CLEVELAND -- Sunday marked the Royals’ first muted postgame clubhouse during their three-game series against the Guardians at Progressive Field.
Instead of dimmed lights and dubstep remixes of Creed blaring through the clubhouse’s speaker system, the Royals packed their bags following their 11-1 loss to the Guardians to the melancholy tunes of country music under the clubhouse’s normal lighting.
But even if the Royals didn’t close out their road trip with a win, they still boarded their plane back to Kansas City with a 4-2 road trip under their belt that closed out a 16-12 August.
It may be too little too late for the 2026 iteration of the Royals, but the past week showed just how close they are to reaching the heights that fans dreamed of at the beginning of the year.
“These past two weeks we’ve played well and won a lot of games, and they should be proud of that,” manager Matt Quatraro said. “The resolve of these guys is good. We’ll be ready to play Tuesday.”
Their strong month was led by outfielder Jac Caglianone, who built a legitimate case to be named American League Player of the Month for August thanks to a .411/.429/.684 slash line with six home runs and 26 RBIs.
But, according to Caglianone’s teammates, the budding superstar still isn’t satisfied.
“The good thing about him is that if you asked him he probably would have thought he hit .150,” first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino said. “He puts a lot of pressure on himself. He could be 4-for-4 but if he gets out the fifth time he’s going to figure out what happened.”
Caglianone’s month also included 11 multi-hit games, eight doubles and 65 total bases after his double on Sunday.
“This has been his best month, and he’s just growing at the big league level,” Quatraro said. “It’s been a lot of fun to watch.”
In all three games against the Guardians, the Royals rolled out a lineup headlined by Carter Jensen, Bobby Witt Jr. and Caglianone. That’s as good of a top three as there is in baseball, regardless of what their record is.
"They're a really good team. We’ve talked about it all year: Records are not indicative of how good a team is,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said after Saturday’s game. “That's a very good team over there… They play really good baseball, and we seem to always get their best."
This week showed that the Royals being at their “best” is more than just them getting contributions from the big names in their lineup.
On Friday, they got contributions from Isaac Collins and Steven Cruz on their way to a win. On Saturday, it was Josh Rojas, Craig Kimbrel and Anthony Gose who led the way.
“It seems like it’s been someone different every night,” Quatraro said.
While none of Rojas, Gose or Kimbrel were on the Royals’ roster in April, they helped pave the way to a winning August.
“In February and March we talked about how we needed depth; you just don’t know why or when or where those guys are going to come from,” Quatraro said. “[Those players coming up] is a credit to our player development and the players themselves for putting themselves in a spot to come up.”
There was only so much that group could do on Sunday, however, as they spent almost all of the game playing from behind. Although the Royals' offense tagged Guardians starter Parker Messick for two runs in the first inning, the Guardians pounced on starter Seth Lugo for three runs in the first inning.
Lugo ended up allowing a career-high nine earned runs in 3 2/3 innings on 93 pitches.
“They did a good job with two strikes,” Lugo said. “They were spoiling good pitches and fouling them off. Hats off to them.”
Cleveland’s final blow against Lugo came via two-run home run from José Ramírez in the fourth inning. Ramírez now has 33 home runs against the Royals, which is the most among all active players.
“I think his stuff was good, he just wasn’t on the plate enough early,” Quatraro said. “There were a lot of little moments that compounded to make it not a good outing.”
Even if those little moments didn’t go the Royals way on Sunday, it was a drop in the bucket in a month that’s featured plenty of positives.”
“We’ve been playing good baseball… we’re doing the little things well,” Pasquantino said.