Kansas City Royals could be out of playoff contention before we know it

The Kansas City Royals are bad. Fans didn’t expect much this year, but starting the year off with a 2-10 record is still pretty embarrassing.

During all of those grim years when the Kansas City Royals were awful, most fans had checked out by the 4th of July, if not sooner. It looks like it’ll be a “blast from the past” in 2019, as the Royals already seem poised to be out of any type of playoff contention by the end of the April, if not sooner.

That… is not good.

While Carrington Harrison of 610 Sports’ tweet below might seem a little extreme considering how early it is into the season, can anyone really dispute what he’s saying?

To make matters worse, the Royals have been in a lot of these games. Their bullpen has blown a majority of them and their starting pitchers haven’t gotten past four innings on multiple occasions, but, for the most part, the bats have come through and runs have been scored. That should make fans feel better, but somehow, it makes them feel worse, at least it makes me feel worse.

No realistic Royals fan expected the team to do much of anything this year, that much is true. The hope this year, however, was that the team would make strides from a year ago.

A year ago the team held the second to worst record in Major League Baseball, but they did start to look better in the second half of the season. That gave fans hope that this year might see the team look a little more competitive.

The problem with this year’s team so far has been the bullpen, which continues to be a dumpster fire. Looking at the current slew of Royals pitchers, courtesy of ESPN.com, the only relievers with a respectable ERA are Richard Lovelady, Ian Kennedy, and Scott Barlow. The rest are not good.

Here are those ERAs in case you were wondering:

• Jake Newberry – 13.50
• Wily Peralta – 10.80
• Brad Boxberger – 9.95
• Glenn Sparkman – 7.36
• Jake Diekman – 4.76

What made the Kansas City Royals so darn good during their run to the top in 2014 and 2015 was their shutdown bullpen. We’ll probably never see a bullpen that good ever again in our lifetimes, but this is just pathetic. Surely there is better talent out there than what the Royals are currently trotting out of the bullpen every day.

If the bullpen continues to blow leads, then yes, the Royals will absolutely be out of contention by the end of this month. If, however, they figure things out, then this team could be somewhat enjoyable to watch. They have intriguing starters in the rotation and like I mentioned earlier, the bats aren’t the problem, like in years past.

Hopefully the Royals can give us something to cheer about this year, outside of Whit Merrifield (whose hitting streak ended at 31 unfortunately), because otherwise, we’re going to be in for a loooong season, my friends.