‘Today’s the day’: Royals must show this type of urgency even if it’s all about 2023 now
With a routinely demoralizing 7-0 loss to Toronto on Tuesday night at Kauffman Stadium, the Royals lost for the 15th time in 18 games, suffered their major-league leading eighth shutout (complemented by having the worst ERA in the American League) and splatted to 17-37. That made for the worst record in MLB and tied for the second-most miserable start in franchise history.
Despite any simmering cumulative anguish, though, that was yesterday’s news to manager Mike Matheny entering Wednesday with 108 games left to play.
“If I’ve been gifted at anything, it’s showing up today knowing today’s the day,” he said in the dugout before the game. “And showing up excited to watch these guys do their thing. And knowing, without a doubt, how much better we are than what we’ve shown. And it’s inevitable (they will improve). …
“That’s just what I believe, and there isn’t anybody who can talk me out of it. I’m grateful for that mindset, and if I could pass on anything through that clubhouse, that’s what it would be. Because I hate that there are times when the game steals your joy.”
Alas, most of us know that feeling following the Royals right now.
But at least Wednesday indeed was the day for an 8-4 victory over Toronto and a reprieve … if not necessarily a reset for a team that has won back-to-back or more games just three times all season entering their game Thursday night against Baltimore.
Before anything can become sustainable, after all, it has to bear out as merely repeatable.
Trouble is, it’s hard to discern where there’s traction or reassurance in what’s coming over the rest of a season that we figured at least would provide a tangible link to a brighter future.
Exasperation folded into apathy is the prevailing fan sentiment, accented by many games being both literally as well as figuratively unwatchable for many because of the nonsense with Bally Sports.
Especially since it just shouldn’t be like this five years into a rebuild out of the now-underappreciated beauty of 2014 and 2015 … and the hopes of extending that gone awry in 2016 and 2017 for reasons ranging from admirable to ill-fated and ill-conceived.
The Royals are stranded between phases of the operation instead of engaging the gears of the prospective reclamation, one that hopes to parallel what Dayton Moore and his staff engineered from 2006 through 2015 — a resurgence that was predicated on a replenished minor-league system.
Then as now, the Royals retooled their farm system into one widely regarded among the best in the game.
Then as it distinctly is now, it was hard to see what was bubbling up while you waited.
Maybe you remember screaming for regime change in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Heck, maybe you were one of those calling for it in 2014 … even in the middle of the Wild Card Game against Oakland that changed everything.
Maybe you then swore that you would cherish those two seasons the rest of your life.
That’s not to say what was then will be now.
But it is to say that there are many reasons for this gridlock now, and that the architects of that magic ought to be granted the benefit of the doubt in seeing this through.
And as much as the Royals have some systems to audit and rewire (why isn’t the young-but-not-so-young pitching demonstrating more consistency by now?), not all of the issues bode doom.
Beyond the crippling pitching woes, how different would this season be to this point if stars like Salvador Perez and Whit Merrifield hadn’t struggled so much early? Or if Carlos Santana had been productive before his recent outburst, including four hits and a walk on Wednesday
What might it be like if Adalberto Mondesi hadn’t gotten hurt again? How much did the COVID-induced 60-game season of 2020 and the lockout last offseason warp the timeline of a team more dependent on development than most?
None of that makes what’s happened palatable or acceptable, and we know there’s a fine line between reasons and excuses.
This administration certainly has made some decisions that either were misguided or backfired, and the Royals have much to solve ahead if they’re going to get on trajectory to a meaningful 2023 and thereafter.
That includes the long-term disconnect in pitching development and when the right time will be to maximize trade value for the likes of Andrew Benintendi (who will be a free agent at the end of the season) and when, oh when, oh when they feel hot-shot prospect Vinnie Pasquantino and Nick Pratto and others are ready to be called up from Triple-A Omaha.
When the Royals replaced Terry Bradshaw as hitting coach a few weeks ago, the implication was that the Royals would become more transactional and that accountability was paramount. At least from the outside looking in, scant little has changed dramatically.
But that also doesn’t mean nothing is happening in more granular and subtle ways.
It’s not hard to find evidence of the impact of director of hitting performance Alex Zumwalt in his interim role as hitting coach, and the Royals surely are seeking to reconcile the pitching development.
They should be able to procure some worthy talent as sellers, at least with Benintendi, before the trade deadline, and we’ll almost certainly see Pasquantino here within a few weeks unless he regresses greatly.
Better days ahead, we reckon, but only with progress across the board instead of what looks a lot like stagnation. Whoever you want to blame, at some point talented players are supposed to rise to the surface and perform.
Before they went from bad to worse a few weeks ago, I spoke with Royals chairman John Sherman about several aspects of his franchise and asked if he should be considered a patient man.
“Well, patience is a relative term. …,” he said with a laugh. “You have to balance patience with having a sense of urgency to get better.”
Even coming from a man who says it’s crucial not to panic, the term “sense of urgency to get better” reverberated with me.
It’s unclear how he has transmitted what he means by that to Moore, now the team president, and general manager J.J. Picollo or even Matheny. But bear in mind that he promoted both Moore and Picollo less than a year ago and extended Matheny’s contract through 2023 in March.
So even if everything realistically appears all about 2023 at this point, the trick now is to make the rest of this season an essential part of the connective tissue instead of a hollow waste.
If this group is much better than what it’s shown, as Matheny put it, there’s still plenty to play for this season … even if it’s in the context of “wait ‘til next year.”
When we might all hope saying “today’s the day” will prove true a lot more often.