AL Wild Card Standings: Royals enter grueling 13-game stretch still trailing Mariners

After a weekend that was overall positive, the Kansas City Royals will enter yet another week feeling like they left something on the table.

Unlike last week where the Royals only managed to come out with one win in their three-game home-set against the Detroit Tigers, they managed to come out with a series win against the Minnesota Twins this time around.

However, after narrowing the gap between them and Mariners to a single game heading into Sunday's contest, they are now back to two games below Seattle, with Texas leapfrogging them in the process, after dropping the series finale to the Twins.

The Royals now enter an extremely competitive stretch of games over the next two weeks with seemingly all to play for and everything to lose.

Royals still knocking on October's door with a challenging schedule ahead of them

Gone are the easy opponents on paper for the next little while like the Royals saw in three of their last four series in the White Sox, Angels and Twins. The next two weeks will see Kansas City head on the road for a pair of challenging series against some postseason contenders, before returning home next week for the same sort of week.

They'll start it off tonight against their current Wild Card rivals in the Cleveland Guardians for a four-game series at Progressive Field. Then, they'll make the jump over to Pennsylvania to square off against the NL East leading Phillies for a three-game weekend stint.

They'll then return home next Tuesday for what could be their most crucial series of the season as the team they're ultimately chasing in the Seattle Mariners come to town for three games and then it's the AL East leading Toronto Blue Jays coming to Kauffman for a three-game weekend series to end the Royals' home schedule for the year.

To play with the best teams when it matter most, you have to beat them in the regular season. So, perhaps the next 13 games will be a terrific test of whether or not this team is a legitimate contender.

Looking at the current lay of the land in the AL Wild Card scene, as mentioned earlier, Kansas City is still chasing down Seattle, who sit two games above them. And then of course, Texas was able to jump back up over the Royals by half game on Sunday.

A half game below KC sits their division rivals and current opponents in the Cleveland Guardians, so this will be a key series to ensure they don't allow another team to leap frog them if they can help it.

Then, after getting swept this weekend, the Tampa Bay Rays now fall four games out of the Wild Card spots and two games behind the Royals, as the herd might be beginning to thin here in the final three weeks.

At the end of the day, the only two things that matter for the Royals at this point are focusing on what they do first and foremost, but also hoping the teams ahead of them slip up a bit.

The Mariners start the week with a tricky home series against the .500 St. Louis Cardinals, while the Rangers gear up for three games at home against MLB's best team in the Milwaukee Brewers.