Royals Projected To Fall One Win Short Of 2025 MLB Postseason Appearance
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The Kansas City Royals have to back up their 2024 season with a strong showing in 2025.
Last year, no one expected the Royals to be good except the Royals themselves. The team delighted in proving the naysayers across Major League Baseball wrong as they willed their way to 86 wins, a playoff berth, and a Wild Card Series win over the Baltimore Orioles.
Entering the new season, though, the Royals are now a known commodity. And the rest of the American League got tougher, with possible Wild Card opponents like the Boston Red Sox and Texas Rangers taking major steps forward.
The Royals did their best to upgrade their own roster this offseason, with new leadoff hitter Jonathan India standing out as the most important acquisition. But with the bottom of the lineup remaining largely unchanged, there are legitimate questions about this offense's ability to score enough to win.
On Wednesday, Keith Law of The Athletic praised the Royals for attempting to improve this offseason, but projected that they would miss the playoffs by one game, finishing with an 85-77 record.
"The Royals, on the other hand, did try to get better this offseason, but they were working uphill to some degree as their 2024 season saw them get over 150 starts from five guys, four of whom were better than league average," Law wrote.
"They re-signed Michael Wacha, brought in some pitching depth, and traded for Jonathan India, who gives them a viable OBP threat to get on base in front of Bobby Witt Jr. The pitching depth — in the forms of Michael Lorenzen and Carlos Estévez — is a modest insurance policy against the inevitable starts some of their four returning starters will miss, but it’s not going to cover them if one of them misses half the season. At least they did something."
It would be tough to play out the entire season only to fall one game short of a return to October. If the Royals want to avoid that fate, they'll have to find some added production from the bottom of the order, and they'll have to hope for another year of good starting pitching health.
Thankfully, projections aren't reality, and the Royals have a full season in front of them to change some skeptics' minds. It all begins Thursday with a divisional showdown against the Cleveland Guardians.
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Jackson Roberts is a former Division III All-Region DH who now writes and talks about sports for a living. A Bay Area native and a graduate of Swarthmore College and the Newhouse School at Syracuse University, Jackson makes his home in North Jersey. He grew up rooting for the Red Sox, Patriots, and Warriors, and he recently added the Devils to his sports fandom mosaic. For all business/marketing inquiries regarding "Kansas City Royals On SI," please reach out to Scott Neville: scott@wtfsports.org
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