Remember when the Royals were lucky and good? Yeah, not so much anymore

So, just to make sure we’re all in the same place here, the Royals’ season is not yet one-third done and already:

Their original right fielder got hurt on the first day of spring training, two starting pitchers went on the disabled list on the same day, their previously steady DH is hitting like a National League pitcher, and, just as the team is starting to play better, they are losing one All-Star for a month and another for the season because of what happened on one stupid, inconsequential, nothing foul ball in game 43 of 162.

Ned Yost has been in professional baseball for more than 40 years and says he’s never seen anything like that last one, where one play — out of dozens in a game, and thousands in a season — can end with such far-reaching affects.

We already knew that Alex Gordon would miss at least four weeks from a collision with Mike Moustakas. He is the team’s highest-paid and perhaps most-respected player. Now we know Moustakas is out for the season. In nine professional seasons before this one, he had never been on the disabled list. Now, in his second game back from his first injury, the rest of his 2016 is about rehab and trying not to drive his friends in the dugout crazy while he watches.

Baseball is such an endless and frustrating and euphoric and unexplainable grind that the men who dedicate themselves to the sport are often reduced to talking about the baseball gods. The last two years of this franchise have been remarkably charmed, but now, with the way 2016 is going, it’s like the baseball gods want payback.

“I don’t have time for that,” Yost said when asked if he felt snakebitten, which is exactly the kind of thing a man says when he feels snakebitten but doesn’t want to admit it.

Let’s be clear: this is not a season-ender. The 2016 Royals are not doomed right now anymore than the 2014 Royals were doomed when they went under .500 after the All-Star break.

Part of winning at baseball’s highest level is overcoming setbacks, and this group has proven itself time and again. The Royals are a good organization (finally!), and part of being a good organization is being able to cover for a few injuries. A decade ago, Danny Duffy would’ve been the opening day starter, Scott Alexander the closer, and Brett Eibner the cleanup hitter. Now they are replacements.

This is a good time to remember that all boats have holes, too. The division-leading White Sox are struggling, the Tigers are aging, the Indians have problems, and the Twins belong in the Pacific Coast League. The Royals still have the division’s best centerfielder, catcher, and bullpen. Someone has to win the division.

Part of the Royals’ strength has always been balance. Internally, club officials have seen Lorenzo Cain, Sal Perez and Alcides Escobar as the players they could not do without over an extended chunk of the season. All three remain healthy, and two are hitting very well.

But if it’s not a season-ender, it sure is a season-changer.

Because along with balance, much of the Royals’ strength as been in their drive, their resilience, their energy, their personality. And in Gordon and Moustakas, the Royals are losing two irreplaceable parts of that personality. Even as Gordon has been ineffective, this removes two proven and productive bats.

A wretched few weeks put the Royals in a standings hole they never dealt with a year ago, so their margin for error was already shrunk.

The record of teams the year after winning the World Series is bad, and the Royals are taking on more than the usual level of muck.

For almost exactly two years, the Royals have been both good and lucky. They have the flags and rings to prove the first part, and in honest moments along the way have often acknowledged the second part.

One year after the Rangers missed the playoffs with 91 wins, the Royals made it with 89, and won the Wild Card game with the help of a third-party tip about Jon Lester, a game-tying hit that went maybe 50 feet, and the unforgettable winner on slider 18 inches off the plate.

In 2015, they suffered one major injury — Gordon’s groin — and then promptly traded for Ben Zobrist.

In 2016, we have already seen a few weeks where the Royals weren’t good, and virtually the entire season so far where they have been unlucky.

If that foul ball in Chicago was hit 10 feet away in any direction, or hangs in the air a half-second longer or falls to the ground a half-second quicker, there is no collision, and no injuries. As it happened, it was two of the Royals’ best players, each with well-earned reputations for playing hard, trying to save an out in a close game.

“That play typifies our team,” Yost said. “It was a hustle play.”

This season, it also typifies the Royals with the crap-luck result. The Royals were always going to need to play better to make it back to the playoffs. They can control that.

They’re also going to need to be luckier, which they can’t control.

This story was originally published May 26, 2016 at 7:17 PM with the headline "Remember when the Royals were lucky and good? Yeah, not so much anymore."