The most pivotal series since the last pivotal series

Hello, good pitching.

Goodbye, Royals offense.

Leading up to the series with the Minnesota Twins on April 29th, there hadn't been many games where the starting pitching had come through, only to be let down by the Royals offense. It was the exact opposite, as a matter of fact.

But in these last 14 games, the tables have turned -- the Royals are losing games where the starting pitching is competent, but the offense isn't bothering to show up. In their last 6 losses, the Royals have only given up 20 runs for a 3.3 runs/game clip, but themselves have only managed 8 runs in those games, for a 1.3 runs/game average.

I'll maintain what I said last week -- the Royals cannot let a ton of games like this go if they want to stay in this. Possible minor-league help notwithstanding, the Royals starters will likely suck a lot more often than they're good, so they'll need to hold their own in some of the low-scoring contests.

So far, in games where there's a total of 6 runs or less scored, the Royals are 4-8. So sure, the starters have coughed up several losses, but we can see that 8 of the Royals 19 losses (or 42%) can be placed squarely on the offense going AWOL at the wrong time. You're going to lose a lot of games like these during the course of the season, but they'll have to do better than a .333 winning percentage in the low-scoring games in order to stay in the race.

So now comes two straight two-game series against the two teams that first put a hitch in the Royals' giddy-up this season: the Texas Rangers and Cleveland Indians. Except this time, the Royals get them at home vs. on the road, so one would hope the home run derby that occurred last time (you know, the one the Royals apparently weren't invited to) won't happen again.