Royals History: Revisiting the dawn of KC's plunge into mediocrity 10 years later

The Kansas City Royals cruised into the 2016 season on the heels of two wildly successful seasons. After not landing a single postseason berth since winning the 1985 World Series, the suddenly exciting Ned Yost-led 2014 Royals fell one game short of beating San Francisco for another World Championship in 2014, then dominated the Mets to nab the 2015 Series in five games.

Riding so high for two straight seasons triggered talk of a budding KC dynasty. Most of the 2015 title team, including Salvador Perez, Eric Hosmer, Lorenzo Cain, Mike Moustakas, Wade Davis, and Kelvin Herrera, were returning in 2016, and hopes were high that Hosmer, Cain, and Moustakas could be convinced to re-up on long-term deals before stepping into free agency after the 2017 campaign.

And Opening Day of 2016 seemed to signal that the good times weren't close to ending. The Royals hosted the Mets they'd beaten in the World Series just five months before; almost eerily, the same pitchers who started Kansas City's Game 5 clincher — KC's Edinson Vólquez and the Mets' Matt Harvey — faced off in the unusual Sunday night opener, and the Royals won again with super reliever Wade Davis finishing off New York on a strikeout.

Good omens? Seemingly so at the time, but not in the long run. The 2016 season ended not with another trip to the World Series, but in crushing disappointment — instead of repeating as American League Central champions and World Series participants, the Royals finished 81-81 and missed the playoffs.

What happened to the club that for two seasons made such a convincing case for sustained success? Ten years later, let's take a look at the season that marked the beginning of a painful era in Royals' history.

First, some good things about the 2016 Royals

The season didn't end the way anyone wanted, but it wasn't a complete bust. Danny Duffy's excellent 12-3, 3.51 ERA performance made him the ace of a rotation that featured four double-digit game winners and set the table for the five-year, $65 million contract he signed after the season.

Perez's 22 home runs tied his then-career high. He became an All-Star for the fourth time, won the fourth of his five Gold Gloves, and grabbed the first of his club-record five Silver Sluggers (he broke George Brett's franchise mark of three in 2021, then snapped that record in 2024).

Hosmer also made the All-Star team, homered a career-best 25 times (he did it again in 2017), and drove in a career-high 104 runs.

Despite playing in only 103 games, Cain hit .287 with 56 RBI and 14 steals. And Davis saved 27 games.

But the disappointments were too many.

A lot of things went wrong for the Royals in 2016

Several players, most notably Perez, Hosmer, Duffy, Cain, and Davis, had good 2016 campaigns. But major league teams are always the sum of their parts, and subpar individual performances had much to do with the 2016 club beginning an ugly eight-year franchise slide that didn't produce a winning season until 2024. That unfortunate span encompassed three 100-plus-loss campaigns, including the debacle of 2023 that required a final-game win to avoid the worst campaign in club history.

Future club Hall of Famer Alex Gordon, for one, wasn't stellar. He hit 17 homers, but his .220 average was then the second worst, and his .312 OBP the third worst, of his full seasons. And he uncharacteristically failed to win a Gold Glove.

Ian Kennedy didn't quite live up to the five-year, $70 million contract KC curiously gave him after he went 9-15 for San Diego in 2015. Yes, he won 11 games, but he also lost 11 and, across June and July, when the Royals fell from first to fourth in the AL Central, went 2-6 with a 5.37 ERA.

After winning the season opener, Vólquez finished 10-11 and his 5.37 ERA was by far the regular rotation's worst. Brought back to bolster the bullpen, former star Kansas City closer Joakim Soria made 70 appearances, but his 4.07 ERA was then the worst of his career.

And injuries hit hard. Mike Moustakas, from whom big things were expected after his 22-homer, 82-RBI, .284/.348/.401, 123 wRC+ and 3.8 fWAR 2015 performance, tore an ACL in a late May on-field collision with Gordon and missed the rest of the season. And Jason Vargas, who went 16-12 with a 3.76 ERA during the two World Series seasons, pitched only three times after his late-season return from Tommy John Surgery.

Postseason explanations almost universally speculated that a "hangover" arising from the pressures and successes of 2014 and 2015 contributed to the Royals' 2016 downfall. Maybe, maybe not. The undeniable truth is, however, that with their roster still brimming with key players who propelled them to two straight World Series appearances, the 2016 Royals simply didn't play as well.

Unfortunately, the season was a harbinger of bad times to come. Hosmer, Cain, and Vargas left after the 2017 campaign. Moustakas returned but was traded at the 2017 trade deadline. Duffy never again pitched as well as he did in 2016, and that big contract he signed after the season turned out to be one of the worst pitching deals the club's ever made. Gordon bounced back to win four straight Gold Gloves before retiring after the 2020 season, but never consistently hit as well as he had before 2016.

And as a team, the Royals repeated their third-place Central finish in 2017, but couldn't make it past fourth place until 2024.