CLEVELAND — The stakes were obvious.
Having been briefly humbled in a weekend series loss at home to Philadelphia that included blowout defeats Saturday and Sunday, the Kansas City Royals sat three games back of the first-place Cleveland Guardians as they hopped on a plane to northeast Ohio on Sunday. A rainout in June meant four games awaited them at Progressive Field.
The stage was set for either team to make a serious statement: Cleveland could give itself some much-needed breathing room atop the AL Central, or Kansas City could leapfrog the Guardians entirely. As far as a series in August goes, it was about as juicy as it gets.
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Game 1 appeared to favor the Royals on paper, with ace lefty Cole Ragans pitted against a bullpen game for Cleveland started by side-winding reliever Nick Sandlin. But from the first pitch, Ragans hardly looked like his All-Star self, with fluctuating velocity and shoddy command limiting his effectiveness and efficiency. After a leadoff walk to open the fifth inning, Ragans departed with a leg cramp, ending his day after just four innings completed, his second-shortest outing of the season.
Though the injury wasn’t thought to be serious, Ragans’ early exit seemed to level the pitching playing field as the carousel of relievers began to spin. And with a minimum of 11 innings left to play in Monday’s doubleheader, the game was still tied heading to the eighth. Then came the latest heroics from Kansas City’s MVP candidate, Bobby Witt Jr. Facing Hunter Gaddis, who had a 1.51 ERA in 59 2/3 innings when he took the mound, the 24-year-old shortstop cranked an 0-1 slider into the left-field bleachers for a solo, go-ahead homer. Right-hander Lucas Erceg, who has been nearly flawless since Kansas City acquired him from Oakland at the deadline, nailed down the save against the top of the Guardians’ lineup to secure the series opener for the Royals.
The nightcap featured two starting pitchers who have been in Triple-A recently for very different reasons. Lefty Logan Allen was in the Guardians’ rotation for much of the first half but was demoted last month after his ERA ballooned to 5.56. On the other side, Royals right-hander Alec Marsh had acquitted himself reasonably well as Kansas City’s No. 5 starter but lost his rotation spot when the Royals traded for veteran Michael Lorenzen. After allowing three runs in the opening frame, Marsh kept Cleveland in check long enough to allow Kansas City’s offense to explode in the middle innings for a 9-4 victory headlined by two home runs from Salvador Perez, including a grand slam.
“Salvy Perez just doesn’t seem to know what getting old means,” Guardians skipper Stephen Vogt said half-jokingly before the series.
Yet in some respects, Perez has begun to acknowledge the realities of being a 34-year-old catcher who is expected to carry a heavy load offensively. After catching the first game of the doubleheader in the sweltering afternoon heat, Perez admitted postgame that he was happy to keep the gear off for Game 2 and stay in the lineup as the DH.
“He’s remarkable,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said postgame. “To catch that first game … he was drained. You could tell, he was drained physically, mentally … to go out there and focus and put those at-bats up like he did was remarkable.”
A younger Perez might have insisted on catching all 18 innings, but he now recognizes the importance of doing whatever is necessary to keep his bat in the lineup. He started 120 games behind the dish as recently as 2021, but Perez’s workload has gradually decreased over the past three years, with markedly more starts coming at first base and DH.
Further aiding Perez’s willingness to cede backstop responsibilities has been the emergence of Freddy Fermin as more than just a capable backup. Not only is Fermin rock-solid defensively, but he has quietly been one of Kansas City’s most reliable bats as well; only Yainer Diaz has a higher batting average than Fermin (.290) among catchers the past two seasons, and Fermin’s 109 wRC+ ranks 11th among catchers in 2024. Perez alone makes Kansas City’s catching situation the envy of most organizations, but Fermin has made it a positional strength that very few teams can match.
For Cleveland, losing twice Monday was the latest in a bizarre trend of faltering in doubleheaders in recent years. The Guardians are 0-8 in doubleheader games this season and 1-17 in such games dating to the start of last season — the worst stretch by any team in a span of 18 doubleheader games in more than 50 years.
And so, strange struggles in twin bills aside, it was on the Guardians to bounce back Tuesday — but they failed to do so. Once again, Kansas City’s starter had to depart early, as Lorenzen left due to a hamstring strain in the second inning, seemingly opening the window for Cleveland to jump on another unexpected parade of bullpen arms. Instead, five Royals relievers — none named Erceg — combined to allow just one run on two hits over the remainder of the contest, sealing a series victory for Kansas City and a tie atop the AL Central.
That set up a series finale Wednesday afternoon with sole possession of first place on the line, and this time, Cleveland finally responded. Three solo homers off Tanner Bibee put the Guardians in a hole early, one they seemed unlikely to climb out of based on the uninspiring state of the offense in recent days. Through six frames, Cleveland trailed 5-2 with a Royals bullpen eager to slam the door following another solid outing from veteran righty Michael Wacha.
Instead, a Bo Naylor homer followed by a series of dinks and dunks fueled a four-run seventh inning that helped the Guardians retake the lead and reenergize a home crowd that had been given little to cheer about all week. Cleveland tacked on an insurance run in the eighth before Emmanuel Clase swiftly converted his AL-leading 39th save of the season to salvage the final game for the Guardians and reclaim their position atop the division — for now, anyway.
While the Guardians managed to stave off the worst-case scenario for this four-game set, this week’s series was a bold reminder of how far this Royals team has come — and how quickly, especially in contrast to Cleveland’s organizational trajectory. Since they won the World Series in 2015, no team in baseball has lost more regular-season games than the Royals. Over that same span, only three teams (Dodgers, Yankees, Astros) have won more regular-season games than the Guardians.
As the Royals descended into mediocrity and then much worse following back-to-back pennants, Cleveland emerged as the standard-bearer in the AL Central, reaching the postseason in five of the next seven seasons. Kansas City, meanwhile, has not been back to October since it hoisted the commissioner’s trophy in 2015. As such, we’ve grown used to counting on Cleveland as an annual threat to contend disregarding Kansas City until it proves otherwise.
But the tone had shifted, at least somewhat, entering 2024. Minnesota — still lurking close behind in this year’s race — had cruised to a division title in 2023. Cleveland’s 76 wins marked its worst finish since 2012. Although Kansas City was coming off a franchise-record 106 losses, the Royals played well last September and then spent significant money in free agency in an effort to fast-track a return to relevance. No AL Central team projected to be especially menacing, but the Royals seemed to have more positive momentum, with their veteran additions joining a budding ace in Ragans and a young star in Witt whose ceiling was undefined in the best way possible. Still, it seemed like a stretch to consider Kansas City a viable candidate to push for a postseason spot, even in what was expected to be a weak division.
Instead, the AL Central turned out to be an absolute gauntlet. Cleveland surged out of the gate, amassing one of baseball’s best records through June and the kind of division lead we’ve grown accustomed to seeing the Guardians build. The reigning champion Twins have been as steady as ever, with a winning record every month of the season. The Tigers have the best record in the American League since the start of July. All the while, the Royals have managed to keep pace with their peers, culminating in this week’s emphatic series victory in Cleveland and setting the stage for an ultra-exciting final month.
A fun subplot of the Royals chasing down Cleveland is how many of the fresh faces among Kansas City’s leadership worked for the Guardians in the past. While Royals skipper Matt Quatraro’s pro coaching career began in the Rays organization — including managing a young catcher named Stephen Vogt back in 2007 — his first job on a big-league staff was with Cleveland as an assistant hitting coach. Pitching coach Brian Sweeney, widely credited as a key figure behind the Royals’ dramatic turnaround on the mound, joined Quatraro ahead of 2023 after spending five seasons on Cleveland’s major-league staff, primarily as a bullpen coach. And the ties extend further up the chain of command: Before he bought the Royals following the 2019 season, chairman and CEO John Sherman spent three years as vice chairman of the Guardians after purchasing a stake in the team in 2016.
These connections serve as an intriguing backdrop to a burgeoning rivalry between two clubs that historically have not spent much time together atop the AL Central standings. Since the inception of the division in 1994, just once have these two teams finished first and second: in 1995, when a juggernaut Cleveland team won 100 games and the second-place Royals finished 30 games back but ahead of Chicago, Milwaukee and Minnesota. In other words, this is the first time in three decades of divisional history that we’ve seen these two clubs jockeying for the top spot this late in the season.
By blasting past even the most optimistic of outlooks for this season, the Royals dramatically altered the status quo in the AL Central, and now they’re in pursuit of MLB history with a month left in the regular season. After winning just 56 games a year ago, the Royals are currently on pace to win 91. That would tie the divisional-era record for most wins gained from one year to the next, which is currently held by the 1999 D-backs, who won 100 games after winning just 65 in 1998. Should the Royals finish in first place in the AL Central, they’d become the first team in MLB history to win the division following a 100-loss season.
And while the Royals’ exact record and finish in the standings are weeks away from being determined, a return to October in some form is looking more certain by the day, with FanGraphs tabbing the Royals’ current odds of qualifying for the postseason at roughly 90%.
For Perez, who remains the heart and soul of this team both on and off the field, the wait to play postseason baseball again has gone on long enough.
“It means a lot,” he said this week of being in a playoff push this late in the season. “There’s nothing we can hide about what’s gone on here last year, two years ago or even six years after we won the World Series. I’ve always said hopefully we stop losing because I want to go back to the playoffs. So every game is very important to us.”
For Quatraro, Perez is top of mind when reflecting on what Kansas City has already accomplished — and what it has in its sights.
“I feel very fortunate to be here and be able to watch him every day because it is special,” he said. “… His performance on the field is what everybody sees, but his drive to win and his work ethic behind the scenes is outstanding.
“We feel the obligation as a team and an organization to get him back to those spots. And I think that was a big part of our drive this winter — he deserves that. He earned that. He played every single game last year in a really rough year, and he’s never wavered.”
While Witt’s rapid ascent to superstardom has defined the Royals’ rocket-ship ride out of a lengthy rebuild, Perez is the lone player in the clubhouse who already knows what it’s like to be on a winning Royals playoff team. Witt was about to start fifth grade when Perez debuted with Kansas City in 2011, and he was a high school freshman when Perez and the Royals won it all in 2015. Now, they’re co-starring in search of a long-awaited return to the postseason for the organization.
“As soon as you play in the playoffs,” Perez said, “you don’t want to play ever again in the regular season. You just want to play in the playoffs.”
