The Royals are going down fighting

There’s a play from this week that has stuck in my mind. It is a fairly anonymous play; it happened in the 8th inning of the Kansas City Royals victory over the Washington Nationals on Monday. Catcher Riley Adams is leading off against Angel Zerpa, and he gets a single on a Texas Leaguer. First baseman Vinnie Pasquantino makes an impressive effort to hold Adams to a single, here’s the clip:

There are good reasons why Pasquantino hustles on this play. It is a close game, it’s late in the game, and the Royals are fighting for their playoff lives. His hustle is rewarded; Adams is held to a single and does not score in the inning. Still, if you’ve watched sports for long enough, you know that not everyone hustles as hard as Pasquantino did on this play, regardless of whether the situation calls for every effort or not.

Maikel Garcia had an impressive hustle play himself in Tuesday’s game against the Nationals, going first to third on a Bobby Witt Jr. groundout to the pitcher:

The Royals broadcast had a number of nice replay angles that I can’t find right now, but you can still see Garcia turning his head and then breaking for third in the clip above. It was an impressive base-running read, showing that Garcia was locked in and focused early in the game. The effort led to a run; Pasquantino hit a sacrifice fly in the next at-bat. Witt also made this play possible with his own hustle, getting down the line as fast as he could and forcing the pitcher to focus solely on throwing him out.

There’s more effort and focus plays that we can find from the Royals previous series, but I think these two show that the Royals, despite their low chance of making the post-season, are still locked in and giving every effort to try and finish the season well. As a fan, I really appreciate that, and it’s helping me want to keep watching this team even as their playoff chances keep slipping away.

I don’t want to overstate my case here. Every loss, particularly against teams lower in the standings than the Royals, feels like one hundred losses stacked on top of each other. Sunday’s loss against the Minnesota Twins felt as demoralizing as they come, and I was pretty let down after Wednesday’s defeat to the Nationals as well. Mentally, I’m inching closer and closer to playoff mode, where I have a hard time not treating every game like life and death. This season is almost certainly going to end in pain; the Royals are running out of time to right the ship.

Yet, I’m excited to watch the Royals play the Chicago White Sox this weekend, and I think even if/when the Royals are officially eliminated from the playoff race, I’m still going to enjoy watching the games. A large part of that, at least for me, is that the Royals still have enough give-a-shit to justify me caring about these games.

If you watch sports for long enough, you become a sommelier on the different types of losing. For almost all fans, the season is going to end on some sort of disappointment, some sort of failed goal. The types of losing all have different notes and accents. The bewilderment and frustration of the 2004 Royals felt different than the crushing defeat the 2014 Royals experienced in the World Series, which in turn was different from the 2024 Royals loss in the ALDS.

For my money, the worst sports watching experience is when you can tell that a team just doesn’t care very much and is going through the motions. If you are reading this, you almost certainly care about the Royals a lot, but whether the team itself cares is outside of our control. Personally, I always feel a huge disconnect and disgust when I can see that the players for whatever reason just don’t care enough to really hustle and fight, even in defeat. Hustle isn’t everything; you do have to be talented and there can be eyewash that ends up being just as frustrating as not giving an effort. I also don’t want to be the guy who chocks up every loss to one team not caring as much as the other, as if always caring more led to victory 100% of the time. Nothing, however, makes me turn off a game and disconnect from one of my favorite teams faster than realizing that I care way more than they do.

There’s been plenty of examples of past Royals teams throwing in the towel at this point in the season, more than are worth recapping here. I also think some teams with a 7% chance of making the playoffs would be starting the process of shutting down for the season instead of fighting for their playoff lives. The fact that the Royals are still giving impressive effort and going down swinging is a culture change in the organization, and one that I appreciate.

I started to notice the change in the lost 2023 season. That season was a nightmare in many ways, but you could tell that the Royals still played hard under Matt Quatraro deep into that 106 loss season. That was a new experience for me as a Royals fan; I’ve watched plenty of 100+ loss teams, but I hadn’t seen one try as hard in September as the 2023 team.

It doesn’t surprise me that this team is continuing to try hard, and I don’t wan’t to be the “good job, good effort,” kid and act like the season is a success just because the team tried. This team not reaching the playoffs will be disappointing, and that’s way more likely to happen than not. Still, I appreciate that the team is giving it their all and clearly still cares about the season. Even if it seems like that should be a guarantee among professional athletes, it definitely is not, and nothing curdles a season faster than a team who doesn’t care. The Royals look like they are going down, but I can appreciate that they are still out there fighting and trying, and that I am not wasting my energy caring about a team that doesn’t care themselves.