NEW YORK – A no good, very bad road trip has concluded for the Royals, who now head back to Kansas City hoping the home scenery will help reset them, fire them up, whatever it takes to get this thing back on track.
A 7-0 loss to the Yankees on Sunday at Yankee Stadium closed out an 0-6 trip through Detroit and New York for the Royals, who have lost seven consecutive games and need to find solutions quickly to avoid the slide slipping even more.
The road trip had a little bit of everything. Close games. Heartbreaking losses. Blowout losses. Drama and tension heightened by a team mired in a losing streak.
The discourse around the Royals is, understandably, red-hot. Fans expected more out of this team, but no one expected more than the Royals themselves. A 7-15 start to the season isn’t the way it was supposed to go.
So where do they go from here?
“It’s disappointing, but you move on,” Bobby Witt Jr. said. “You can either get better and improve, or you just keep doing the same thing, showing up and doing kind of what we’ve been doing. We just got to get better and flip the page.”
They need Ragans right
The Royals needed a stopper Sunday, but they were put into an early hole that only grew. Cole Ragans issued a career-high eight walks, and three of the four hits he allowed were home runs. That led to a final line of seven runs in 4 1/3 innings.
The Royals’ rotation still ranks 10th in MLB with a 3.66 ERA, but Ragans’ season has been inconsistent with a 6.00 ERA across four starts. One of those was a shortened outing when he got hit in the hand by a comebacker in the first inning. He held the Tigers scoreless across six innings on Tuesday, but he couldn’t carry that momentum into Sunday.
The Royals have yet to win a game with Ragans on the mound. There’s no understating how much they need him to be the ace he has shown in the past.
On Sunday, it was the command that hurt Ragans most, throwing just 49 strikes out of 97 pitches. Three of his eight walks came around to score.
“Just [need to] go back to the drawing board and try to be smooth, loose, free,” Ragans said. “Stop trying to make the perfect pitch. Just go out there and be free and easy.”
They need the stars
If you think you’ve already read this once (or twice), it’s because we’ve written it once (or twice). It’s no secret why the Royals’ offense isn’t clicking, and it’s really not complicated: The middle of the order has to be better.
Witt’s OPS is climbing; two hits Sunday brought it to .716. But he has scored only four runs this year. On Sunday, Witt was stranded on second in the first inning, and his double in the sixth turned into an out at the plate when Elias Díaz, trying to score from first, was sent home by third-base coach Vance Wilson. That was a mistake; Díaz was easily thrown out.
Vinnie Pasquantino showed some life on this trip with two homers, but he is otherwise still struggling with a .499 OPS. Salvador Perez, a day after a very public tiff with manager Matt Quatraro over the words “mental breather,” went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. Perez is slashing .152/.200/.291 this year.
“It’s understood that, ‘Hey, we’ve got to pull ourselves out of this here,’” Pasquantino said earlier this weekend. “The only way we can do that is with each other. … When you’re going through it, you can question everything. But you got to find a way through it. And that’s why I keep talking about keeping your head up, because it can happen quick.”
Relieve the pressure
Losing is no fun for any team. For a contending team, the pressure mounts quickly no matter where you’re at in the calendar.
Right now, it seems Kansas City can’t get out of its own way. It’s playing out on the field and off it. Winning is going to relieve the tightened grip the Royals have on the bats they swing and the pitches they throw.
But they know they’ve got to execute.
“Everybody’s frustrated,” Quatraro said. “Nobody wants to have a start like this. But it is early, mid-April, and we play better baseball, that’s what’s in our control. If we’re able to do that, we’ll dig ourselves out. There’s way too much talent in there. There’s way too many high-character guys in there.”