ANAHEIM -- News trickled through the clubhouse and into the dugout about 20 minutes before the Royals’ series opener against the Angels began on Tuesday night: Cleveland came back to beat Detroit, an improbable American League Central takeover that has all of baseball watching right now.
It also made official what the Royals had come to accept over the past two weeks: Their season will end this Sunday in the regular-season finale -- on the outskirts of October, marking the end of a season that had high expectations following their playoff run in 2024.
The Guardians’ win eliminated Kansas City from postseason contention on Tuesday, news that the Royals responded to by beating the Angels, 8-4, at Angel Stadium, as the focus officially shifted from holding out hope to just finishing strong.
Kansas City (79-78) is eyeing a winning final road trip to finish the season above .500 in back-to-back years. That’s something the franchise hasn’t done since the 2014-15 season, and it has won 82 or more games just five times since 1993.
“When you expect to do it and you don’t do it, it hurts more,” first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino said. “It gives us an opportunity to regroup this offseason. But we’ve got five more left. There’s a lot of pride in this team, and we’re going to show it this week.”
Kansas City opened the final week of the regular season with exactly one path to make the postseason. It would have required both the Guardians and Astros to go 0-6 this week, the Royals to go 6-0 and the Rangers to go 5-1, resulting in a four-way tie for the final American League Wild Card spot. The Royals would own that specific tiebreaker, combining their record against the other three teams.
“You need two teams that have winning records to lose out and we need to win out -- it’s not the most likely thing in the world, but you have hope, especially with Detroit going up early,” Pasquantino said, referencing the Tigers-Guardians game that the clubhouse TVs had on pregame Tuesday. “The chance was there, but at the end of the day, we eliminated ourselves, in my opinion. Few games in there that we could have flipped. Then you’re not in the spot we’re in. We made our bed, and now we got to lay in it.”
Clearly, the Royals knew the odds. There are other portions of the schedule that they can point to when dissecting the season: the 9-14 start to the year, the 8-18 stretch in June, and the 2-5 road trip through Cleveland and Philadelphia earlier this month, which all but doomed their postseason hopes. Even looking back to earlier this month, when these Angels came to Kauffman Stadium and won two of the three games by shutting the Royals' offense down and watching Angels outfielder Jo Adell hit two game-deciding home runs.
The Royals did not let that happen Tuesday night with a 15-hit offensive performance. They jumped out to a two-run lead in the first and tacked on runs in the fifth, seventh and eighth innings. Starter Cole Ragans struck out 10 batters in five innings in his second start off the injured list and the first time he’s finished five innings since May 16, before going on the IL first with a groin strain and then with a left rotator cuff strain.
“Glad to finally get through at least five,” Ragans said. “It’s been a minute. Felt good to go out there for that one.”
The Royals had hoped the stakes were higher when they mapped out Ragans’ return-to-play plan, getting their ace back in the middle of a playoff push. Instead, he’s focused on finishing the season healthy ahead of 2026.
Because the goal won’t change next year, the bar has been raised for this organization, which is why missing out on October is a disappointment.
There will be plenty of time to dissect what went wrong and what changes must be made for the Royals to rebound in ‘26. The pitching injuries stacked up, and even though the depth stepped up enough to cover the innings, there’s no replacing the rotation’s frontline starters.
Mostly, 2025 was defined by an inconsistent offense that entered Tuesday night third-worst in the Majors in runs-per-game (3.95), ahead of only the Rockies (3.74) and Pirates (3.60).
“It’s disappointing, for sure,” manager Matt Quatraro said. “But we've got to be honest with ourselves. We didn’t do enough to get there, you know? That’s only on us, and there’s a lot of things we’re going to have to look at to determine how we fix that.”