Looking at 2024 in a vacuum, going 86-76, making the playoffs, winning a playoff series, and pushing the future AL Champion Yankees in a series with four tight games was objectively a successful year. At the same time, though, taking that year out of the vacuum and looking at where we were coming from in 2023, it was an incredible year!
But, as any reasonable person can agree, a lot had to go right to improve by 30 games in one season. Likewise, usually the pendulum starts to swing back the other way the following year after such massive gains. There's a lot of double-digit dips the year after.
So yes, the Royals regressed, but went from 86 to 82 wins. That's with Seth Lugo and Cole Ragans both missing significant time, Kris Bubic seeing his season end midway through, wholesale offensive struggles, Bobby being a little bit worse (still great, though) than last year, Michael Massey and Kyle Isbel regressing considerably, MJ Melendez and Hunter Renfroe (neither of which were good last year, but still) completely disappearing, and the Jonathan India trade not working out.
In other words, several key pieces that were key to last year's turnaround didn't work out. But I think it says enough to the solid foundation in place that one infamous time in Royals history didn't repeat itself: in 2003 the Royals followed a 62-100 season in '02 (the first 100-loss season in team history) by going 83-79…then they faceplanted into 104 losses in 2004, followed by 100 losses in both '05 and '06.
The fact that the Royals finished 82-80 this year after the miracle that was 2024 is incredibly encouraging that this is not a 2003-esque mirage. There's something here, now it's up to the powers that be to make something more meaningful of it.
8 comments
Yes, you named a lot of the things that went wrong, but part of the reason they didn’t absolutely collapse this year and should be better next year in my estimation is because of the talent that was called up and that they put together quite a bullpen – which includes the MLB saves leader.
The multiple rotation injuries and low offensive output combined should have tanked KC to close to a 100-loss team. But they were in the mix somehow. I think the manager deserves a little bit of credit for keeping the team grinding until Game 162, too. It is especially hard when there are so many individuals struggling at any given time.
The Royals will probably be my pick for the AL Central next season, winning 90 games.
Seeing what Jensen can do for this short time REALLY excites me for next year. Having the offense led by Witt, Garcia, Pasquatch, Sally and Jensen sounds like it can be potent. I also assume Cags will make the adjustments and still add a power bat while Tolbert can hit for average. Lots of talent on the team.
Honestly this coaching staff overall (maybe not on the hitting side) deserves a lot of credit for keeping us competitive as long as they did. We lost Ragans for most of the season, Bubic for the second half, Lugo for the bulk of it, and both Lorenzen and Wacha for some of it. The entire rotation at some point or another was out of action, as well as some pieces of the bullpen, yet we finished above .500 and now are looking ahead wondering who will be the odd man out for next year’s rotation. The organization has proven now that they can develop starting pitching and can make trades to fill needs on the fly which is strongly encouraging.
Imagine telling someone last off season Witt got 8 fwar still, Maikel would be the 2nd most valuable 3rd baseman in baseball, and Vinnie and Salvy went 30 100 and our offense get substantially worse.
Isbel’s BA is up by .26, had the most hits he had in a season, and his SOs are down from last season. I wouldn’t quite call it a regression.
I just cannot get over that we couldnt take advantage of Detroit’s collapse. The surge of the Guardians shouldnt have mattered; we were between them when there was the 15gm gap
I think we have a lot of tomato plants, and we got a couple of fully ripened tomatoes this year!
At the same time, had we gone 86-76 again this year, we still would have likely missed the playoffs, depending on where those 4 wins came from.