The Kansas City Royals are in the midst of one of the most extreme scheduling shifts imaginable.
On Sunday, the Royals completed a two-week stretch during which they played 12 games against the Guardians, Mariners, Yankees and Dodgers, all of them division leaders.
Starting this Tuesday the scheduling tide will turn profoundly. On that day the Royals begin another two-week stretch, but this time they’re playing the Oakland Athletics, Texas Rangers and Miami Marlins. Those three teams are all five or more games below .500.
The Royals, who were 50 games below .500 last year, undertook that last stretch with a goal of validating their position in the standings, which at the time was four games out of first place in the AL Central and in the first wild card spot.
That grueling stretch – two versus the Guardians, three with the Mariners, four versus the Yankees and three against the Dodgers – validated their fans’ faith that the Royals aren’t going anywhere soon. They went 5-7, splitting with the Guardians, winning the Seattle series, but losing the Yankee and Dodger series.
They emerged from it with a continued grip on the second wild card spot.
That 5-7 record was compiled against four division leaders who combined for a .630 winning percentage at the time the games were played. That level of quality opponent is are about to fall off a statistical cliff. The Athletics, Rangers and Marlins have a combined .379 winning percentage, a 251 percentage point dropoff.
Between now and mid-August, the Royals play 39 games, but only eight of them against teams currently with a record better than .500. For the rest of the year, they play only 32 games against teams with records above .500.