Kansas City Royals clinch MLB playoff berth for first time since 2015 World Series

The Kansas City Royals are finally returning to the Major League Baseball playoffs.

After enduring a disappointing 106-loss season in 2023, the Royals have stormed back to the MLB postseason for the first time since they won the organization’s second World Series championship in 2015.

On Friday, the Royals clinched a playoff spot despite losing 3-0 at Atlanta. They got in automatically later in the evening when the Minnesota Twins were eliminated from the running for an American League wild-card berth with a 7-2 home loss to the Baltimore Orioles.

The Royals currently hold the third and final AL wild-card spot behind the Detroit Tigers. KC is a game behind the Tigers for the second AL wild-card spot.

The two teams have two games remaining to finalize their playoff seeding. The Royals could move up to second or remain in third, but either way their postseason berth is secured.

That much accomplished, the Royals and their fans can begin celebrating an epic turnaround in a city where playoff baseball has been all too rare. This is just the third postseason berth for the Royals in the last 40 seasons.

And a lot has changed for the Royals since the last time they hoisted the World Series trophy nine years ago.

There are new faces in the starting pitching rotation, in Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha. A new superstar at shortstop in the uber-talented Bobby Witt Jr.

And then there’s the lone constant: a longtime major-league veteran, all with the Royals, named Salvador Perez. The Most Valuable Player of the ‘15 series against the New York Mets, he has longed to get back to playing October baseball ever since.

Perez has played catcher, first base and designated hitter this season, but he hasn’t had to shoulder the burden alone. A convoy of veterans was brought in over the past year to support KC’s young core of homegrown talent.

This past offseason, the Royals weren’t projected to be a playoff team in 2024. Several pundits didn’t even foresee a winning season for KC.

After all, the Royals hadn’t enjoyed a winning campaign in eight years, and they’d lost 100 or more games in three of those seasons.

Few outsiders believed in the ability of the Royals’ revamped roster to contend in 2024, but they certainly did. And during spring training, it became apparent that their starting pitching would be solid.

That belief spread as the regular season commenced. The Royals were competitive against the Orioles in their first road series. But there were plenty of downs to go with the ups. Months later, they went 9-11 in a brutal 20-game stretch against top-tier teams.

They survived a pair of late-season seven-game losing streaks.

And now the Royals are a playoff team again. Their 31-win improvement from 2023 to 2024 is among the greatest in baseball history ... and they’ve been rewarded for it.