J.J. Cooper

It's just like it's a multitude of factors, it feels like, and I just will throw one other one out there, which is, and I do feel like that this

This division has been, you know, a little different than we expected.

Now, I mean, as bad as it's been for the Royals, I think, you know, Tigers fans are probably more upset.

You know, as bad as it's been for the Royals and the Tigers, I think White Sox fans are probably looking around right now going, wait, what?

We're at 500?

How?

But that's kind of – it's been a very – much like the rest of the American League.

That's probably the best news I could get for Royals fans right now is –

The rest of the American League, with a very few exceptions, you could throw the Yankees and the Rays in there and the Guardians, I guess, to some extent.

But everyone else has been bad.

And so as bad as the start of the season has been for the Royals, there still absolutely is room to fix it.

I mean, to just kind of put it in perspective...

The Royals are, as you just laid out, 11 games below .500.

But they're probably, I mean, they're kind of in the thick of the wild card race in a way that, like the Pirates are in the NL, and the Pirates are in last place in the NL Central, but they're 29-26, which is just kind of crazy.

So, yeah, I think that obviously the first, now we're past the 25% point of the season, but the first quarter-plus of the season has not been what the Royals want.

I don't know.

Like, I mean, if it's going to be much better over the remaining close to three quarters of the season, it's going to be, you know, like, okay, Jack Haglione, who's shown some definitely some positive signs, keeps getting better.

I tell Garcia, who's still a very good player, but, you know, is not playing at the level he was last year, I would say, raises his game a little bit.

But I would say most importantly, it's like,

the middle of the lineup, the guys like Pasquantino, Perez, Jensen, end up being better than they have been so far.