By Adam Gardner | Aug. 31, 2026
You can’t accuse the Kansas City Royals of throwing in the towel.
The Royals suffered a sweep at the hands of Los Angeles Dodgers Aug. 10-12, then turned around and went 13-3 in their final 16 games of the month.
The team is playing well and the players are feeling confident. Just take a look at this pic that was making the rounds on social media:
It’s been a heck of a run, even if it won’t end up in a postseason appearance.
“These past two weeks we’ve played well and won a lot of games, and they should be proud of that,” manager Matt Quatraro said after the Cleveland series. “The resolve of these guys is good. We’ll be ready to play Tuesday.”
The season isn’t technically dead yet, but even with this 13-3 stretch, KC still needs to finish the season 19-5 in their final 24 games to make it to .500 on the season. Even an 81-81 record doesn’t guarantee the final Wild Card spot, either.
Wild Card
I took to Twitter (X, whatever) on Friday prior to the Royals weekend series at the Cleveland Guardians and said KC would need to sweep the series to make this a realistic conversation.
The Royals promptly went out and won the first two games of the series, then took a 1-0 lead in the first inning in Sunday’s finale. I was really trying to wrap my head around the idea of the Royals legitimately being in the postseason hunt … and then Cleveland scored 11 unanswered runs and the Royals woke up 7.5 games back in the standings.
That’s what makes this task so unrealistic; there just isn’t enough time left. The Royals won two-of-three against the very team in that third Wild Card spot and only made up 1 game. It’s admirable they’re out there going for it and playing good baseball, but there just aren’t enough baseball games left for the Royals to pull this off.
The math just isn’t math’n (to borrow an online phrase that has burrowed into my brain). KC has 24 games left, they need to make up 7.5 games, they have to 19-5 to get to 81-81 and there are seven teams in front of them. Here’s what the teams in front of Kansas City would need to finish in order to have no better than an 81-81 record:
- Cleveland: 12-13
- Baltimore: 13-12
- Toronto: 13-11
- Texas: 14-11
- Minnesota: 16-9
- Seattle: 17-8
- Detroit: 18-8
Maybe the Royals will be able to pass Minnesota, Seattle and Detroit? That would leave a better taste in the mouths of players and some fans, I’m sure, but it doesn’t actually do anything but make the Royals draft pick next season worse.
Is there any hope?
I know I sound pretty negative for a guy who references the “Hope” line from Shawshank Redemption a lot – there’s just so little time and so little wiggle room left for the Royals to make a run at the postseason.
But let’s just imagine for a second what it might actually take. Detroit, Seattle and Minnesota have not been playing well lately, and the Royals are only 3.5 games away from passing those three teams, so that would leave Cleveland, Baltimore, Toronto and Texas in the way.
Texas still has to play the Tampa Bay Rays and Boston Red Sox, so maybe they get swept in those 7 games? The Rangers also play Toronto, so someone has to lose those games and the Royals need them both to lose.
KC still has three home games against the Blue Jays, so perhaps a Royals sweep this coming weekend sends Toronto into a tailspin.
The Orioles have games with Boston, Cleveland, Toronto, Milwaukee and the New York Yankees. This gives Baltimore an opportunity to make great strides or completely fall off the map. For this exercise, we need it to be the latter.
That leaves the Cleveland Guardians standing in the way. Wouldn’t you know it, guess who will play the Royals at Kauffman Stadium in the final series of the year? It would be pretty incredible for all these dominoes to fall perfectly in order to set up a winner-takes-the-Wild Card series in KC on Sept. 25-27.
It’s a lot of things that need to go right for that sort of dream scenario to occur. Feel free to continue hoping, because of course I won’t completely give up until KC is mathematically eliminated, but I wouldn’t blame anyone for checking out at this point.
Jac shows no mercy
The Royals were dominating the Blue Jays in last Thursday’s series finale in Toronto. So much so that the Jays used Myles Straw, an outfielder generally, on the mound to record outs in a game they’d given up on.
Jac Caglianone saw the opportunity and jumped on it.
Straw floated a pitch in and Cags used his lumberjack strength to send it quickly out of the yard. I was immediately reminded of someone using a juiced-up bat in slow-pitch softball.
It made me wonder if Cags ever tagged a long with his friends to an intramural softball game while at the University of Florida. And maybe the score was lopsided in that game, and maybe the teams decided Cags should take a hack just to see what pain he could inflict on a softball. I imagine it would have looked a lot like what he did to the pitch from Straw.
Also, if you ever see me staring into space, this might be the type of thing I’m thinking about.
I haven’t loved it when other teams’ players homered off of Royals position players pitching out of desperation, but watching Jac do that against Toronto made me feel a lot better. We’ve got to enjoy the little things, right?
