Everything to play for

An amazing five game stretch has enabled the Royals to position themselves favorably as teams are lining up for a spot in the postseason.

It was, as far as victories go at this point of the season, fairly routine. You had Salvador Perez driving in three runs. You had Seth Lugo throwing seven strong innings. And you had a big contribution from Paul DeJong and (gasp!) the return of John Schreiber. It worked out to a 5-3 victory, the fifth consecutive for the surging Royals.

Regular readers will know that, most days, I will write a brief recap of other games involving teams from the AL Central. I’ll conclude those recaps with a snapshot of the current standings or the Wild Card standings or the current playoff odds from Fangraphs. It began a couple of years ago as an exercise to illustrate how bleak the situation was, and how far from contention the Royals seemed to be. This season, it has become an optimistic marker of progress.

The Royals, through trades last month’s All-Star break, have reshuffled the rotation. Here’s what has happened in the latest turn:

Cole Ragans vs Min - 7 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 0 BB, 8 SO, 71 Game Score
Michael Lorenzen vs Cin - 5.2 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 3 BB, 3 SO, 61 Game Score
Michael Wacha vs Cin - 6 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 9 SO, 72 Game Score
Brady Singer vs Cin - 6 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 6 SO, 67 Game Score
Seth Lugo vs LAA - 7 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 3 BB, 8 SO, 66 Game Score

Total it up and you have 31 innings from the starters with 23 hits and eight walks to go along with 34 strikeouts. They’ve allowed just four runs which works out to a 1.16 ERA. Sure, you can have your small sample, but when the starting pitchers give you basically a week of games like that, you’re going to be winning.

While the offense has certainly exploded over this stretch—they’ve averaged 7.4 runs per game—the starting pitching has set the tone, kept them in the games and ultimately, brought them these victories.

Now, back to the playoff odds I mentioned above. This most recent stretch of smoking-hot baseball has coincided with some of the better teams in the league not exactly playing their best. The result? There’s a spike in those playoff odds.

I mean look at that spike! The Royals went from 46 percent after losing back-to-back games in Minnesota where they looked far from playoff contenders to nearly 80 percent. A jump of nearly 34 percentage points! In August! In a four-team race for two spots!

It’s not just FanGraphs that’s bullish on the Royals’ chances. Baseball Prospectus has the Royals at a 75 percent chance to be playing into October. Their standings page has a seven-day delta where they show the Royals as gaining 29 percentage points over the last week.

This five game stretch, this singular turn through the rotation, has launched the Royals firmly amongst the elite teams in the league. Maybe their record against “winning” teams isn’t the best, but I’ve said all along, that doesn’t matter. Take care of business in a proper fashion (i.e. beat up on the Angels and Reds) and then hang tough against stronger competition. The Royals last lost three games in a row in early July. Their longest losing streak of the season is just four games. Newsflash: They’re a really good team.

This surge from the Royals has coincided with what can only be described as a bizarre stretch of baseball from nearly all the other contending teams. In the AL Central, the Guardians, who have been punching above their weight all summer, seem to be plummeting back to Earth. The Twins are hanging around, and are probably the class of the division, but have yet to put together any kind of kick to establish themselves as such. The Yankees and Orioles are engaging in some sort of baseball war of attrition and are both now hovering below the .600 winning percentage mark. The Mariners are falling apart in the West and the Astros, like the Royals, are on a roll.

The result of all of this is a bunching up of contending teams, both in the division and in the league. The Royals, as of this writing, are currently 2.5 games behind division-leaders Cleveland. They are tied for second with the Twins (although we all know given baseball’s inane tiebreaker rules that they’re really behind the Twins in the standings even though they have identical records).

They are also—get this—just three games off the pace for the best record in the American League. They have also, by the Red Sox and Mariners falling off the pace, built themselves a nice cushion in the Wild Card.

To say this is an amazing turn of events would be an understatement. To say that, with 37 games remaining there is everything to play for, would be absolutely accurate. Suddenly, there is an entire range of outcomes on the table, from the best record in the league to missing the playoffs entirely to everything in between. This last month-plus of baseball is going to be intense. Look at the standings above. Things were different this time last week. Nothing is guaranteed. Everything is in play.

I have no idea how this will shake out and I’m not dumb enough to make some sort of prediction. I do know that every team has its flaws, whether it’s a short lineup, a rotation that doesn’t stack up, injuries or just general underperformance. I don’t think there’s a team among the nine highlighted above where you can say with any certainty where they will end up at game 162. All outcomes are possible. Nothing is off the table.

We are, finally, at a moment we’ve been missing since 2015.

You couldn’t ask for anything more.