When it was suggested a week or so ago that Royals fans may want to enjoy this dicey and fickle season while it lasted and that this has the makings of an intriguing team, an anonymous reader left a dissenting phone message.
“Let’s give these poor Royals fans some peace and tranquility,” he said, “and end this miserable joke of a season as soon as possible.”
Now, amid the ever-present COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, the potential for an abrupt ending still lurks over this rejiggered season. That’s been amply illustrated across the state, where the St. Louis Cardinals now have had 13 games postponed and will go at least two weeks between games.
And it might reasonably be asked what the meaning of winning it all under these circumstances will be.
And, yes, the Royals might well still turn out to be no good at all.
But as they prepared to resume play today in Cincinnati, something seems substantially different now than a week ago, doesn’t it?
Small sample size that a four-game winning streak might be, it’s been delivered in the compressed context of a (scheduled) 60-game season … right after a six-game losing streak that naturally might have doused faith and even incentive to play.
Moreover, you can trace the apparent reset that matches their longest winning streak of last season (after swamping the Minnesota Twins for their first three-game sweep since last April) to tangible reasons.
So much so that it was a bummer to have an off-day Monday even after playing 17 straight days.
“I just want to keep watching what I’m watching,” manager Mike Matheny said.
What anyone watching can see is that, hmm, they’re a better team when they have the whole team.
The battle of attrition looms extra-large this season, of course, and every team deals with this one way or another. But for one team coming off back-to-back 100-loss seasons, the absence of key players is particularly pronounced.
“We believe in this group,” Matheny said, “but we need all of our guys.”
Staggered over the last couple weeks, the Royals have welcomed the return from COVID-positive tests of starting pitchers Jakob Junis and Brad Keller. That has reframed a makeshift rotation into a rather compelling one featuring veteran Danny Duffy and enthralling youngsters Brady Singer and Kris Bubic.
Then Sunday was marked by the return of the versatile Hunter Dozier, a development Matheny suggested had a tangible impact before the game with clubhouse chatter along the lines of, “We’ve got the band back together.”
