Kansas City Royals: Fans need to relax and enjoy summer

The Kansas City Royals are not going to be a good baseball team in 2018, in fact, they are going to be flat bad and it’s time fans come to terms with it.

Anyone who has watched the 2018 version of the Kansas City Royals knows this isn’t my kid’s Royals team. This season the Royals are going to be a lot more like the Royals I grew up watching throughout the 1990’s and 2000’s.

After being labeled one of the worst franchises in the sports world for most of the 2000’s, the Royals turned things around in 2013. The Royals surprised the league by finishing over .500 for the first time since 2003 with a record of 86-76.

The team proved it wasn’t a fluke in 2014, making it all the way to game seven of the World Series where they lost to Madison Bumgarner and friends. Fans reached highs they haven’t experienced in the city since 1985.

More from Kansas City Royals

2015 followed and this time the Royals reached the top of the mountain as they won the World Series for the first time in 30 years. The fans flocked to the stadium in record numbers and the victory parade was attended by an estimated 800,000 people.

Baseball was back where it belonged as the number one sport in Kansas City. I’ve always said KC was a baseball town, even during the Chiefs’ prime in the 90’s. Anytime you asked a fan who loved both teams if they could only pick one team to win a ring who would it be, almost everytime you’d hear the Royals.

That’s not to say the city doesn’t love the Chiefs, because we all live or die on Sunday and are starving for the first Super Bowl in nearly 50 years. But the Royals have always held a special place in the hearts of KC that simply goes deeper to the core of the city.

The 2016 and 2017 seasons were still good for the Royals, but injuries and the death of Yordano Ventura derailed what could have been something very special. The Royals finished 2016 at 81-81 while in 2017 they came within one game of being a .500 ball club for four straight seasons for the first time in team history when they went 80-82.

Enter the 2018 season and for the first time in five years the team is bad and appears to not have any shot at being a .500 club. The Royals made no secret in the off=season that this would be a rebuilding year and that fans would need to be patient with them, yet it seems some fans missed the memo.

All around social media fans are bashing owner David Glass for being cheap, general manager Dayton Moore for poor draft picks and manager Ned Yost for his lineups and bullpen usage. The same group of men who rebuilt baseball in KC and brought a championship are being questioned like fans expect the 1927 New York Yankees and it makes no sense.

The franchise who has brought the last two major championships to KC is being questioned while the Chiefs get treated like kings when they haven’t even made a title game in nearly 50 years. I know none of us want to go back to losing 100 games a year with no hope of a future, but that’s not what this is.

This is the first year of what is likely to be a three to four year rebuilding plan. Most of the teams best prospects are only in A ball which means they are two to three years from the big leagues. I think the men who brought respectability to the city deserve at least that much patience.

Next: Ten Greatest Moments in Royals History

This year’s team still has a solid core of great Royals players like Salvador Perez, Whit Merrifield, and Mike Moustakas. There are young keys to the teams future in Jakob Junis, Jorge Soler, and Brad Keller. I don’t expect sellouts every game, but I also don’t expect fans to dump this team like sour milk just one year removed from playoff contention.

It was just five short years ago that any of us would have sold our souls to the devil to simply finish above .500. After the best, five year stretch in franchise history lets give these guys a break and take a break our selves. Payoff some of those credit card bills from playoff games and memorabilia and just enjoy baseball for what it is, a distraction from everyday life a few hours every night. The team has earned that at least that much trust and loyalty.

Home/Kansas City Royals