It’s not fun. That’s for sure. Watching your team struggle for a week or two is not enjoyable. It’s frustrating and annoying and, if you care a little too much like I do, a good way to wake up cranky some mornings.
In case you haven’t noticed, the Royals haven’t been playing well lately. They were at 12-6 on April 24; since then, they’ve posted a stinky 3-11 mark. It’s been a team-wide failure; they’ve given up way too many runs (76) and scored way too few (42).
But let’s not panic just yet. This kind of spell happens to every team. Really. Even the best teams.
Last year’s run spoiled us all some, I’m afraid. The Royals started 7-0, ran that up to 28-14, and once they took over first place for good in early June, they were never seriously challenged for a division title. It was obvious at the All-Star Break, if not before, that they were going to be in the playoffs. That’s not a normal season. A normal playoff team usually has to grind a little bit. Sometimes even for weeks at a time. It’s the nature of baseball. This ain’t football, where teams go 15-1 or 14-2 or 13-3 all the time.
Even last year’s team wasn’t immune to a bit of a slump. Immediately after they reached that 28-14 mark, they lost eight of 10 games. It’s a little different, but they also had a rough patch in September, going 8-16 from the 4th through the 29th. They had a big lead and they were resting players for the postseason, but they still lost games at a pace that even the 2004-2006 Royals couldn’t match for a full season.
The thing is, though, that the Royals are not unusual in this regard. Every playoff team last year had a stretch like that. Most of them had multiple stretches where I’m sure their fans thought they might never win another game.
Take the Royals’ World Series opponents, the New York Mets. On May 11, they were 20-11. Then they went 4-10. After pulling out of that, they found themselves at 36-30 on June 16. Boom, another 4-10 mark. Heck, they were basically a .500 team through the end of July; they didn’t take over their division until going 20-8 in August.
Or perhaps the Royals’ ALCS opponents, the Toronto Blue Jays. Sure, now we think of that team as a slugging offensive juggernaut that went out and added David Price at the trade deadline. But before they came together, the Blue Jays played like crap for almost a full month. From April 24 to May 23, they were 10-19. They were 23-30 on June 2. And even after they got it together for a bit, they struggled through a 6-12 stretch in late June/early July.
Kansas City’s ALDS opponent, the Houston Astros, were very streaky last year. After a hot start, they went 1-8 in early June. They had a 2-9 stretch in July, a 3-8 stretch in August, and a 5-12 skid in September that probably cost them a division title. But still, playoff team. And, as you may remember, one that had the Royals all but eliminated at one point.
The team that beat out Houston for the AL West title, Texas, went 6-18 from June 20 to July 20. The other AL wild card team, the Yankees, had a 1-10 stretch in mid-May that probably had George Steinbrenner firing someone in the afterlife. They also went 4-7 in one August period.
The other four NL playoff teams had struggles at various points, too. The Dodgers had 4-8, 2-7, and 2-8 stretches. Pittsburgh had a 2-8 and a 3-6 period. The Cubs had 3-8 and 6-10 stretches of futility. Even the Cardinals, the only MLB team to win 100 games last year, weren’t immune. They had two different 5-9 stretches and a 2-8 one in early September, making the NL Central race interesting for a bit.
You want more? I’ve got more.
Every 2014 playoff team had bad stretches. The 2014 American League champions—oh, that would be the Royals—went 3-7 in early May of that season, and 9-18 from mid-June to mid-July. The team that won the AL Central, Detroit, had 4-13 and 5-10 stretches. The World Series winners, San Francisco, went 6-13 from late July to mid-August. The Pirates, who lost the wild-card game to the Giants, went 6-17 after a 6-3 start to the season. Yep, they were 12-20 in early May and still won 88 games.
I didn’t look up the 2013 playoff teams, but I bet I would find similar numbers for most, if not all, of them.
It seems to me the difference between a playoff team and a mediocre one is the ability to limit these kinds of stretches. If this team is what we thought they were at the start of the season, they’ll get things corrected. If not, there will be plenty of conversations to be had about how to fix this team. It’s too early to throw in the towel, but the struggle needs to end, and soon.
Photo credit: Peter Aiken, USA Today Sports