Royals POSTCAST: Royals LOSE, 8-6 | Kansas City FAILS To Keep Up With Phillies, Now Sit Under .500

Royals POSTCAST: Royals LOSE, 8-6 | Kansas City FAILS To Keep Up With Phillies, Now Sit Under .500

[Music] This is the Royals Post Cast, your instant game reaction for the Kansas City Royals, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome in to the Royals postcast here on the Locked On Network. Your team every day. I’m Chance Lebo, your host, and we come to you live after every single Royals game this season and for the rest of the seasons because this is a show where we you have live postgame reaction. If you are a fan of Jeff and Monty and you want to talk to them and hang out with them after the game, feel free. But um yeah, this has been a a show we’ve done for a past couple of months and we are hoping to continue to do it. I appreciate you guys for being here and supporting the channel, supporting the team, and we will talk to you guys after every single Royals game. Jaylen brings up in the chat, Royals lost. Anyways, what’s for dinner? Um dinner tonight, Papa John’s. Uh that was what was for dinner tonight. But the Royals lose um 8 to6. They’re below 500 for the first time since uh August 11th. Um they have hit a really, really rough stretch of games. I mean, you talk about a team that is just floundering. Royals are uh they’re done. Uh let’s just say it. Uh 12 13 games left. Um Royals are cooked, man. I mean, they have uh according to baseball reference coming in today, uh.5% chance to make the playoffs. Um yeah, I I that was not an encouraging showing. You got a pretty bad day from Ryan Bert. The Royals have now lost uh let’s see since they left for Detroit. They were 66 and 62. They are eight and 13 over their last 21. They have had a playoff spot or at least a pretty close to playoff spot just absolutely evaporate. They now sit six and a half games back. At one point they were one game back of a wildcard spot. It’s just not going to happen. Um it’s not going to happen this season. Uh lots of underwhelming performances tonight and uh but before we really talk about the Royals, we’ve had an opportunity and a lot of I didn’t get to watch the game last night, but if you’ve watched the last two nights, you’ve had the opportunity to see what it looks like when it’s right. And we’re going to talk about that because it’s what you’ll be talking about. This is what you’ll be talking about. I cover high school sports as a full-time job here in the state of Kansas. Um, this is like when when a three and five team faces a undefeated team, you kind of feel like you’re right there. You kind of feel like you’re getting there. You just a couple of bounces goes your way. You feel like it’s going to be right. Um the Phillies are what it looks like when that is in my opinion the best team in baseball. Um the Zack Wheeler injury kind of complicates things a little bit, but that’s what it looks like. The Royals and you can say what you want. The Phillies have had opportunities in October and come short. Um winning a World Series is not about it’s not a beauty contest. It’s a it’s an allout war. Um, so sometimes that’s not the best teams don’t always win the World Series in Major League Baseball. And certainly um building a good team, building the best team is always going to be the goal. But the Phillies are a team that you know if the Royals were somehow a coin flip away from being in the playoffs tomorrow, if they were in the playoffs, do you have confidence after seeing what we just saw over the last two nights that the Royals have any chance at beating the Phillies in a sevename series, in a fivegame series, in a three-game series? You know how you give the Phillies a a twoame lead in a series and I still would have confidence that they would be able to or you could give the Royals a two-game lead in a seven-game series against the Phillies and I’d have that much confidence the Phillies would be able to beat him. Um, you can say what you want about Motr. He hasn’t been great this season. He’s had his miscues that the lineups have been frustrating. There have been a lot of shortcomings on his on his hands. You can say what you want about JJ Pako and their lack of any kind of movement in the offseason in terms of offense. You can say what you want about the guys that they brought back. MJ Melendez, Hunter Renfro, those kind of guys, but I don’t think that anything that the Royals could have done in the last 365 days plus. You can you can name five moves that the Royals could have made in the last 365 days that didn’t happen. How many of them can you realistically say put the Royals in a position to be a team that competes with the Phillies, that competes with the Boston Red Sox, with the Yankees when they’re clicking, with the Tigers right now? How confident are you that the Royals as currently constructed are a team that is going to be able at some point unless they get significant money poured into this organization unless they get a, you know, just a blossoming of prospects that come up out of nowhere. I mean, guys, this is the most concerning thing about the Royals is that they need help and there’s not help on the way. I mean, go look at Omaha. They’re talking about MJ Melendez hitting for the cycle. We know what MJ Melendez is at the major league level. The best hope that this team has in terms of an impact bat coming from that minor league system, well, it’s Carter Jensen and he’s batting under 100 now through his first two weeks of big league play. The next best hope is Gavin Cross, who in my opinion, I’ve seen him multiple times. I I worked down here in Witchaw. I’ve watched him at the uh uh watched him when they play the wind surge. He’s not special. He He’s not anything like we just saw for the Phillies. Are is John Sherman and JJ Pakola going to fork over $40 million a year for a DH like Kyle Schwarber? I think not. Are they going to win a win a a bidding war against the Blue Jays and against the Dodgers and against the Yankees and against the Red Sox for an actual high quality bat? No, probably not. And it’s kind of like I mean I’m a college football fan. You see I’m repping some college football stuff tonight. I love college football. There’s a reason why, you know, Big 12 teams aren’t going to win a national title as currently constructed. It’s going to be the SEC and it’s going to be the Big 10. There’s a reason why the Royals need a lot of things to go right. They needed last year to get into the ALDS SMB losing four to the Yankees. They needed the best shortstop season since Cal Ripken. They needed two players to play outside of their minds in Salvador Perez and Vidy Pascantino compared to what their production was up to that point. Salvi honestly had to turn back the clock that season. They needed insanely healthy years out of their entire starting pitching staff. Whether it’s Cole Reagan’s, Michael Walka, Seth Lugo, and Brady Singer. I mean, those are four starting pitchers that did not spend more than 15 days on an injured list other than Michael Waka. And now we’re talking about the Royals being a team that you feel like, well, yeah, 2026 is the year. But I don’t know. I mean, we just saw Ryan Bert, who’s kind of the the prodigal son, the the best pickup at the deadline. We saw him get tossed around a little bit by that Philly’s lineup. I mean, just absolutely scorched him tonight. I was not impressed by Ryan Bergen. He’s had a couple of really, really bad starts. Now, tonight was very similar to what we saw from the Guardians game, uh, where he just had a couple of soft hits that ended up not going his way. But tonight, I mean, three walks through four innings, that just can’t happen. Was not in the strike zone near enough tonight. I You look at Savant right now in the zone on 42% of his pitches. I’ll pull up the Savant page right now so you guys can see, but this is this is just not good enough. 42% in the zone. Did not get any kind of chase. 23% chase rate. Exit velocity was not great, but he got some hard uh some soft contact that just didn’t go his way. Fast ball was actually really solid tonight. And I was actually really impressed by the Ryan Ber fastball. That 97 was early in the first inning against Bryce Harper. That was something we haven’t seen much of from Ryan Ber this season. But and you know, Cam brings up a a decent point in the chat. He says at least it was a close game, though. I don’t know. Is was there any point in that game where the Royals felt like they were the better team that they were going to win a baseball game? I watched that game from the first pitch to the last. There wasn’t an opportunity in that game where I felt like the Phillies were sweating at all. I mean, they knew the entire game. I mean, it felt like the they could have told the Royals what they were throwing and outside of Salvador Perez, they probably wouldn’t have gotten that much. Um, I know it’s probably going to be a Debbie Downer, you know, uh, glass half empty take, but the Royals are not anywhere close to what we saw just tonight from the Phillies. And that’s a team that they’re going to have to compete with if they, like you guys are talking about in the chat every single night. You know, Macurro is not the guy to get them to a championship. Like, who is? I mean, they could get Yogi Barra resurrected from the dead. He’s not getting this team any anywhere close to a pennant. I I I really do believe that. Um, I I just it’s it’s disheartening seeing your favorite team go up against a team that’s in the same league technically, but they’re playing two different sports because the Phillies lineup was unbelievably different than what we saw from the Royals tonight. And we didn’t see Castana or we saw Castanos in a pitch hit opportunity. But I mean, that’s a lineup that started, you know, Otto Kemp in the seven hole. You’re telling me Otto Kemp is uh isn’t any better than Jonathan India? I mean, I get it. He’s got a 741 ops. Jonathan India has been better, but guess what? The Royals are paying Jonathan India a lot more than Otto Kemp is being paid than seven for the Phillies, but um just an unfortunate unfortunate series um for the Royals. Um they’ve lost now five of six on the road trip uh a road trip. You know, they had the home stand, they had the series with the Twins, and they just let it slide away. And now they’re just getting skunked out here on the road. A team that lacks mental toughness, a team that lacks any kind of mental fortitude to go on the road and win a tough game in a really tough environment. They just don’t have it. Um, no other words really for you guys tonight in terms of uh what I saw from uh the Royals, but when we come back, we’ll talk about Salvador Perez and his night tonight. Um, I’ve had the question posed to me a couple of times. Uh, and uh, the answers that you’ve heard probably haven’t been great. We’ll talk about Salvador Perez and his Hall of Fame case when we come back here on the Locked on Royals postcast. You’ve probably seen a million ads for hair growth products and thought, “Sure, like that actually works.” There are so many products out there and it’s actually hard to know which ones are actually going to do anything. That’s why you should give Neutrifol a closer look. Neutrifll is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand trusted by over 1 and a half million people. 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Um, I really like the under in the Colts and Broncos game. I think it’s going to be a low-scoring game in Indie. Um, I I am a Colts fan. Uh, and I do not like the Colts chances in that game. I’d actually take the Broncos on the money line as well. You know what? Actually, give me that. Let’s go uh Broncos money line, Bon Knicks anytime touchdown, and then throw in the first half under in that game. So, I’m going to take that as my FanDuel bet today. And it’s great because it fits however you like to bet. Player props, building a same game parlay, or even just jumping in live as the action unfolds. So, are you ready to play? Download the FanDuel app now by visiting FanDuel.com to get started. That’s fanduel.com to place your first $5 bet today. Okay. Um I wanted to talk about Salvi because uh Salvi had a big night tonight in terms of historical uh uh historical acument. Uh 300th home run uh becomes I believe they said on the broadcast the seventh catcher all time. Um the seventh primary catcher all time to be the uh to be a uh 300 home run hitter. I’m going to pull up Jake Eisenberg on Twitter because he uh usually does a great job with stuff here u making sure that you are well informed. But uh Salvador Perez um 10th active player to reach a thousand RBI um eighth primary catcher in Major League Baseball with 300 home runs. Um just a a fantastic fantastic career for Salvador Perez. We uh we um I I’ve had this question posed to me a lot um about whether Salvador Perez has a Hall of Fame case. Um I think his number will be retired by the Royals. I think Salvador Perez will be a no doubt first ballot Royals Hall of Famer. The one thing I am concerned about though is just I I don’t think he is going to be a Major League Baseball Hall of Famer. You want to talk about the most exclusive clubs in Major League Baseball history, the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, it is it is bordering on Colt. I mean, it is really tough to get into. And in Salvador Perez’s case, you have to take into account that, you know, he doesn’t have great career wins above replacement numbers because the fact that he was a pretty mediocre catcher defensively for most of his career. And I know that he wants some gold gloves, but the advanced numbers don’t love his career, especially um before last season. Um you also have the fact that um he missed a full season with Tommy John surgery. Uh in his career earlier uh earlier in his career, he missed almost all of a season because of an ACL injury. Um you know, he’s a career um he is a career 264 hitter, 757 OPS. Um he did have something going for him for a while with the fact that he was the uh Major League Baseball single season all-time catcher home run record holder with 48 homers in 2021. But now that is not he doesn’t have that. The fact that Salvador Perez his best MVP season was in 2021 and it was seventh. He has only finished in the top 10 in MVP voting once and it was that season. I just and also the fact that the co year I mean the co year he had a great season was a uh was a silver slugger that season hit 333 but also he played in just 37 games that season a 60-game campaign I mean it’s really really tough to uh really really tough for him to be able to consider himself a Hall of Famer and I I love I love Salvador Perez he’s going to go down as one of the great Royals of all time and one of our uh commenters brings up he’s a gold glover silver slugger world series champion and you can probably a hundred players that have those accolades throughout their career and have not made the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame because it is a very very very exclusive club. It’s really really hard to get into. Um I don’t think that at this point in his career Salvador Perez is a a Hall of Famer. I I just think that he’s had a really he’s going to be hall of really good. I mean, you look throughout his career, yes, he had that one really good season in terms of home running hitting, 48 homers, but you look at the rest of his career, he has zero other seasons with 30 home runs, and he didn’t really hit for he he doesn’t walk. He he strikes out a ton. I just I love Salvi. I think he’s going to go down as one of the greatest Royals of all time, a top five royal in every sense of the imagination. His his number will be retired the day he hangs up the catcher mitt. I just find it really hard to find him being a uh a Hall of Fame catcher with the numbers that he has throughout his career and the fact that Major League Baseball is very very strict on who they let into the Hall of Fame in terms of the Baseball Writers Association. Do I think he’s a Hall of Famer? Absolutely. But I have a little bit uh lighter standards when it comes to who I would put in my Hall of Fame. So, uh that is my take. Appreciate you guys for being in uh being here tonight. I know 8:00 on a Saturday night is not exactly um the place or the time that you would be uh watching a YouTube live stream, but if you are here live, appreciate you. Uh be sure to uh like the video, subscribe to the channel. If you’re new here, just tuning in for the first time. Uh we do this after every single Royals game. So, be sure to check us out every single night after the Royals play. 13 games to go uh for the Royals. and we will be back here tomorrow afternoon for you uh with another edition of the Royals Post Cast.

Chance Liebau reacts to game two between the Kansas City Royals and Pihladelphia Phillies. We discuss what the pitching staff was able to do, Salvador Perez’s big day, and a losing record for the first time in a month.

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