Oakland, a victory that launched an unprecedented decade at the Truman Sports Complex: The Royals went to back-to-back World Series and the Chiefs sprung to four Super Bowls in the last five seasons.
Just get in, those teams taught us, and anything can happen for a city where decades of Royals and Chiefs futility now is a distant memory.
This breakthrough perhaps was all the more exhilarating because of the exasperating and tantalizing last few weeks, during which the Royals suffered two seven-game losing streaks and lost one of their three most vital offensive players, Vinnie Pasquantino, to a broken thumb in a nauseating moment that included an injury to reliever Lucas Erceg.
Until they ended the second of those slogs on Tuesday in Washington, the season was in jeopardy of being defined simultaneously as an incredible turnaround and completely anticlimactic and unsavory.
Instead, it’s nothing but joy and a sense of rebirth and a fresh opportunity when the three-game Wild Card series begins Tuesday at either Houston or Baltimore.
And here’s how they made it this far.
‘Pulling on the same rope’
The Royals improbably got here because of a resurrected and dynamic starting rotation highlighted by Cole Ragans and free-agent signees Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha.
And because of Bobby Witt Jr. morphing into a superstar and 34-year-old Sal Perez being steeped in the fountain of youth — and now basking in a return to the postseason, a front-office aspiration for him, for the first time since he was named 2015 World Series MVP.
They made it this far because mid-season acquisition Erceg has blossomed into a staunch bullpen ace, the best of a previously volatile group that has stood tall in the last week.
And because of defense and base-running, and because — in about every one of their victories this season — a role player or three came through.
They flourished because Picollo and his staff did beautiful work, including with a $100 million offseason spending spree and key pickups at and after the trade deadline that make Picollo a prime candidate for MLB executive of the year.
They prevailed because owner John Sherman signed off on all that and a nearly $300 million long-term contract for Witt.
And because American League manager of the year contender Matt Quatraro and his staff stayed cool and calm and on track with their approach, even when you might have wanted to see something different.
Crucial to it all, they overcame steep odds because of how a core of youngsters meshed with a veteran group. Their clubhouse features 11 players on the current roster with postseason experience, and four more, including Smith, present but on the injured list.
“It’s a fairly complete team that believes in each other,” Picollo said in the Kauffman Stadium home dugout before a game a few weeks ago. “And when you gain confidence in guys around each other, pulling on the same rope, you can do pretty special things together.”
‘The more we win, the more close we become’
Just how far chemistry and culture can take a team is hard to measure. But when I asked Perez about that one August day in the Royals’ clubhouse, I barely got the words out of my mouth when he said, “100 percent.”
Like others, he talked about the meals on the road and joking around in the clubhouse as building blocks of what we see on the field, where he believes it doesn’t matter how good you are if you don’t play together.
“I really love these guys,” he said. “They’re part of my family.”
Veteran Paul DeJong, acquired at the trade deadline, also thought of the team’s personality as pivotal.
“I think winning creates the chemistry, but then having chemistry will create winning,” he told me in August. “So you kind of need both. One validates the other. …
“(And) the more we win, the more close we become. And the closer we become, the better chance we have to win. So it really is kind of a snowball effect.”
As he spoke, DeJong thought back to his time with the Cardinals, for whom he played in 14 postseason games, and the guidance of Brian Alazzawi, a former Navy SEAL who worked with the players. One of the points Alazzawi tried to convey was that in hard times it’s important to turn to teammates and be inspired by their presence and perseverance.
“And that can push you a little further,” DeJong said, “and you can get to achieve things that you didn’t really think were possible because of this larger group.”
That helps explain why Picollo said he didn’t feel any panic in the clubhouse amid the first seven-game losing streak — a run that ended with a 4-1 win over Cleveland on Sept. 4 marked by Tommy Pham’s three-run homer.
To that point, though, fans were starting to feel otherwise — in part because they still were trying to reconcile the loss of Pasquantino the week before.
After that game, Sherman said in an interview with The Star a few days later, his phone blew up.
“It was like a sigh of relief was breaking out all over Kansas City,” he said.
‘Didn’t come this far just to come this far’
That night triggered a 7-2 spurt for the Royals, leaving them 82-67 and with some margin for error in the Wild Card race as of Sept. 14.
Still, Picollo understood that the final weeks remained “fragile,” as he put it on Sept. 16 … just as the Royals were a day into what would become their second seven-game skein in a matter of weeks.
After the last of those losses on Sunday at Kauffman Stadium, the clubhouse was tangibly tense and players seemed stunned. Most sat at their lockers in full uniform some 15 minutes after the game as reporters were admitted to the room.
While they still had control of their prospects, you could only wonder if they would be consumed by the plummet and the pressure, or if they’d be buoyed by the brilliant opportunity that remained.
As much as any other explanation, the culture proved a reservoir from which the Royals had revived themselves just before collapsing into an irreversible spiral.
Never mind that the streak-ending 1-0 victory in Washington came after 27 scoreless innings, and was delivered courtesy of the extra-innings automatic runner who started at second base (and a Nationals error).
And that it held up only after a Joey Gallo smash looped just right of the foul pole before Erceg struck him out to end the game.
There was something apt and maybe even poetic about that improbable and dramatic path proving to be the reset for a Royals team that few outside the franchise forecast returning to the postseason in 2024.
“We didn’t come this far just to come this far,” Witt told Bally Sports’ Joel Goldberg on the field after the skid-halting victory.
For emphasis, Witt later repeated the phrase to reporters in the clubhouse later on.
And well he should have.
Because the notion both encapsulates the once-unfathomable season so far and speaks to the intriguing possibilities ahead.
Because … why not them now, too?
