What a Strong Finish Means For the Royals

It's probably somewhere between nothing and something, but watching wins is more fun than losses and I think it's maybe closer to something.

Baseball history is littered with strong finishes from bad teams that get fans fired up for the next season only for them to be disappointed by Memorial Day. Heck, Royals history is littered with that. Who can forget the 18-8 September in 2008 when Kyle Davies looked like he had turned a corner before Luke Hochever even knew what a corner was? We may not remember the 2000 Royals too well, but they finished 30-28 and had some legitimate prospects on the way. That, uh, didn’t work out either. I don’t think anyone was actually fooled by the 2018 Royals 15-13 September, but it was still a good month that made you wonder if they could be merely bad in 2019 instead of world class horrible.

So what are we to make of the way the Royals are playing right now? They are now 23-18 since the All-Star Break with a positive run differential. They’ve gone toe to toe with the Astros and won that season series. They just took three of four from the hopeful Mariners in Seattle, which is no small task. They swept the Tigers, who have gone 53-45 since their dismal start. They’re 5-2 against the White Sox. They’re 2-0 against the Brewers. They got tossed around by the Blue Jays and Cardinals, which isn’t great, but the point is they’ve played well.

In my opinion, I think winning is better than losing for any team. That seems like a “no duh” statement, but the idea that if you’re going to win 75 games and finish out of the playoffs, you might as well win 55 games and get a top pick is very prevalent in sports. And it’s not even necessarily wrong in a big picture viewpoint.

But that also stinks and I hate it. It stinks for the people running the team. It stinks for the people on the team. And it stinks for the people paying to watch the team whether that payment comes in time, money or both. And from the fan perspective, sure, most do come back when times are better, but how many fans do you lose who realize they can survive without baseball as a key part of their lives? Or how many fans become casual fans because of a lack of effort? That’s not something I really want to get into today so much, but I think it’s worth exploring in the offseason a bit.

Regardless, we’re talking about winning now and specifically the Royals winning and if it’s worthwhile or not. And the reality is that unless you’re picking in the top three, you’re generally going to get a similar player at four as you are at eight or nine. Obviously that’s not always true. Some years, the draft is deeper than others, and sometimes you think the next year’s draft will be deep and it isn’t and vice versa.

But my point here is that no matter what you think of the Royals, they’re not as bad as the Orioles or the Pirates or the Rangers or the Diamondbacks. They simply weren’t going to sink to those levels. The best pick the Royals could have ever hoped for was the fifth pick, and even that might have been tough for them to pull off without completely tanking, which I’ll get to in a minute why that’s a bad idea with this roster. It isn’t all about the actual pick, of course, with the draft pool playing into it, but at some point, winning has to be prioritized.

I think if the team was filled with a bunch of veterans who aren’t going to be a part of the next good team, then winning is irrelevant. But I think with a team that’s even somewhat filled with players who could be on the next winning team make winning a useful development tool.

On this current Royals team, the roster includes, by my count, 12 to 16 players who could be on the next good Royals team. Most of them are pitchers - Scott Barlow, Kris Bubic, Carlos Hernandez, Daniel Lynch, Brady Singer, Josh Staumont, Kyle Zimmer and Tyler Zuber. But Salvador Perez, Hunter Dozier, Nicky Lopez, Whit Merrifield, Adalberto Mondesi (tomorrow probably), Emmanuel Rivera, Andrew Benintendi and Edward Olivares are also part of what could be the next good team. Some of these players don’t need development, but it still feels like they can benefit from some winning.

I also feel like there’s value in free agent recruitment to some winning and if the Royals believe they can win in 2022, they need to fill in some holes. Yes, money absolutely talks, but if a player actually wants to win, I can see a scenario where they’re more interested in a team that looks like they’re on the upswing than one that finished 21-50 or something in the second half because they don’t appear to be trying.

I believe that even with all the young pitching, I think the Royals could use a legitimate starter who can slot at least toward the top of the rotation. Maybe Robbie Ray is prioritizing winning and an opportunity to lead a young rotation. A Royals team that finishes strong on the back of Lynch, Hernandez, Singer and Bubic, for example, might appeal to him a lot more than if they looked flat down the stretch. I don’t know if that’s the case, but I have a hunch that is true for at least some free agents and the Royals do have holes they need to fill if they expect to win next year.

All that said, the wins and losses don’t ultimately matter that much but how they play absolutely does. I’m looking at the last 32 games of this season sort of like spring training. Do I care if the Royals give up seven runs in a Mike Minor start? Absolutely not. Just like I don’t care if the Royals give up seven runs in the eighth and ninth with AA pitchers on the mound in Surprise. But what happens in a Lynch start 100 percent matters. If he goes out there and gives up two runs over six innings with eight strikeouts but Wade Davis blows the game in the seventh, I’ll absolutely be annoyed in the moment, but it ultimately doesn’t matter and is a successful late 2021 game.

But as more and more future pieces start making their way to the big league roster, it becomes more and more difficult to find spots where the results don’t matter. Sure, Davis blowing a game in the seventh would be irrelevant to the future, but maybe an inning where Lopez and Mondesi couldn’t get a run home from third with nobody out to take Davis off the hook does matter for the future, so it’s pretty easy to see how things can get sticky there with this mindset.

I think I’ve said this before, but I really changed my tune on this topic after I had a chance to get into the clubhouse during the 2014 season, starting in spring training. One of the most common things I heard that spring was how energized the team was from trading for James Shields the year before (a trade I absolutely hated at the time) and generally being put in a position to go for it with the group of prospects who had been in the big leagues since various points in 2011. And then how much that final push from 2013 helped them prepare for a pennant race even if they were just on the periphery of it.

With that in mind, here’s a look at some bad to mediocre teams that have parlayed strong finishes one year into improved seasons at the least the next:

• 2018 Rays - They finished 36-19 to get to 90-72. In 2019, they went 96-66 and made the playoffs.

• 2018 Twins - They finished 15-8 to get to 78-84. In 2019, they went 101-61 and made the playoffs.

• 2017 A’s - They finished 17-12 to get to 75-87. In 2018, they went 97-65 and made the playoffs.

• 2016 Brewers - They finished 16-13 to get to 73-89. In 2017, they went 86-76 and while they missed the playoffs, they’ve been a contender ever since.

• 2014 Rangers - They finished 13-3 to get to 67-95. In 2015, they went 88-74 and made the playoffs.

• 2013 Royals - They finished 22-12 to get 86-76. In 2014, they went 89-73 and made it to Game Seven of the World Series.

• 2011 Orioles - They finished 15-8 to get to 69-93. In 2012, they went 93-69 and made the playoffs and then contended for a few years.

• 2011 Dodgers - They finished 34-20 to get to 82-79. In 2012, they went 86-76 and while they missed the playoffs, they’ve gone on some kind of run since then.

There are others that have benefited from a great finish. There are probably more that haven’t, but there are instances where a strong finish actually means something for the future, as you can see above. We already talked about Royals teams of the past who have had these big Septembers and then seen nothing happen, so we know it doesn’t always work. You can even look back to just last season when the Royals finished 12-6, but they did a lot of that damage against the Tigers and Pirates, two awful teams.

It feels like the wins, at least lately for the Royals, have meant more than that. As I mentioned above, handling the White Sox, Astros, Brewers and Mariners (I don’t think they’re that good, but they’re in the race) has been an unequivocal positive. And doing it behind continued development of some of the young pitching like Lynch and Hernandez has been even better. Look, I get the idea that if you’re not first, you’re last, but I really do think there’s value to winning and not just because the Royals keeping up their second half pace will get them right around my 76-86 prediction for the season. I think there’s very real value in wins even if they still end up on their couches for the playoffs.