Kansas City Royals: How are the 2018 Royals so bad?
The calendar flipped to July and the Kansas City Royals have only won 25 games. How are the 2018 Royals one of the worst teams in Major League Baseball?
After the fan favorites waved good-bye to those who filled up Kauffman Stadium for the Kansas City Royals‘ last game of the 2017 season, fans knew some changes were coming to the organization. There’d be no reunion with Eric Hosmer or Lorenzo Cain (though Mike Moustakas did surprise us by re-signing a one-year deal) and we all knew a rebuild was on the horizon.
Even with a rebuild being the plan, however, Dayton Moore brought in players like Moose, Lucas Duda, and Jon Jay, which showed that the Royals weren’t entirely tanking in 2018. They also still had old fan favorites like Salvador Perez, Danny Duffy, and Whit Merrifield, which would keep fans engaged hopefully.
Sure, the 2018 season was going to consist of more losing than fans had grown accustom to over the years, but there was enough talent keeping them out of the basement of the league, right? Well, as we’ve found out, we were all wrong there. The 2018 Kansas City Royals are not only awful, but they’re becoming historically awful.
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As mentioned in the intro paragraph, the Royals have only recorded 25 wins and we’re almost to the All-Star break. The Boston Red Sox and Arizona Diamondbacks, the two best teams in the league, have won 47 games a piece. That’s 22 more than the Royals.
Dayton Moore has been quoted as to saying that he didn’t anticipate 2018 being this rough for the franchise. He pointed to next season being the year where the team would struggle to win games, and that’s pretty alarming. Even Moore didn’t expect the boys in blue to be this bad.
Dayton Moore on his 22-49 Royals: "I really thought *next year* would be the year we really, really struggle... I didn't expect us to lose this many games at this point in time."
— TOM MARTIN (@LetItFlyTom) June 18, 2018
So why are the Kansas City Royals so bad this year? They have several good players on their roster, so shouldn’t that lead to more wins? Not exactly.
The offense is anemic, the starting pitching (minus Brad Keller) is tough to watch, and the bullpen has been awful since the first game of the season. To sum up, the Royals don’t have any strengths, and that’s not going to translate to wins.
We’re only three years removed from the Royals winning the World Series, but it feels like a lifetime ago. It’s great that Dayton Moore got this city a championship, but the fact that 2018 wasn’t supposed to be THIS bad and it’s going the way it has, tells me that the next few years are going to be unwatchable for fans.
Fingers crossed that the next wave of prospects pan out and fans don’t have to experience another 25+ years of losing. People might not be so patient this time.