In a sense, the Royals had some of the same tough decisions to make as the White Sox did coming into this winter. The farm was depleted after shipping off considerable talent to obtain James Shields, Ben Zobrist, and Johnny Cueto.  Obviously, back-to-back World Series appearances, including a victory, are a worthy return for such an investment, but now they’re on the other side, already bumping up against budget constraints with a middling major league roster.  And while they did sign Jason Hammel, sadly, he merely serves to soak up the innings that would have gone to Yordano Ventura.

Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Lorenzo Cain, and Alcides Escobar will all be free agents at the end of the season, and the Royals largely opted to add short-term supporting pieces to make one last run with this group, and how 2018-2020 play out will hinge largely on whether or not they are competing around the deadline. If they have fallen out of the race, they may be able to inject some talent back into the system by trading these players off.  They’re rentals, but it’s better than losing them for nothing, or the greatly diminished compensatory pick system under the new CBA.

Indeed, unless the Royals do surprisingly well selling off their pending free agents, the cupboard is awfully bare. Sal Perez and Danny Duffy are still young and signed long term, but Alex Gordon and Ian Kennedy are on the wrong side of 30, and Gordon is coming off arguably the worst season of his career. That’s about it, although Raul Mondesi Jr. could at least ensure they don’t miss Escobar too much.

The farm is weak.  Their top prospect is pretty much ready, but his ceiling is limited, and the next two behind him are relievers. So despite the front office’s creativity and recent track record of performing greater than the sum of their parts, their system lacks impact potential. And, for all that the Royals did successfully building a team that competed for three years, it took a long time to accumulate it, and the talent is leaving faster than they can bring it in.

Update: On March 1st, the mother site published its Organizational Rankings, and Kansas City weighs in at 27th, only ahead of a troika of truly desolate systems.

Lead Photo Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

But the double blow of them losing Alex Gordon and Mike Moustakas in the same collision/near miss–the latter gone for the season with an ACL tear–is a brutal blow for the defending champions, who are already off to an underwhelming 24-22 start. Gordon had stumbled out of the gate offensively, but Moustakas was second on the team in home runs despite only playing 27 of Kansas City’s 46 games, and together they hobble the left side of the Royal defense that would otherwise has been and would be considered elite.

There were many reasons why the Royals dynasty–back-to-back AL pennants and 270 victories in three seasons deserves some kind of recognition–was due to end this year. Their reliance on extraordinary relief pitching, otherworldly outfield defense, and playing their savant catcher every damn day has always ran the risk of suddenly entering a deep decline at any moment, and the willingness to hang most of their innings on mediocre starters yet again was tempting fate.

But if this is the reason they fall from the top, if grim injury is what ends their torment of the AL Central, it will be a shame.

The Royals have been nothing short of perfect foils of the White Sox for the last four seasons. Almost every pitching probables matchup between the two seems like it portends a walkover for Chicago, only for the Royals to defeat them with almost mocking precision while the Sox bleed value at every margin. This has mostly come while the two franchises have been at polar opposite points in their competitive cycles, but a proto-version of these Royals helped kill the Sox playoff bid at the end of 2012.

As tiresome as seeing the same movie can be, and as much as I never need to hear Hawk Harrelson to make the same talking point about high contact rate and “Kansas City specials” again, the Royals’ run is one of the more truly remarkable developments I have observed since I began writing. They have expanded my mind in how I understood what a competitive team can be, and I am thankful for the havoc they have wreaked on my assumptions.

In the wake of my sabermetric awakening, the important push in improving my analysis is moving beyond the different brand of rigidness that a new approach to seeing value can engender. As open minded as I might have thought I was, I still gravitated toward placing faith in teams that made their hay with top of the rotation starters that soaked up innings, and “stable” hitters who avoided peaks and valleys with walks and power.

The Royals defied that, or at least challenged it, with their waves of “lucky” singles that just never ended, a bullpen back end that made the ‘six-inning game’ cliche seem real, and causing havoc with speed to prop up an offense that pre-2015 read like it should be objectively bad. By the time this Royals group finally reached the mountaintop, they defied it a little less, but their mark had already been made. As intensive as covering baseball can get, it can all start to run together at a point. I had to look up just now to remember which one of the Giants World Series teams dominated with their slate of aces, which one was actually an average pitching staff, and which was flat-out pretty bad at it. And an attempt to recall off-hand the details of each Cardinals playoff contender of the last decade would be even harder.

But I will remember these Royals, partly because who could forget a team that so relentlessly tormented the team I cover, but more because you remember who proves you wrong and alters your thinking. If they shrug off these seemingly devastating injuries and keep grinding the division to dust, I’ll remember them even more, but I won’t be as surprised, and I have them to thank for that too.

Lead Image Credit: Kyle Terada // USA Today Sports Images