Kansas City Royals: Ranking every season from 2010s

9 of 10

September 30, 2014: Kansas City Royals players celebrate after catcher Salvador Perez (13) hit a game winning single in the bottom of the 12th inning during the American League Wild Card game. The Royals defeated the A’s 9-8 in 12 innings. (Photo by Jeff Moffett/Icon Sportswire/Corbis/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) /

RANKING EVERY ROYALS SEASON FROM 2010-2019

NUMBER 2: 2014

Record: 89-73

We’ve arrived at the two best seasons of the decade, with the second being the 2014 season. The Royals went 89-73, improving on their 2013 campaign.

Kansas City was very up and down in 2014, but their ten-game win streak in June got everyone excited for what was to come. Unfortunately, they then entered a horrible slump in which they went 9-17 and reminded fans that this team was still very young.

After barely making a move at the trade deadline (they added Josh Willingham and Raul Ibanez), fans were ready to give up on this team ever being relevant. Well, good thing we stuck by them because the team turned things around and when the end of September rolled around, fans were glued to their TVs to see the Royals clinch a postseason berth for the first time in 29 years.

When the Royals defeated the White Sox, Royals fans made the drive to the Windy City to see the clinch happen in person and those of us who watched on TV were thrilled to finally see our team make it to the playoffs.

KC hosted the Oakland Athletics in the Wild Card round and it’ll go down as the best game in Kansas City Royals history. When Eric Hosmer hit the game-tying triple and Salvador Perez hit the walk-off single, 29 years of misery had been lifted off the franchise’s shoulders.

From there, the Royals went on to win their next seven games to advance to their first World Series since 1985. Even though the Royals fell in Game 7 of the World Series to the Giants, they were so close to winning it all.

That playoff run gave Royals fans so many awesome memories that we’ll all share for a lifetime. From H-D-H to Yordano Ventura pitching one of the best games we’ll ever see in Game 6 to Billy Butler stealing a base to the Royals constantly playing extra innings to taking down the likes of the Angels and Orioles (the two best teams in the AL that year), it was impossible not to feel attached to this group of players.

We’d see that while 2014 didn’t end the way we wanted it to, maybe that wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

Home/Royals All-Time Lists