How this incident on a Royals road trip set up a perfect homestand — and maybe beyond
The downpour commenced by late morning in Baltimore, before the Royals had even unpacked at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
You didn’t pull up to an outdated column here. Before we delve into the Royals’ perfect 7-game homestand this week, capped by a 13-3 win against the Astros on Thursday, it’s worth rewinding.
There will be some cause-and-effect conclusions about what we saw in Kansas City, before the Royals departed for a weekend trip to New York. Appropriately so, for example, you might reason that this kind of start to the season can set some new expectations for a team that won 56 games a year ago.
But what if those two items — cause and effect — should be reversed? What if the expectations came first?
The evidence for that theory predates the homestand.
To a game the Royals actually lost.
To the downpour — and an early sign of the expectations.
In the series finale against Baltimore, the Royals arrived to weather conditions less than ideal for baseball. At some point, in the conversation with players and managers, with the usual MLB and MLB Players Association input, the question had to come up.
Do you really want to wait hours to play a game instead of getting on a flight back to KC?
“(Bleep) yeah, we want to play,” Royals outfielder Hunter Renfroe recalled the reply.
OK, then. A pretty important note I should mention: The Royals were set to face Orioles ace Corbin Burnes, who has placed in the top 8 of Cy Young voting four straight seasons, including the 2021 trophy.
They sat through five hours of a rain delay to ensure themselves the opportunity to face that guy — on the mound for the team that won more games than any other in the American League last season.
“When you get into a rain delay situation like that, it’s natural that both teams start talking — (which) mutual off-days are a possibility, coming back at a different time, making it up,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said. “Our guys were very clear: We want to play. It doesn’t matter how long we have to stay here, if we have to play at night, whatever.
“Obviously we lost, so it doesn’t feel good at the end of it, but the attitude of wanting to play is really important.”
To be clear, the Royals are not scheduled to make another trip to Baltimore this season. A make-up game would have provided some logistical challenges.
The player rationale, though?
“We were locked in,” shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. said. “We just really wanted to get things going.”
“You could feel something special in the clubhouse that series,” outfielder MJ Melendez said. “It just felt different from what I’ve personally felt the last few years.”
“We didn’t care who we were facing,” Renfroe said. “We were playing well at the time. We wanted to challenge adversity.”
“We had our pitcher on the mound too,” Witt added. “He was ready to go.”
Oh, yeah. The Royals have their own ace now, Cole Ragans. He spent that day doing crossword puzzles in the training room. He literally laid down in the weight room for a bit. A five-hour delay had completely disrupted his routine, and that guy even said, “If I have to wait around, I don’t care. Let’s go.”
The Royals, as Quatraro mentioned, lost the game. Took a 3-0 lead into the eighth and a 3-2 lead into the ninth and blew it. You might recall some frustration and even mild (or not so mild) panic about it.
It resonated differently inside the Royals’ clubhouse.
It supplied a positive precursor to this week’s perfect 7-game homestand — just the third perfect homestand of at least that length in team history.
The results are a change. The precursor? Even more so. It reflects something with the potential to be much longer lasting. Who knows where this young season will go from here. But it’s telling to know where they believe it’s going.
So, back to the cause-and-effect — maybe that flows both ways. The expectations came before the wins. The Royals were 2-3 before that rain delay, 2-4 by the end of the night. But the expectations can certainly take a bump after the wins.
Particularly seven of them.
You can chalk up the initial four games of the homestand to a bad White Sox team that looks destined for a season best reserved for an Oakland address.
The next three came against the Astros, a club that has enjoyed playoff baseball for seven straight years. And let’s be clear: The Royals whipped them. After the Astros scored the initial three runs of the series opener, the Royals outscored them 28-5 over the 23 innings.
We can debate for days about what will happen over the remaining 92% of the season — yeah, there’s a long way to go — but there was no debate about the better team at Kauffman Stadium in the middle of April. By the end of it, the Astros were waving a white flag in the form of a position player on the mound. Their best outing of the week.
The Royals concluded that three-game series, ahead of this weekend’s trip to New York, with the best run differential in baseball, at plus-39.
“What’s up, fans?” Vinnie Pasquantino asked after the sweep. “You like that?”
They’re hitting well. They’re fielding well. They’re running the bases well. Their starting rotation is throwing it better than any other in baseball.
Oh, and one more thing:
You and I might be surprised by the reach of the success.
The ones who matter, to at least an extent, expected it.