KC Royals: Trust the process, but expect the rewards

The KC Royals always seem to have a plan in place, but for fans following along, the path for progression is often unclear and filled with questions.

The KC Royals have a decently long history of many good players, multiple championships, and irritating fans beyond reason. There are those fans who are always looking on the bright side, then the complete opposite who only see the bad, and in the middle are fans who can see both the good and the bad.

There are likely also some outliers in between these groups, but the point…all types of fans are important. Without diversity among the fanbase, nobody would be seeing the light at the end, or nobody would be asking the difficult questions and pointing out when the team is making questionable moves.

Since the 2015 World Series, there has unfortunately been a lot of reason for some of the more pessimistic fans to be questioning the direction of the team. The Royals were at the peak, something that many may have thought would never happen.

Though they had finally reached the World Series, they quickly fell off and were on the path to the bottom of the statistics pool once again. There were some questionable moves that were made by the team after the World Series, like poor choices in signings, not trading when they likely should have, etc.

For most fans, though, it was likely easy to see that while the Royals were able to move to the top fairly quickly, the team had no idea how to maintain the success and continue progression for more than a year or two.

Having depleted a good deal of the farm system and lost most of the World Series team, it was time for the Royals to enter their rebuild.

Many of the decisions the Royals have made in the last few years have been questionable and often leave even me, a typically optimistic fan, wondering what exactly is going on in the carpeted offices upstairs. If the team is really in a “rebuild”, one would think the progression from year to year would be better than 1 win, and that the team might not still have a 100 in the loss column.

Many will often try to throw around the small market argument as the cause for the lack of progress. While I don’t deny that the issue of being a small market does exist and cause problems for teams such as making major signings, there is also a side of me that thinks this argument is too often used as a crutch for teams to not spend any money for a few years and get away with it.

But maybe, just maybe, we are all a bit wrong. Some of the positives and players that have done well in the past few years might not pan out or last. Some of the poor choices by the team might not actually have been all that bad. Maybe, we as fans just need to trust the process.

It’s never fun to be the fan of a team that lost 100 games, and it’s even worse when the team does it 2 years in a row. But, right under our noses, prospects have been gaining steam in the minor leagues and the future is beginning to come to fruition in spring training.

The minor league pitching talent has been holding up with talks of Brady Singer actually making the big league roster at some point in 2020. There’s also a group of outfielders who look as though they could one day all be patrolling the canyons of Kauffman Stadium.

It’s easy to see all the bad the team is doing, and even easier at times to only see positives. Maybe it’s time for us as fans to look at what’s right in front of us instead of what the team should or shouldn’t do, or what they might do if the cards fall right.

It’s time to trust the Royals process, however confusing and messed up it may be. Players are beginning to develop, and soon, the Royals could have an arsenal on their hands. The team is poised to be contention ready in the near future, and with their developed farm system, could be in a position to sustain the success much longer than the last time.

So, trust the system, but expect rewards.

Continue to be positive and negative, asking the hard questions, and seeing only the bright side. The conversations that are created from a difference of opinion are often the best conversations to have. Just remember, we should all have one thing in common. A love for the Royals, and trust in the process.