At last, KC Royals are in MLB playoffs again. Here’s why they can do damage there

The Royals lost a baseball game late Friday in Atlanta. A night that could have provided their most meaningful victory in nearly a decade concluded instead with a shutout. They were never really in it.

And, oh, about two hours after that game, they produced a baseball idiosyncrasy — a champagne-soaked losing clubhouse.

That’s right: The Royals, a year after a franchise record-setting 106-loss season, are back in the playoffs for the first time since hoisting the World Series trophy in 2015, clinching their spot when the Twins lost later Friday night.

“You guys deserve this more than any team I’ve ever been around,” manager Matt Quatraro told the team before popping the champagne in the clubhouse, as caught on TV by Bally Sports.

The Star’s beat writer, Jaylon Thompson, is in Atlanta and provided coverage of that scene.

“We always say (that) it doesn’t always happen on your time,” Quatraro said. “We had to wait a little bit tonight, but that makes it even sweeter.”

Well, to be clear, the wait is not just tonight. The Royals broke the second-longest active postseason drought in baseball.

That they secured their first playoff berth in nine years on the heels of a loss, and in a month when they’ve lost plenty, probably furnishes at least the semblance of a feeling that they backed in.

Let me clear that up: They did not.

Let me add this, too: Who cares?

The timing of the flows, or the ill-timing of the ebbs, is irrelevant over a 162-game season. The full marathon leaves the Kansas City Royals as baseball’s best story and owner of one of the best turnarounds in MLB history.

I’ll remind you that it grew so bad in 2023 that Quatraro, who embodies the five capital letters on his shirt (TODAY), told the team last summer to prioritize next year. That’s not all he said, either — he told 24 of the 26 players in the clubhouse they shouldn’t assume they’d have a spot on the roster this season.

“I remember telling guys, ‘Here’s what’s guaranteed: Bobby (Witt) and Salvy (Perez) will be on the team next year,’” Quatraro told me earlier this season. “Beyond that? We don’t know. So if you have ideas, start now.”

The turnaround required not only modifications to the roster, but modifications to the way a front office thought about how it would construct a roster. Behind the scenes, Quatraro has pushed for much of that — but this front office, led by executive of the year favorite J.J. Picollo, has not only embraced thinking differently but insisted on it.

That’s why they’re here.

Bobby Witt Jr. is why they’re here. The world is about to have a better understanding of what Kansas City already knows about its star shortstop.

Salvador Perez is why they’re here. The world is about to remember that the guy named MVP of this franchise’s last postseason run sandwiched three 100-loss seasons before embarking on another next week. With the same franchise, at that.

But there’s another component of these Royals — one that, like Witt and Perez, we’ve discussed at some length this season, and one that’s also responsible for the remarkable one-year turnaround. Even more than that, it positions the Royals to turn a compelling regular-season story arc into something much more.

The rotation.

The intention here isn’t to downplay the other components. Nobody is more valuable to this team than Witt. It’s to underscore a particular attribute that World Series-winning teams have had. It is the evidenced-backed case, if you will, that a resurgence perhaps has not necessarily yet peaked.

Let me preface this with some logic: A lot of attributes provide elements of correlation to winning championships. Those teams tend to be good in quite a few areas. They tend to have fewer weaknesses than most. As I said, logic.

But this attribute — a formidable rotation — has carried some exceptional weight over the past decade.

In eight consecutive years, every World Series-winning team’s starting rotation has finished top-seven in the majors for combined earned-run average. That’s every year since the Royals used one of the best bullpen’s in league history to close out games and cover for what they didn’t have to open them.

They were the anomaly. Eight straight winners since have been backed by rotations. Four of those last eight either finished first or second in the league in ERA.

This year’s Royals rotation’s ERA: 3.57.

League rank: 2nd.

They are not without flaws, but they are strong precisely where each of the last eight championship teams have been strong.

And they’re top-heavy in a postseason format that only cares about what you have at the top. The opening round next week, which will include either a trip to Baltimore or Houston, is a best-of-three series.

Royals right-hander Seth Lugo is 10th in baseball with a 3.03 ERA. Left-hander Cole Ragans is 12th at 3.14. And right-hander Michael Wacha is 18th at 3.35.

That trio has combined for a 2.07 ERA in September. A baseball proverb will tell you the playoffs are a crapshoot. There’s some truth to that.

Some.

But there’s nowhere you’d rather be strong than the top of the rotation. And collectively, there’s nowhere these Royals are stronger. They comprise the lone team ranking three pitchers in baseball’s top 20 in ERA. I’ll note, since it might soon become relevant, the Astros have two of the top eight. That could be fun.

Isn’t it nice to even care about this again?

By the way, if you’re wondering about the bullpen — because I sure was, given the Royals struggles’ there over the course of the season — it provides some peaks and valleys over that same time frame. It was a regular-season weakness of the Rangers a year ago. Heck, the 2019 Nationals had the second-worst bullpen in the league.

Don’t get it wrong: It matters.

It just matters less. Why? Because you can trim the fat once October arrives, and you can bolster that group with the leftovers from the rotation. (Brady Singer, for what it might or might not soon be worth, has an ERA under 2.00 in the first innings of games this season, and that’s while preserving himself for a greater workload.)

The Royals’ bullpen has also vastly improved in September because Quatraro has treated those games like his team is already playing in October. He has shortened the proverbial circle of trust, and the Royals have responded with the third-best bullpen earned-run average in MLB over the past three weeks.

Quatraro pitched closer Lucas Erceg in three straight games in Washington, and the Royals won them all. Worry about the future later, because you’re not guaranteed one.

That defines the postseason.

Just ask those who have been there.

The Royals collected those guys, prioritizing this kind of experience. And that prioritization ran in such stark contrast to their own recent history that they had to be reminded of it in spring training.

It was then, in Surprise, Arizona, that Quatraro opened the preseason with a short team speech. He mentioned last year, the one that matched a franchise record with 106 losses, before then-34-year-old reliever Will Smith — who hadn’t thrown a pitch for the organization in a decade — felt comfortable enough to interrupt.

“We’re not talking about last year,” he said, as his teammates later recalled in summary. “We weren’t here. Why would we spend energy and time talking about that?”

We’re not anymore.

Plenty else to talk about now.