Since I introduced what I call the Zumwalt Number last Tuesday, every single run the Royals have scored have come across via a hit. That’s good! Ehhhh…Since then, the Royals have lost all four games they’ve played, scoring a grand total of 10 runs. 

And that’s bad.

The Rangers made sure that a comeback wouldn’t be required on Sunday. Let leapt out early with four first inning runs against the Royals best starter, Michael Wacha, with all four crossing the plate with two outs. Sometimes, it’s just not your day. Texas cruised to a 6-3 victory.

Another series, another sweep. 

The only joy found in the weekend came in the seventh inning on Saturday, when the Royals scored four times, erasing a three-run deficit. Although it was for the briefest of moments, the boys were playing some ball. They built the inning around two doubles and four singles, a reminder that when a team showcases the ability to score runs, baseball can be pleasing. 

However, with these 2026 Royals are a horror movie in real life. The good times never last long. And the call is coming from inside the house.

The ninth inning on Saturday was the worst inning of baseball I’ve seen in a long, long time when Lucas Erceg faced five batters and couldn’t record an out. It’s been almost two days, and I still don’t know what to make of the whole debacle. It wasn’t great that Erceg gave up a laser of a home run to Joc Peterson to lead off the inning. It came on a 90 mph center-cut changeup. A terrible pitch to a hot hitter. 

He then got two ground balls. While both were hard-hit, it’s not inconcievable to think both could’ve been fielded for outs. 

The first was a smash off the bat from Josh Jung at 101 mph that Bobby Witt Jr. fielded on a short-hop while diving to his right. That alone was a jaw-dropping play. It was amazing that that ball did not get by him. Yet he needlessly rushed his throw and yanked it wide of first base. There was no need to hurry with Jung running. The overall degree of difficulty meant this was a single.

The next batter, Brandon Nimmo, chopped a grounder over the head of Erceg that the pitcher could only deflect toward the baseline between first and second. Had Erceg kept his glove down, I think Tyler Tolbert gets to this ball at second and starts a double play...Maybe? Sure, a double play can never be assumed, but where that ball was hit back up the middle to the second base side and with Jung running from first, they get at least the lead runner.

From there, a couple of singles were dinked into the opposite field to bring in a grand total of two runs to complete the comeback.

If the Memorial Day 4-3 loss to the Yankees where the Royals led 3-2 going into the ninth was a gut-punch, this one was some jerk taking your ice cream money out of your hand as you approached the truck: Wholly cruel and unnecessary. 

Erceg is shellshocked. He has allowed eight runs on 13 hits in his last three outings. He cannot be trusted to secure a lead of any amount at this point. The Royals need to figure out how to get him right, whether that's an IL stint, an option to the minors or extreme low-leverage situations.

In her Saturday recap, Anne Rogers wrote this:

The pieces are there. Fitting it all together has been the most puzzling part.

I’ll go on record and disagree. The pieces are most decidedly not there. If they were, this team wouldn’t be careening toward a 100-loss season. They do have a handful of pieces: Witt and Maikel Garcia and the starting pitching are a good foundation. Carter Jensen and Jac Caglianone have shown promise, but clearly aren’t there yet as both are striking out around a third of their plate appearances.

I still think Caglianone will develop into a big-time power hitter because I need something to cling to.

As for pieces, that's about it. The lineup wasn’t improved at all last winter and the bullpen is full of saboteurs. This is not a winning ballclub. For a moment it looked like they could be. The Royals reeled off five wins in a row to open the month of May. Overall, they started the month 7-2 and were, for a brief moment, the hottest team in the league. Promising! From there, they went 3-16. 

This is not 2009. This is not a season where the front office was delusional in their aim for October. Back in March, the Royals were a solid pick for the division title. Hell, the projection systems even liked them. If they weren’t making the postseason, the minimal expectation was the 2026 Royals would be a competitive ballclub with perhaps one fatal flaw that would push their record to .500. 

Expectations were set. They most likely will not be reached. When that happens in sport, there are consequences. People lose their jobs. At this point I’m not sure how the Royals just stay the course or whatever it is they’re trying to do with their current coaching staff. I am aware that every single day, the drumbeat increases for the head of hitting coach Alec Zumwalt. Although while the Royals offense has yet again underwhelmed, I’m not sure you can pin it solely on the coaching. This is a talent and acquisition issue. That falls to the front office. The scouts, the analytic department and, ultimately, General Manager JJ Picollo are the one's responsible for assembling this roster. On top of that, John Sherman and the rest of ownership need to make the finances available to assemble a competitive team. This rot runs all the way to the top.

Coming into the 2026 season, the Royals made a bunch of bets and they’re losing all of them. Salvador Perez looks every bit his 36 years. Vinnie Pasquantino is swinging less but chasing more and has seen his Hard Hit rate crater. The big offseason acquisitions—Lane Thomas and Isaac Collins—have combined for -0.2 fWAR and both look to have the range of a concrete block in the outfield. As noted, Jensen and Caglianone are improving, but not fast enough for this lineup that's loaded with dead weight. And now Garcia is hurting. He’s been hampered at the plate with what looks like a hand issue and left Saturday’s game with a hamstring strain. He slugged .442 in April. It was down to .324 in May.

It's the coaching staff's job to get the best out of the players on the team. What if this is the best they've got?

Here's what Picollo had to say about the coaching situation after Friday's loss:

“I have a lot of confidence in our staff,” Picollo said. “You can go back and look at all the historical research on changing coaching staffs. There’s not a lot of strong data on changing coaching staffs mid-season leading to what you need to do. It appeases the fanbase because you’ve made a change, but we have to be logical in our thinking. When you get to a point where you’re making a change on your staff, you reach a tipping point. And we don’t feel like we’re there.”

What is that tipping point?

“It’s when it becomes very clear to you [from] the players, I’ll say with their body language, that they need change,” Picollo said. “When you don’t think it’s the information we’re sharing, when you feel like the players have lost confidence. Then you might get to a point where you have to think about it. I’ve talked to a lot of people in the game, not just this year, but just trying to learn. There’s very little that says changing your hitting or pitching coach fixes things. The players’ confidence levels aren’t going to go up until they perform.”

I'm not sure what Picollo means by a tipping point because a .373 winning percentage on June 1 sure feels like a problem.

Maybe a new hitting coach can fix whatever ails Pasquantino and can accelerate the improvements of Caglianone and Jensen. Picollo said as much and I do agree with him: Firing a hitting coach mid-season generally amounts to eyewash. However, a 22-37 record demands some sort of action if a team is serious about winning. That’s the spot the Royals are in through their own ineptitude where changes will be made for the sake of change. I’m not saying the results won’t improve if a new hitting regime is implemented. I just lack faith in how this roster is constructed and doubt we would see immediate results.

This team has spent the last two seasons getting worse on the offensive side.

Save for a modest increase in on base percentage, all other numbers have dropped since the 2024 season. I'm not sure how you can look at that table above and have confidence in anyone associated with this franchise.

The most galling part of this: The Royals are wasting another epic season from Witt.

Check out the fWAR leaderboard at FanGraphs. As of June 1, there are 30 players with an fWAR of 2.0 or greater. There is one player with an fWAR above 3.0. You know who I'm talking about.

These are the current top-nine hitters in the game:

I used the top nine as a cutoff because those are the players at 2.5 fWAR and greater. Think about what I wrote above. There are 30 players in the majors with an fWAR of 2.0 or more. The table above has nine players where Witt is basically out to a massive lead. The ninth-best player has a 2.5 fWAR. That means there's a cluster of 21 players between 2.4 and 2.0 fWAR. That's a pack of really good players. There's one who is head and shoulders above the rest. That's Witt.

Witt is the best player in the game (non-Ohtani division) because he is the most complete player. There is nothing the dude can't do on the field. Night after night, he is simply on another level than just about everyone else. It is criminal that the Royals are wasting another season of his prime with a supporting cast that is nowhere near good enough. Criminal.

Not only is it on Picollo, who failed to assemble a competent lineup around his superstar, but it's on ownership who have not properly expanded payroll to support their marquee player. The failure here is rampant.

The Royals have lost six in a row. It’s their third losing streak of six or more games this year. It’s June 1. 

Since the postseason tournament expanded to its current format in 2022, there have been a few teams that have had multiple losing streaks of six games or greater that have played in October. The Cleveland Guardians last year had a 10-game losing streak close to the All-Star Break and then dropped six in a row in late August. Hell, the New York Yankees even had a pair of six-game losing streaks last year.

The Detroit Tigers, who started so strongly in ’25, faded late. Although they still made the postseason, they had an eight-game losing streak in September and two streaks of six losses in July. They are, by my count, the only club that made the postsesason since 2022 with three extended losing streaks. As noted, they made it because they built such a healthy lead over the first three months of the season. 

It’s not like what the Royals are attempting to do—if qualifying for the postseason is still the goal here—is impossible. As we all know, the Guardians made up an 11 game deficit in the standings last September. Yet digging this large of a hole as the Royals have done in the season’s first two months, renders the task at hand monumental. It would take a massive run to get out of this mess. Looking at the roster, I don’t think that’s happening.