This Royals reliever is pitching his way out of a high-leverage role

There was a time this season when it felt as though the Kansas City Royals would have been dead in the water without reliever John Schreiber. Unfortunately, of late, the team's playoff hopes seem all but over, and Schreiber has played a part in making sure they've looked dead in the water as the campaign winds down.

Every reliever in baseball is going to have a rough period here and there. Even some of the best bullpen arms in the game go through stretches where they look like they've never recorded an out. It's more the timing of Schreiber's struggles that makes his mistakes more aggravating.

What makes Schreiber's recent stumbles most disconcerting is that they've come on the heels of arguably the best stretch of his career. Entering September, the Kansas City Royals reliever looked like a real weapon, allowing just three earned runs (in one outing) and six hits in 11 August outings.

John Schreiber's slump derailing Kansas City Royals’ postseason hopes

However, once the calendar turned to September, the most essential part of the season for a team hoping to grab a Wild Card spot, Schreiber has been, for lack of a better word, awful.

The reliever has allowed runs in four of his last six outings, and three of those four saw multiple runs allowed. He's posted an 11.81 earned average overall so far this month. He's allowed seven hits in 5.1 innings, and three of those were home runs.

As John Schreiber has gone, so too have the Kansas City Royals. While not technically out of the race yet, with 12 games to play, they sit 6.5 games out of the final Wild Card spot and will need to leap both the Cleveland Guardians and Texas Rangers to have a real shot at squeaking into the postseason.