The Kansas City Royals are currently playing through one of the best stretches for the franchise in a number of years and after winning 6-2 against the New York Mets on Sunday, the team clinched a franchise-record 8-1 road trip and are now looking at trying to get into the top of the wild card race.
The Royals are 56-52 this season and are over .500 at their latest point in over a decade and now that they have won 11 times in the past 12 games, the team is firmly in the playoff race at 4.5 games out of the first wild card and they could be sleepers for the rest of the season. Ervin Santana has proven to be a very reliable starter for the team and he was just that again on Sunday, winning after allowing just one run in six innings and is now 8-6 on the year. Since the All-Star break he has been stellar, putting up a 1.27 ERA and he has gone 5-1 since June.
Young star Zack Wheeler fell to 4-2 and ended up with a loss for the first time in six starts and he gave up three earned runs and five walks on the night, including three free passes to George Kottaras. Mike Moustakas hit a homerun in the first to get things started off for the Royals and Marlon Byrd gave the team some help, missing on two fly balls during the game that got caught in the sun.
The Royals are 7.5 games back in the American League central and while that will be a hard race to get back into, the way they are playing it should be much easier to get into the wild card race. Santana is leading the team in ERA this season and Eric Hosmer is tops in batting average and home runs while Alex Gordon is tops in RBIs. The young stars on the team are all playing well at the same time and while the Royals felt it was hard to give up Wil Myers, they are glad to have James Shields giving the rotation depth. The Tigers and Indians are ahead of the Royals in the standings in the Central and now they have the chance to end their streak of losing seasons and missing the playoffs.
