Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hour number three of the program on Sports Radio 810 WHB. I'm your host, Jack Johnson, filling in for Seren Petro, Curtis Seabolt here, Kyle Collier producing, and joined in studio for the next hour by Blair Kirkoff. Blair, thanks for coming in today. Great to be here. Hope you're doing well, Jack. Well, other than, we said this to J.J.
Cooper yesterday, other than the Royals playing the way they have for the better part of two months, you just can't complain too much about the day-to-day life. But when you work in the sports industry, oftentimes the failures of the team you're covering...
impact your day-to-day and maybe let's start there a team that basically told everybody in the media going into the season in spring training at you know the uh the fan fest we expect to win a division title we expect to get back to october it's not a this has to go right this has to go right it was we do anticipate being there but here they are in a relatively weak division
and they are 12 games under .500. Why has it gotten to this point? And maybe more importantly, is this who they are? Are they going to be a team that loses anywhere from 90 to 100 games, or is there some spurt that is bound to happen at some point?
Well, I don't think the sentiment was wrong going into the season. I thought last season ended up being a disappointment. Following 86 wins in a playoff appearance with 82, but you could explain that away, the injuries to the staff, but you had a 3,100 season from Salve and from Vinny and ā And Michael Garcia having the year that he had and which numbers came down a little bit last year.
But it was what was he fourth in the MVP voting? I mean, it was, you know, a great season. And so every reason to believe going into this year that with healthier arms, that, you know, Players like Garcia and Vinny and even maybe you would have expected a little bit of regression from Salve. But otherwise, you know, a year better from Caglione and Jensen showed promise.
And I think they improved the corner outfielders. Every reason to believe that this would be a next step type of season. And that's what to me has kind of. why we're in the mood that we're in about the Royals. It's not because this is just another one of those double-digit games under .500 before June seasons.
It's because there was legitimate reason to feel good about this team's hopes going into this year, and they've just been kind of heartbreakingly bad.
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Chapter 2: What are the Kansas City Royals' struggles this season?
So for all the reasons we understand, to me, it was the Carlos Estevez injury early, I thought, set the tone. It screwed up the bullpen. And now you had Ursa closing. You had people in roles they didn't expect to be in. And I think that had an impact early. The, you know, hitting with runners in scoring position never came around, still hasn't come around.
The disappointment, the disappointing season, especially for Pasquotino and Salve, everything. It's hard to, except for the play of Bobby Wood Jr. and maybe, you know, Daniel Lynch, he's having a good season. Waka's having a terrific season. but just about everybody else, you're just going, what? What's going on? Why is this happening? Why is this happening to us?
Not like we've had so many years of great expectations going into a season, but when we do have one, let's fulfill it. Let's be competitive. If you were just 500 now, you'd be right in the thick of things, and you'd be plotting what moves do we need to make going into the trade deadline, but Now you're hearing about who's going to get sold off. How are you going to improve?
What's it going to look like next year and the year after? Nobody wants to be here. Nobody thought we would be here.
So I guess what it comes down to is maybe finding where the blame should be placed because I'm a big believer in, yes, when your offense struggles, the guy that often falls on the sword is the hitting coach because they're the easiest to replace. You know, you can go and change around pieces of the offense, but when you want to send a message, it's usually firing the hitting coach.
But there's a lot of experienced guys that you're just expecting to be better than they really are. Is the blame on the coaches for a team that has the talent? They're 12 games under .500. Is it the players simply underperforming? Or is it the third option here of J.J. Piccolo and company assembled this roster, and there was all the talk of they need an impact bat, they need an impact bat.
They decide to hang on to all of their pitchers, which now looks to be a good thing because they've lost a couple of them to the injured list. But Isaac Collins was the lone bat they really brought in to make an impact. That's a lot of chips, you know, on the side of Jack Caglione and Carter Jensen to be big time contributors. They've had their moments.
But yet, Blair, here we sit and it's not a good offense. So where do you think the the most of the blame should fall on?
Hard to say. Everybody's got a piece of it. The hitting coach is going to, I think, shoulder most of it. And it's not the first time we've been down the road with him. And the Royals made moves after last season to shake up the coaching staff on the hitting side. And it hasn't worked. It just hasn't worked. So I think the next... would be to make a change at the top of that.
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Chapter 3: Why are the Royals underperforming despite high expectations?
Let's just assume right now it won't be Matt Cotrero or J.J. Piccolo. John Sherman basically hired J.J., and he turned around and hired Q. So I think that if there's going to be some kind of change, it'll be at that level, at the hitting coach level, Now, when that would be, I don't know. All-star break? Do you ride it out to the end of the season?
Do you look at what's left in this season and the division you're in and think you're just a five-game winning streak away from being a wild-card contending team? It could be as simple as that. And if that's the case, do you make a change? I don't know. But I don't think... However this season ends for the Royals, and let's just for the sake of argument say it doesn't end in a playoff.
Let's say it's not a 95-loss season, but it's losing somewhere in the mid-to-low 70 win, and they don't make the playoffs. I don't think it's a clean the house situation yet. Certainly personnel moves would have to be made, but I think the manager, the general manager, would be back in that scenario. I don't know what it would take, to be honest with you, for them to make those kind of moves.
But then is the focus in the offseason, if this was a disappointing year, maybe a couple guys you lost due to injury, guys underperformed, is that where you go? Going into 2027, we can't keep gambling on guys that we're waiting for them to show us something. You have to go out and spend quite a bit of money. You have to part ways with some valuable pieces to get the impact players.
Because I thought after 2025, the message was clear of that was a disappointment to us. We're going to be much better. But yet here they are far worse than they were at this point in 2025.
Well, you said it a moment ago and you said it well that, you know, asking the question, is this who they are? You know, we we were hoping last season with with Garcia, with Pasquotino, with Salvi and, you know, in the sunset of his career that that's who they were. But, you know, two full months into this season now, we're about 55 or 56 games in, more than a third of the season.
I think that's long enough to establish an identity of what kind of season you're going to have. I'm not sure Vinny's going to turn it around. He certainly absolutely can't duplicate the numbers that he had a year ago, which is, you know,
It's such a shame because it looked like, you know, in 2004 when he was on pace for 100-plus RBIs when he broke the thumb, and then he had the big 113 RBIs last year, and you think, okay, that's who he is. Where is this coming from, you know, with him? And why is it like this? And like I said, a little bit of regression with Salvi, but... He's still on pace to hit 25 home runs this year.
He's not driving in many, but nobody is on this team. I don't think that right now there's a guy on the team who's projected to have 80 RBIs. So that's the question. To me, what you ask is the biggest question in the offices of the Royals is, Is this who we are?
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Chapter 4: What impact did injuries have on the Royals' performance?
So I guess now you can bring up the question, if the White Sox were normal that year, not historically awful, and they were to be 8-5 against them. I mean, think about what that does to their record. That's a 4-5. Five-win difference, and that could be the difference in you being 86-76, getting the final playoff spot, and 81-81, which wouldn't have been good enough.
So is that, based on 2025 being 82-80, 24, I guess that's kind of a dumb point to make because the White Sox were that bad. But did we maybe... Not correct enough based on they thought they really were a playoff team when maybe in reality they benefited from such an awful team. They got to play 12 to 13 times.
Well, you're right. The record tells you you're right about that. Now, everybody in the AL, the three other teams in the AL Central got their 12 or 13 games against the White Sox and didn't have as good a record as the Royals did, you know, against that particular Chicago team.
So, yeah, that's... And, you know, rubbing salt into the wound a little bit, look at where the White Sox are now in just two years after a historically bad... So, yeah, yes, the fact that the Royals, you know, basically were a 500 team without playing the White Sox and took advantage of that.
I remember Bobby Witt just owned the White Sox that year, had that great series right after the All-Star break and just was just raked against the White Sox up in Chicago. But, yeah. All the games count. They all count. So I don't think it was unfair for the Royals to just take their 86 wins that season.
I think they were a year ahead, maybe a little year ahead of schedule, no matter who they had beaten that year, and plotted a course with that in mind. Now, it wasn't a 12-1 record last year against the White Sox. I remember Chicago won a few more games, and this year, Royals are underwater against the White Sox, as they are against a lot of teams.
But, yeah, that does hurt a little bit to see what the White Sox are doing and what they've done against Kansas City this year.
Okay, we're going to take our first break here in the third hour. When we come back, let's talk some football. I mean, the Chiefs have been speaking to the media a little bit, and we've certainly got some conversations that can start up as we get closer and closer to OTAs. You're listening to the program on Sports Radio 810 WHB.
All right, the Lafetta delicatessen, end of the hour answer. How many postseason walk-off homers have happened with the team trailing?
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