By Adam Gardner | April 16, 2026
The Royals road trip didn’t get off to the rollicking start we fans hoped. It was déjà vu all over again as Kansas City lost back-to-back games to the Detroit Tigers by identical scores of 2-1.
Your eyes don’t deceive you – Royals pitchers gave up 4 runs in two games and have a pair of losses to show for it because the hitters only managed 2 runs in 18 innings.
Watching the Royals lose Wednesday night in the same basic fashion they lost on Tuesday made me feel like Mike from “Breaking Bad” talking to Walter White:
But you know what? This is baseball. The Royals will play the Tigers again Thursday afternoon and it’s another chance for the offense to shake off the cobwebs and start hitting. It’s another chance to win.
It’s an opportunity to avoid being swept by a divisional opponent and fall to 7-12. #FountainsUp
Offensive woes continue
The Royals managed 6 hits in Wednesday’s game and Jac Caglianone had 3 of those hits. This was actually better than the series opener when KC recorded 4 hits.
In the first two games of the series, the Royals were a combined 10-63 at the plate. That’s good enough for a .159 batting average. When I said Monday that something needed to change, I didn’t mean they needed to hit even worse, but here we are.
Just look at the season slash lines for the players after Wednesday night’s game. It’s not great.
These are the types of games and numbers that kill any sort of excitement for the season. The die-hards will be there through thick and thin, sure, but the bulk of fans want to watch a winner.
They want to see their team score. They want to take their kids and let them feel the excitement of a winning club as fans clap and cheer. They want to feel something positive when discussions of a new stadium pop up.
They certainly don’t want to think to themselves, and hear other people say, “Another season lost in April.” That’s what these numbers do – they remind fans of every negative memory and it’s hard to get past that.
So I’ll say it again: something needs to change. But it needs to change for the better.
ABS Challenge update
Let’s take a look at how things are shaping up with the ball-strike challenge system as we work into the heart of April. The Royals rank 23rd in the league in total number of challenges as of the conclusion of games on April 14.
The Royals are actually fourth-best overall when it comes to winning challenges as they have won 19 of 30 attempts, good for 63.3%. The Cincinnati Reds are tops in MLB with a 70.4% win rate.
KC is the same – 23rd – in number of challenges made by batters, but are 13th in challenges made by catchers. They are one of 12 teams yet to have a pitcher challenge a call.
Salvador Perez and Carter Jensen have combined for 13 out of 19 correct challenge calls behind the plate, 13th best in MLB.
Royals batters have won 54.5% of challenges, good for seventh best. I’m glad the hitters are being pretty successful in relation to the rest of the league when it comes to challenging, but I would love to see them challenge more often.
Compare it to a good shooter in basketball. If you have a player who is shooting 54% from 3-point range but only taking one or two shots per game, you’ve got to get that player to shoot more often. The percentage will probably take a little bit of a hit with more shots, but it’s still valuable to take those attempts.
The Royals batters right now are a 3-point shooter who isn’t taking shots.
Shoot your shot!
A perfect example is Starling Marte in Tuesday night’s loss to the Detroit Tigers. The Royals were down to their last out with the tying run on third base, Marte was facing Kenley Jansen.
With a 1-0 count, Marte watched a pitch come in high that was called a strike to level the count at 1-1. That pitch looked like a sure-fire ball on television and should have been a no-doubt challenge, but Marte never tapped his helmet. He swung and missed at the next pitch, watched two more balls, then flew out to end the game on a 3-2 count.
Had Marte challenged, the count would have been 2-0 in his favor. We have no idea how the rest of the at bat would have gone. Maybe Jansen tries to groove in a strike and Marte hits a home run to give the Royals the lead. Maybe Jansen buckles down and throws three-straight devastating pitches and strikes Marte out.
What we do know is that Marte should have been ahead in the account but refused to challenge.
To make matters worse in this instance, the Royals had *both* of their challenges remaining. Remember, KC was down to their final out. Even if somehow Marte had been wrong and the Royals lost that challenge, they still had one in their pocket.
The Royals have had 35 missed opportunities for a batter to challenge a call, tied for the 14th most, according to taptochallenge.com. They only have five challenges made by hitters that were considered “bad challenges,” which is tied for the second fewest.
I like the team’s mindset of not blowing through challenges in the early innings. However, there is no reason to end games with both challenges remaining. There is too much upside to gain and potential to swing a game in the Royals favor.
Learning from the mistake
A strikingly similar situation occurred Wednesday night. Jac Caglianone was at the plate, against Jansen, with the Royals again down 2-1 in the ninth inning.
The Royals had both challenges remaining. Cags took a low strike and immediately tapped his helmet to challenge. In this instance, the ball grazed the bottom of the zone by a stich of the baseball and the challenge failed – still a strike. It was a good challenge by Caglianone regardless.
Cags lined a single to left field later in the at bat anyway (going 3-3 on the night with every hit going the opposite way). However, he didn’t get much support in another loss.
Forgotten Royals – José Rosado
Next up in the “Forgotten Royals” series is José Rosado, a pitcher who unfortunately had a very short career in the late 1990s.
Rosado was drafted by the Royals in the 12th round of the 1994 June draft. He didn’t spend much time in the minor leagues, pitching in Rookie Ball in 1994, High-A in 1995, then cruising through AA and AAA on his way to Kansas City in 1996.
He made just 16 starts at the big league level in ’96 but was good enough to finish fourth in the American League Rookie of the Year voting that season with an 8-6 record and 3.21 ERA.
Rosado was named an American League All Star in 1997 and 1999. In the rare times his name comes up, I like to remind people that he earned the win in the 1997 All Star Game played in Cleveland. Typically, though, I leave out the part where he lost the lead in the top of the inning only to have the bats get it back in the bottom of the inning to put him in line for the W. Oh well.
The 1999 season was the best of Rosado’s career. He started 33 games for the Royals, just like 1997, and pitched a career-high 208 innings. He had a 3.85 ERA and an ERA+ of 129 (remember, league average ERA+ is 100).
Despite that, Rosado’s record that season was 10-14. The Royals overall record that season was 64-97 even though the outfield was made up of Johnny Damon, Carlos Beltran and Jermaine Dye and the starting pitching wasn’t awful.
How does that team lose 97 games? A quick look at the bullpen and you’ll see a lot of ERAs that start with a 6 … or even 7, 8 and 9.
Rosado made just 5 starts for the Royals in 2000, suffering a shoulder injury that ended his career. He attempted comebacks after multiple surgeries, but his arm never had the same life that allowed him to become a two-time All Star and never pitched in the major leagues again.
KC’s Tom Glavine
I was a big José Rosado fan as a kid. Royals games weren’t always available locally, so I watched a lot of Atlanta Braves games growing up because they were on TBS every night. This meant I saw a lot of Greg Maddux, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine, the lefty who didn’t exactly throw hard but knew how to paint the corners.
My hope was that, with Rosado, the Royals had found their Tom Glavine. It certainly wasn’t fair to compare him to a two-time Cy Young winner, but when you’re 13 you don’t always have great perspective.
I wasn’t the only one to make the Glavine comparison, though. I found a video on YouTube with highlights from the 1997 All Star Game and the broadcaster made the same comment.
Rosado went into coaching after his playing career ended, coaching in the New York Yankees organization from 2011-2020. He has been the New York Mets bullpen coach since 2023 and has coached with Team Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic.
I’m happy to see he’s still involved in the game. Every so often I’ll be driving and randomly get a little sad and wish we could have seen a 15-year career out of Rosado.
But I haven’t forgotten him and now you won’t either.
