Kansas City Royals Doing Their Part to Shake Up American League Playoff Picture

The Kansas City Royals, who have the second-worst record in the major leagues, are doing their part to shake up the American League playoff picture, playing spoiler to the Houston Astros.

The Kansas City Royals are doing their part to shake up the American League wild card picture. 

Kansas City, who has the second-worst record in baseball at 53-102, has beaten the Houston Astros in consecutive games.

As a result: The Astros have fallen out of first place in the American League West. They are now 1.5 games behind the Texas Rangers.

Also, the Astros are now in the third and final wild card spot, where they are 0.5 games ahead of the Seattle Mariners. Seattle has lost two consecutive games to Texas and owes the Royals an extensive holiday card for keeping them in the race despite those losses. 

The Royals beat the Astros 3-2 on Saturday night behind the pitching effort of embattled starter Jordan Lyles. He went 5.0 innings and moved to 5-17 on the year with a 6.24 ERA.

Offensively, the Royals got multi-hit efforts from Maikel Garcia and Nick Massey in the win.

The Royals are looking to finish the season strong so they can have a semblance of momentum heading into the offseason. The team will be built around Salvador Perez and Bobby Witt Jr. in 2024, so there are certainly good pieces there, but the Royals will need young players to continue to develop and will need to invest in pitching.

The Royals will look to continue to play spoiler on Sunday afternoon when they take on the Astros again at Minute Maid Park. First pitch is set for 2:10 p.m. ET.

Steven Cruz (KC) pitches against Hunter Brown (HOU).

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