Kansas City Royals: Three thoughts on 2020 Hall of Fame

The 2015 Kansas City Royals

Let’s start this section with a quick note about the 2003-2004 Detroit Pistons.

That Pistons team is an anomaly because they won the NBA Championship without a future Hall of Famer on the team*. They were the last team to do that, and they were the first team to do that in God only knows how long**. Today, they’re still remembered for upsetting a Los Angeles Lakers team that featured the likes of Kobe and Shaq plus the aging Karl Malone and Gary Payton, and doing so without a superstar.

*But their coach that season is in the Hall of Fame: Larry Brown. You Jayhawkers might remember him.

**I mean, I could probably figure this out, but I don’t have the time. NBA history, I know not.

Okay, so what’s that got to do with the 2015 Kansas City Royals? Well, I’m pretty sure that that Royals team falls into the same category: a team that won the championship without a future Hall of Famer on the roster (or on the staff), and that, turns out, is also an anomaly in baseball.

Would you have thought that? I wouldn’t have. But I went back through every World Series champion since 1990, and the Royals appear* to be the only one who did it without a future Hall of Famer on the roster or on the coaching staff or in the front office.

*Maybe the sign-stealing scandal keeps all players associated with the 2017 Houston Astros out? I doubt it, but it’s a possibility worth noting.

Instead, that Royals team was made up of guys who, in the end, will finish things with fine careers, nice careers, in some cases really good careers, but none of them will have Hall of Fame careers. For a while, I had hope for Salvador Perez, but with the injuries racking up and offensive numbers slipping, it seems unlikely.

Hosmer? Moose? Cain? Gordon? All four will have made a ton of money, earned a World Series ring, maybe a spot in the Royals Hall of Fame and maybe a number retired with Kansas City, but you won’t find their busts in Cooperstown.

What about pitchers like…well, who would that be?

Cueto? Again, a solid career, a dreamy life, but he doesn’t belong with the Bob Gibsons and Bert Blylevens of the baseball world.

HDH–Herrera, Davis, and Holland–all had outstanding stints with the Royals, especially in 2015, but those careers were more similar to meteors streaking across the night’s sky before burning out than something sustainable, which is a must for Hall of Fame career, especially for a reliever.

But please, please, please note that I’m not taking anything away from the members of the 2015 Kansas City Royals or what they accomplished. No, what I’m doing is quite the opposite: I’m heaping even more credit onto their shoulders. Turns out, it’s not so easy to win a championship in any of the four major North American sports leagues without a future Hall of Famer on board.

And yet, the Kansas City Royals did just that. Not only did they finish 2015 with the best record in the American League, overcome enormous odds to rally against the Astros, take down the 93-win Blue Jays in six games, and knock off a red-hot New York Mets squad in the World Series, but they did it without a superstar, without anyone who will finish his career with a resume worthy of getting him into Cooperstown.

That feat puts them up there with the greatest of World Series teams: a team that won by actually playing as a team.