Regression was always going to happen. What will the Royals do about it?

Now what?

Anything can happen in one individual game of baseball. Anything can happen in a few games of baseball. Heck, anything can happen in a course of a few weeks of baseball. It’s a marathon sport where the long game is the only game you can reasonably play while still saying sane.

That’s because there’s a lot of noise in an individual game of baseball and not a lot of signal. It takes a lot of games for there to be more signal than noise, and the previous season’s results are usually more indicative of true talent—both at a team level and on an individual level—significantly far into the season.

Last year’s 2023 Royals team lost 106 games, and while underlying performance metrics suggested they were a better team than that, they were still a bad team. So when the 2024 team jumped out to a 34-19 record through May 25, it was clear that regression was going to hit like a hammer. It was always going to, as had the Royals maintained that 53-game pace over a full season, they would end up with 104 wins.

The largest year-over-year improvement in MLB history happened in 1999, when the Arizona Diamondbacks won 35 more games than they did in 1998. The Royals won 56 games last year, and a 35-game improvement would put them at 91 wins. Look, y’all. I like the 2024 team a lot. I think they’re good. The numbers back that up. But they’re not a 104-win team good. That 91-game win goal sounds reasonable at this point, but it would necessarily involve a skid or two.

We’ve officially hit that skid. Kansas City has won only two of its past eight games due to some issues that have been apparent for weeks. They’re going to face the buzzsaw that is the Cleveland Guardians, who are so far ahead in the American League Central that the Royals could sweep them and still stay in second place. More losses seem possible.

The Royals have, over the last few years, been very accustomed to a world where more losses doesn’t matter. But now, the Royals hold a playoff spot in June. They can make the playoffs for the first time in nine years. Winning 90 games would definitely do it thanks to the third Wild Card spot. However, if the Royals only win, say, 85 games, they could very well miss the playoffs. Those five games are therefore huge, and it behooves the Royals to do something about it.

Fortunately, the Royals seem hyper aware of this. JJ Picollo, head honcho of baseball operations, was interviewed on June 1 about the trade deadline. And Picollo is not messing around: he wants to “jump the market.”

So, what should the Royals do here? The team’s weaknesses are clear: bullpen and outfield. For the first time in forever, they have both starting pitching depth and some high-end position player talent. But they don’t have many strikeout guys in the pen, and their outfield is really, really bad. Worst of all, they just don’t have very much depth in either group.

For the Royals to make the playoffs, they need their core players to continue performing. Fortunately, they can absolutely go out and make some moves to shorten games on the back end and get some bats to lengthen the lineup. I’m not too worried about the regression that’s happened; that was always going to happen. Stopping the skid from slipping further and making moves to shore up the team are what’s important right now.