By Adam Gardner | July 6, 2026
The disease of apathy has settled on this Kansas City Royals season.
Poor play, injuries, short bursts of quality hitting and pitching followed by extended streaks of terrible baseball – it’s all led to apathy from the fanbase.
Even I’ve succumbed to the disease without even realizing I was exhibiting symptoms. I’ve been plodding along, keeping an eye on the Royals but spending more time following the World Cup.
I’ve always been a sucker for international sporting competitions, but I didn’t expect the Royals to slip from my mind almost completely. It wasn’t until I heard Carrington Harrison put into words what was happening that I realized I had full blown apathy.
Harrison spoke during his radio show on 96.5 The Fan about how nobody is benefiting from the World Cup more than the Kansas City Royals. Everyone is swept up in the WC that they have barely given the terrible Royals any thought at all.
Normally, Harrison said, his show would have texts and calls upset with the KC players, coaches and front office. But they’ve hardly gotten anything because the collective eyes are on soccer.
Then I had a conversation with one of my brothers about the Royals and afterward I realized it was the first time in a couple weeks that I’d gotten in depth with anyone about the team.
There wasn’t even a new Looping Liner post as normally scheduled this past Thursday because I couldn’t bring myself to write it. Only two games had been played since my last post and the Royals had lost them both. Now it’s the following Monday and the Royals won just once in that time frame. They’re 2-8 in their last 10 games.
The Royals barely averaged more than 15,200 fans for their three-game series against the Tampa Bay Rays during the week. Luckily for KC, the Philadelphia Phillies came in this weekend with all their stars and gravitational pull, bringing in a crowd over 30,000 on Saturday, but that number dipped back down to fewer than 15,000 on Sunday.
It’s the final home series before the All-Star Break and it needs to be a time of self-reflection for everyone involved with the Royals.
Disaster of a first half
This season has been a complete disaster for the Royals which has led to the apathy people have now.
There were so many good vibes heading into this year, too, which makes it that much more frustrating. We had several players show out in the World Baseball Classic and I wasn’t alone in thinking that momentum would carry over into the season.
National pundits predicted big seasons for the Royals and their players. MLB Network talking heads predicted awards to be won, the division to be conquered, and a postseason appearance where the Royals could make some noise.
But as they say in baseball, momentum is the next day’s starting pitcher. Whatever happened today, or whatever we think *might* happen tomorrow is meaningless. The only thing that matters is what actually happens each time the team takes the field.
And what happened for the Royals was a lot of bad, losing baseball.
The 2026 season – so far – hasn’t been one of those seasons where we can point at one thing and say, “This is what needs to be fixed.” I wish it were that easy. In the early 2000s the Royals could hit and score runs, but the pitching staff was awful. We could look at the team and say, “they just need to fix their pitching.”
But it hasn’t been just one thing for the 2026 edition. The starting pitching hasn’t been as good as hoped or expected. The lineup was pretty much worthless for over a month and has been streaky, at best, ever since. There have been baserunning mistakes and unforced errors over and over again.
The relief pitching has been sad and the managerial decisions on how to use the relief pitching has been maddening at times. Everyone could see Carlos Estevez didn’t have the same life in his arm during Spring Training, but the Royals hoped he’d find some adrenaline-backed lifesaver in a real game. But Estevez blew the first save opportunity of the year and the season has been a kick in the pants ever since.
Lucas Erceg started strong but fell apart. First, his physical delivery of pitches was sub-standard from his breakout 2024 season. Then he mentally fell apart as he continued to blow saves. But KC manager Matt Quatraro kept putting him in those situations and hoping he wouldn’t fail.
It kept getting worse and worse, though, and eventually Erceg was given a lifeline and taken out of the closer’s role.
Quatraro has also made questionable batting order decisions, even though I really don’t get too worked up over the batting order. Carter Jensen has been hot as donut grease but that didn’t stop Q from shuffling the order around because of pitching matchups.
I understand the idea. Over the course of a long season, the numbers should eventually even out and you want to play the optimal lineup as often as possible to take advantage of everything you can. So why not have Lane Thomas leadoff against lefties despite Jensen rocking his hitting streak, right? It’s the “analytical” thing to have a right-handed hitter face a left-handed pitcher, right?
The problem is Jensen has been a much better hitter than Lane Thomas, regardless of what hand the pitcher uses to hurl the ball. Jensen’s number are actually quite a bit better against lefties than they are against righties – the only difference is Carter has hit 11 home runs against RHP and just 2 against LHP.
Quatraro’s tough first half
So we’ve got questionable pitching decisions and we’ve got Lane Thomas leading off even though the better hitter is quite clearly spelled out in the numbers. That’s not all, though.
Q spent a large chunk of the first half of the season jerking Jensen and Jac Caglianone in and out of the lineup. Again, it’s that boogeyman idea of a left-handed hitter facing a left-handed pitcher.
This caused Q and the Royals to yank around their two most-promising young hitters and sit them for entire games in one of their formative years. Cags was the No. 6 overall pick in 2024 and Jensen hit at every level of the minor leagues, but the Royals and Quatraro were dead set on turning them both into platoon players.
Why handicap yourself like that? Why limit the ability of two young players with a ton of potential? It was sickening as a fan to see Jensen and Cags on the bench as the team continued to struggle. With every loss meaning the season was more and more lost, it became more and more frustrating to see the organization not go all-in on the youngsters and let them learn at the Major League level.
Eventually the Royals hand was forced by injuries. Quatraro had no other choice but to play Jensen and Cags and even had to put them at the top of the order (where they’ve thrived).
I’m always willing to say a baseball manager gets too much credit when the team wins and too much blame when the team loses, and I believe that’s true for Quatraro. It’s not his fault so many players underperformed – he only has so many relief pitchers available and if they all stink, he can’t magically change it.
But the margins are so thin for the Royals that every decision carries great importance, and Quatraro’s decisions too often didn’t maximize Kansas City’s chances to win in the first half of the season.
Injuries galore
And then we have something Quatraro and General Manager J.J. Picollo can’t really do much about – nearly every single key player has been injured this season.
Cole Ragans, Kris Bubic, Estevez, Vinnie Pasquantino, Maikel Garcia – even Bobby Witt Jr. missed a week of games. Ragans had “Tommy John” surgery on his throwing elbow for the third time and the Royals don’t expect him back until the middle of 2027.
Even if the Royals had dreams of coming back and contending in 2026, like I foolishly believed was within dreaming distance, the injury bug has given a big Dikembe Mutombo finger wag to that idea.
Kansas City isn’t Los Angeles or New York. The Royals don’t have the same means to get replacements and sadly the minor league system isn’t stocked with young players ready to make big differences.
When a team like the Royals gets hit with this many injuries to key players, you know they’re cursed.
If the team hadn’t played so bad to start the season then maybe we could talk about the Royals just treading water until they get healthier, but that ship has sailed. It’s not treading water when you’re standing at the bottom of the ocean.
Silver linings
There are some things to enjoy from the first half of this season. Witt has been fantastic and it’s a joy knowing that he plays for my favorite team. I’m really happy he’s earned his first All-Star Game starting nod.
It’s great that Michael Wacha earned an ASG invitation, too; his first since 2015. He’s been so good and reliable.
I mentioned Jensen and Cags and watching them grow as players. I can’t wait to see how they finish out their first full season in MLB.
We will hopefully see Salvador Perez pass George Brett on the Royals all-time home run list. That should put a lovely bow on the end of Salvy’s Royals career.
But even all of that isn’t enough to wash off the stink of the first half of the season.
Extended break
It’s with that thought that I leave you for a few weeks. I’m going on vacation and won’t be able to post while I’m gone.
When I return I’ll take a look back at the last couple of series before the All-Star Break, then how Witt and Wacha did in the game, and how the second half of the season is going. I’ll likely get to talk about trades the Royals have made because there is no reason the front office shouldn’t shop the majority of the roster.
I know apathy is hitting us all, but I still love baseball and the Royals are my team. I will continue on, but I welcome this break with open arms.
