Slumping KC Royals should heed tale of 2014 and old wisdom of George Brett & Ned Yost

Desperate for a victory on the eve of the last home game, the Royals instead added a jarring chapter to their recent plummet. Yet another distressing loss further jeopardized their once-cozy looking postseason hopes — particularly considering their last two series were scheduled for the road.

In a somber clubhouse afterward, hushed words of resolve seemed to loom as hollow. As one team leader put it: “It hurts; it obviously does. But there’s nothing we can do right now. We’ve got to come out tomorrow and win.”

But enough about the 2014 Royals, who on a parallel Saturday a decade ago lost for the eighth time in 12 games. In the process, they fell to 83-71 and into a tie with Seattle for the final American League Wild Card berth behind Oakland (85-70).

If that sounds familiar, it should:

On the eve of their last 2024 home game on Saturday at Kauffman Stadium, the Royals mustered a wretched 9-0 loss against the Giants. Their sixth straight defeat left them stranded and reeling at 82-73.

So at the end of the day Saturday, they were a half-game up on Minnesota for the second of three AL Wild Card spots and a mere game ahead of hard-charging Detroit — with an odd team sure to be out in the musical chairs down the stretch.

These are particularly tragic numbers when all anyone wants to think about is the magic number — which as of Saturday night was six or seven, depending on tiebreakers and which teams stay around.

Afterward, manager Matt Quatraro put the moment in context with a similar theme to the above words of Eric Hosmer from 2014.

“They’re hurting, right?” he said. “They put their blood, sweat and tears into this for seven months. They don’t want to play baseball like that. They know it. They’re proud. They’re going to pick each other up. And we wouldn’t be in the spot we’re in if we didn’t have a lot of high-character guys in that room.”

Much as he might feel it inside, Quatraro stopped short of the “we’ve got to come out tomorrow and win” part.

Perhaps because he seemed to concede what has appeared evident for days.

While starter Brady Singer on Saturday suffered another of his recent struggles. the most tangible and obvious issue the Royals have right now is their offensive evaporation: They’ve scored a total of four runs in the last four games and, after going 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position on Saturday, are hitting just .186 (40-of-215) in that scenario in 28 games since Aug. 23.

But it might well be understood that there is something deeper hampering that production.

As Quatraro spoke to the broader issue of rebooting, he referenced that something more than meets the eye seems at play.

“If it was, ‘Oh, tomorrow we’ll play better,’” he said, snapping his fingers for emphasis, “we would have done that a long time ago. (But) you’ve got to pitch better. You’ve got to run the bases better. You’ve got to hit better.”

After a slight pause, he added, “You’ve got to relax more. You’ve got to take some of the pressure off for yourself and understand that no one person is going to change the outcome of every game.

“You have to be a team. And that’s why we’re in the spot we’re in, because we’ve put a good team of guys together.”

When he said that, it reminded me of George Brett’s old go-to: “Try easier” — an elusive but vital notion.

Quatraro smiled at the suggestion that was essentially his point.

After first making it clear that this team never has suffered from lack of effort or intensity or being attuned to how to win, he said, “You do have to back off a little bit.”

“It’s trusting your teammates,” he added. “I mean, that’s really what it is.”

Perhaps accordingly, though, Quatraro suggested there would be no change in messaging beyond the urgency of the next game — day in and day out.

And as fragile as the situation has become, the Royals certainly can take some motivation from both the reservoir of what’s gotten them here — particularly Bobby Witt Jr., Sal Perez and the starting nucleus of Seth Lugo, Cole Ragans and Michael Wacha — and an enchanted chapter in franchise history.

To be clear, at this stage any resemblance between these Royals and those is coincidental — other than the fact that Perez, the ageless wonder, remains a franchise foundation.

The teams are stylistically distinct. And, certainly, it remains to be seen what this version has left after a stretch that reeks of a collapse.

But there are intriguing similarities, too.

Each team entered those seasons seeking to purge brutal pasts, and each did strenuous anti-gravity work to get to this point:

In 2014, the Royals were fighting through a 28-year postseason drought. This team is trying to shed a 106-loss season that underscored the fact the Royals had averaged 100 losses in their last five full seasons entering 2024.

Each came to the crossroads right about now, surging into late August only to fall back to Earth.

Through Saturday, this team had won only seven of its last 22. Through that last home Saturday in 2014, that team had lost 13 of 23 — including on this very weekend a nine-run loss (10-1 to Detroit) and, a la this last Friday night, a one-run loss (3-2) into the final Sunday home game.

Then this happened in 2014: The Royals beat the Tigers on that final home Sunday and revived and reset.

“We definitely needed this win today,” Lorenzo Cain said then. “That was huge. That was bigger than people know. Detroit came in, and let’s be honest, they embarrassed us.”

Everything looked different with that one win — which is why Cain was “taking like 15 shirts” with him for the seven-game road swing that the Royals reckoned would be extended with a road Wild Card game.

(Instead, the Royals surpassed Oakland to be able to host the game — one of the most momentous in Kansas City sports history as a portal to an unimaginable World Series run and winning it all the next year.)

In this case, maybe that win and change of mindset will have happened by the time you read this in the Monday paper.

If not, the struggle intensifies ... but the possibilities remain.

Nothing is assured, of course.

But that includes any assumption of the Royals demise.

Or as manager Ned Yost loved to say in the final weeks of the 2014 season: “Nobody knows what’s going to happen.”