By Adam Gardner | Aug. 24, 2026
The Kansas City Royals have won eight-straight games.
The Kansas City Royals have won eight-straight games.
I had to type it twice because it looks so nice. It’s their longest such winning streak since winning eight games in 2024.
It’s an entertaining, fun winning streak for the club and fans to enjoy, on the surface. Beyond that it makes us all pause and ask if we might really see a furious race to the 2026 postseason. Let’s get into it.
Royals sweep the Tigers
After finishing off a four-game sweep of the Athletics on Thursday afternoon, the Detroit Tigers came to Kansas City for a weekend series and the Royals just kept winning.
Noah Cameron continued his hot stretch and the Royals won 5-2 on Friday. Michael Wacha gave another strong start on Saturday, a 3-1 Royals win. Then KC slugged its way to an 11-7 win on Sunday, scoring 5 runs in the second inning and 4 runs in the fifth inning after the Tigers had tied the game.
Nick Loftin and John Rave both homered on Sunday. Getting super-wild, Salvador Perez stole second base, his first steal in five seasons.
“That feels even better than a home run,” Perez said after the game. “It took me five years to steal one bag.”
Salvy ripping off a stolen base really punctuates how everything is going the Royals way right now. Strong pitching, slugging bats – they’re getting things done in a variety of ways and it’s showing up in the win column.
Wildcard, baby
That change in the Royals win column is showing up most notably in the American League Wild Card standings.
I mentioned in Thursday’s post that even though it’s fun the Royals are winning, they would still need to finish 27-7 to get to .500 on the season, a number that might get them the third Wild Card spot.
Not only that, but they need to skip by seven other teams, which means the Royals have to win and other teams have to lose. It’s a tall order and it’s really not likely.
But what if, right?
Cleveland came back from an 11-game deficit in the final month of the season to win the division, just last year! That’s pretty crazy, but crazy things happen in baseball all the time.
And now that magic number to get to 81-81 is just 23-7. Still a very difficult thing to accomplish, but it’s a little more attainable than 27-7.
But what about all those teams the Royals would need to jump? Conveniently enough, the Royals get to play a couple of those teams which means they can somewhat take things into their own hands. The Royals have six games against the Blue Jays and six against the Guardians. Cleveland is currently tied with the Texas Rangers for that third and final Wild Card spot and Toronto is 1.5 games back of them.
There are still the Twins, Orioles, Mariners and Tigers standing in KC’s way, and the Royals have already concluded the season series with each of those teams. But playing well in the 12 games left against Toronto and Cleveland could go a long way to turn a dream into reality.
It’s not insane to see a path to the postseason, is it?
Why it’s frustrating
Yes, it’s a little insane. The eight-game winning streak is really cool, but it’s just not realistic to think a team with a .439 winning percentage could win 23 of its final 30 games.
The Royals bullpen also hasn’t magically turned a corner, either. It’s a group that is a shadow of what was expected heading into this season, and the best bullpen piece is now trying things out in the starting rotation again.
The very thing that helped torpedo the Royals chances earlier in the season is still very much a big problem right now.
We know 12 of the final 30 games are against Toronto and Cleveland. Who makes up that final 18? Miami, Boston, Arizona, Houston, Pittsburgh and the White Sox. Every single one of those teams has a better record than the Royals, and all of them are still battling for the postseason.
The Pirates are probably the worst team left on the Royals schedule, and even they are only six games under .500 right now.
So the schedule doesn’t really line up well for a historic run to close out the season.
That makes me reflect back on why the Royals have so much ground to make up now that they’re finally playing like a Major League Baseball team, and the reason is because of the piss-poor start to the season.
Nothing went well from the beginning. The bullpen imploded constantly, the offense couldn’t muster sustained attacks, and little things like baserunning turned into negatives nearly every game.
As fun as the current winning streak has been, it was even worse watching KC flounder about in the first half of the season.
And even with the winning streak and the weekend sweep, the Royals are still four games back of the Tigers in the standings. KC doesn’t just have to win a bunch and skip several teams, they need to win a bunch just to make up ground before catching these other teams.
It’s really too much to ask.
But…
Call me stupid, call me a sucker, tell me I should be more angry with the club for allowing the bad start to the season ruin another year of Bobby Witt Jr.’s contract – those might all be accurate.
But I can’t extinguish that little light inside me right now that continues to flicker and grows a little brighter with each Royals win. That light is hope, and as Andy Dufresne said in Shawshank Redemption, “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
That quote has been engraved in my spirit for decades. I remember that quote echoing in my soul back in 2014 and 2015. Maybe I’m a naïve optimist, but why even watch sports if you don’t have at least a little optimism about your favorite team?
The winning streak could come to an end Tuesday, and the Royals could go 7-23 in the final 30 games. You could throw my positivity in my face and laugh at me, but it’s not going to stop me from always having at least a little bit of hope for the future.
There have been too many opportunities for the Royals franchise to put out my flame – if it hasn’t happened by now, I don’t know that it ever will.
Adopted NL team
I don’t know if anyone else does this, but I have an adopted National League team that I sort of cheer for as long as it doesn’t go against the Royals in some way. My NL team is the Milwaukee Brewers.
There are a few highly-scientific reasons for this. My mom’s side of the family mostly lives in Wisconsin. The Brewers baseball mitt logo is one of the greatest sports logos ever.
I’m also a little bit of a sucker for a blue/gold color combination. It just strikes my eyes in a pleasant way.
The biggest reason, though, is because of a trip my wife and I took to Milwaukee back in 2018. We had Southwest Airlines vouchers to use and we were able to book a flight to Milwaukee and back for free.
We found a neighborhood we liked; shoutout to Old World Third Street, now known as Dr. Martin Luther King Drive. In one small block you can visit Wisconsin Cheese Mart, Usinger’s Famous Sausage, Mader’s German Restaurant, The Brat House, Old German Beer Hall, and Who’s on Third (which has fantastic fried cheese curds).
The people we met that weekend were awesome. Everyone was incredibly friendly and it reminded us a lot of Kansas City and our hometown.
We also went to a Brewers game when they hosted the San Diego Padres – the timing meant we saw Lorenzo Cain and Mike Moustakas playing with Milwaukee and Eric Hosmer playing for San Diego. It was a tiny Royals World Series Champions reunion.
We loved the visit so much that we’ve been back to Milwaukee two more times since then just to visit our favorite neighborhood, filling up on beer, sausage, cheese and pretzels before coming back home.
That’s how the Brewers came to be my “second team.” Make no mistake, the Royals are my #1 love, my FTF (Favorite Team Forever).
If you’re like me and want to have some sort of interest in the postseason even if it doesn’t include the Royals, give the Brewers a shot. They’re leading the NL Central by 6 games and are battling the Los Angeles Dodgers for the No. 1 seed in the National League.
