What the Royals’ strong September says about 2019 (and what it doesn’t)

Over the final four days of the season, Royals players trickled into manager Ned Yost’s office one by one, greeted there by all of the team’s coaches. In an exit meeting, each member of the staff provided a player with items to work on over the course of the next few months. Two-strike approach. Inner-half pitches. Hitting the ball to the opposite field. And on they went.

The grind of the season concluded last weekend. The necessity to focus on one game at a time is gone. The offseason allows for refreshing the big-picture outlook.

“It’s the ability for (a player) to go home and reflect on his year and what he needs to do to make himself better,” Yost said. “A lot of it can even be visualization.”

The winter can often provide the foundation of a productive season, Yost says. With a young group, the Royals started to establish that foundation over the final month of 2018. The produced their only winning month of the season in September — 15-13. Extended back to the last week of August, the Royals were 20-14 in their final 34 games.

But does a September record play much of a bearing on the upcoming season?

“No,” Yost said. “What comes into play is the reflection of the year before and how you played in September.

“It’s hard for guys to make huge leaps and bounds during the season because they’re working and then they have to go out and compete (every day). During the winter, you can digest everything that you were trying to work on. You can visualize it. You can work on it in a non-stress, non-pressure situation. And it’s always been my experience that guys come back better the year after because of that.”

The numbers back his initial answer. At least in the Royals’ case, a September record is rarely indicative of how they will play the following season. In fact, in five of the 10 previous years, after the Royals finished above or below .500 in September, they did the exact opposite in the ensuing season.

But that doesn’t make the final five weeks of the year irrelevant. Far from it. Where they do matter — especially with this group — is experience for young prospects. Adalberto Mondesi. Ryan O’Hearn. Hunter Dozier. Starting pitchers Heath Fillmyer, Jorge Lopez, Brad Keller and Jakob Junis.

“Nothing replaces being able to just get experience and just getting the at-bats every day,” said O’Hearn, who hit 12 home runs in 44 games after a late-season call-up to the big leagues.

Two hours before the Oakland A’s took the field for their AL Wild Card game against the Yankees earlier this week, shortstop Jed Lowrie was asked during an ESPN telecast when he sensed the A’s could surprise some people in 2018.

“Last September,” he replied.

It wasn’t that Oakland’s 17-12 finish to the 2017 season had provided any sort of momentum to 2018. Rather, the A’s had offered their young core significant playing time. The prospects figured out some successes in the major leagues. They worked through some bumps along the way. So when they arrived for spring training in 2018, they were a leg up on true rookies.

That’s where the Royals’ strong finish comes into play. It’s where the exit meetings do, too. When Yost and his coaches passed along notes to each player, they were based on major-league experience. Yost witnessed first-hand where the progressions need to be made. Some already were enacted over the final several weeks, and he pointed to examples such as Mondesi’s comfort at the plate.

That’s where the effect of the late-season surge will carry weight.

“We feel like they’re just scratching the surface, like Dozier and O’Hearn and Mondi, in terms of their ceiling,” Yost said. “It makes me very optimistic going into next year.”

Sam McDowell

Sam McDowell covers Sporting Kansas City, the Royals, Chiefs and sports enterprise for The Star