The Kansas City Royals blew it on opening day, but tucked into that loss was a good sign
Six weeks after he arrived in Kansas City, Lucas Erceg stepped out of the bullpen, and the Kauffman Stadium lights went out.
Intentionally. It was a brand-new entrance for a brand-new closer. Pretty cool, right?
Well, except that newness, that unexpectedness, prompted Erceg to nearly “fall on my face,” as he jogged to the mound in the dark.
A year later, evidenced by opening day back at Kauffman Stadium on Thursday, the Royals will ask Erceg to embrace a different role.
This one with the lights all the way up.
It’s not because of the trip, but rather because he just so rarely stumbles.
The Royals did Thursday. They lost in extra innings, 7-4, to the Cleveland Guardians in their Major League Baseball season opener, an ugly outing from a playoff hopeful ... with perhaps just two exceptions.
And then there was a sneaky three-inning stretch that might’ve been lost in the effort.
It started with Erceg.
Then Hunter Harvey.
And, finally, Carlos Estevez.
It’s not HDH, far from it, but the Royals have revamped the back end of their bullpen. And if you’re looking for reasons why this team could be better than it was in 2024, well, first of all, you ought to point elsewhere than a mistake-filled opening day.
But where to point? That back end of the relief corps.
The rotation shoved last year. Second best in baseball, statistically. The lineup does highlight a new leadoff hitter in Jonathan India, who will need to learn quickly that 360-foot fly balls to left field inside Kauffman Stadium carry differently than those inside Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati.
But the bullpen offers the room to grow.
The Royals can get better in the moments when their starting pitchers leave the game. They have to.
OK, so at first glance, not a great start Thursday. On the bullpen’s first pitch of the season — literally the very first — lefty power arm Angel Zerpa saw Cleveland designated hitter Kyle Manzardo direct his 97 mph sinker sent into the fountain deck for a two-run home run.
During a month (or two) in which Royals manager Matt Quatraro will probably be tinkering with how to use his new-look bullpen, there will probably be some second-guessing of his decision to yank ace Cole Ragans in favor of Zerpa in the sixth inning Thursday.
There shouldn’t be. Zerpa spanned all of 2024 without allowing a homer to a left-hander, and he dominated in spring training, throwing nine innings without allowing a single run.
Fine decision. Bad result.
You move on.
Let’s move on, too.
We make too much of those kinds of swings on opening day, or we consistently portray it so bold to state that they mean nothing. The Royals made Guardians all-everything closer Emmanuel Clase blow a ninth-inning save to force extras. Is anyone worried about that guy moving forward?
But here’s one thing we can take away from the Royals’ opener: It was our first peek at the plan for the bullpen.
It all centers on Erceg.
Whenever. Wherever. Against whomever.
That’s the apparent job. In Thursday’s opener, the Royals asked Erceg to get a couple of outs in the seventh, because that’s when the Guardians’ best hitters were stepping to the plate. Erceg told me he was informed in spring training that this would be his role.
I asked his response.
“It’s up to you guys to pick what inning I pitch in,” he recalled of his reply. “It’s up to me to get outs.”
He got two of them Thursday. Harvey turned in three more, and then three from Estevez.
That trio faced eight hitters. They retired all eight with a total of 31 pitches.
It was utter dominance lost in the utter chaos of a base-running gaffe and defensive lapses in right field.
It was a peek into what could be — and perhaps into what needs to be.
A year ago, the Royals navigated the initial five months of the season in playoff position despite employing the 25th-best bullpen in baseball. That group totaled a 4.42 earned run average before the calendar hit September.
When it did flip, though, that number fell to 2.77 down the stretch, fourth best in the league.
A 2024 trade deadline helped them then.
It keys them now.
The Royals might have had a relatively quiet offseason, at least compared to a year earlier. But this team’s biggest 2025 moves came in the summer of 2024. That was the idea all along — to seek long-term solutions rather than quick fixes.
It might not resemble HDH — and I couldn’t underscore enough that my implication isn’t that it does — but it certainly clears John Schreiber, James MacArthur and Will Smith. I didn’t pick those names from a hat. That’s how the Royals attempted to close out their first win a year ago. (They lost, by the way.)
The objective here isn’t to downplay the ugly moments Thursday.
It’s to downplay their importance.
We saw the Royals put up a stinker on opening day last year, too.
But we didn’t see the potential of the back end.
This story was originally published March 28, 2025 at 6:00 AM.