Winning -- three (3) streaks of 4 wins or more:
- April 1st - 5th, 4 wins, outscored opponent(s) 26-20
- April 13th - 16th, 4 wins, outscored opponent(s) 28-11
- April 29th - May 3rd, 4 wins, outscored opponent(s) 31-13
Those streaks weren't against anyone playing good baseball at the time, but beating up on teams playing poorly is what you're supposed to do if your team is any good. In April (and just a bit of May), the Royals were pretty good overall. But after that, the well dried up as far as lengthy win streaks.
Losing -- six (6) streaks of 4 losses or more:
- April 22 - 28th, 6 losses, outscored by opponent(s) 46-22
- May 13th - 18th, 5 losses, outscored by opponent(s) 37-9
- May 21st - 26th, 5 losses, outscored by opponent(s) 32-18
- June 2nd - 5th, 4 losses, outscored by opponent(s) 26-6
- June 18th - 24th, 6 losses, outscored by opponent(s) 31-19
- June 27th - July 2nd, 5 losses, outscored by opponent(s) 30-12
The lesson? I think what highlights the losing streaks is the combination of poor pitching and poor hitting at the same time -- none of those streaks were just a product of bad luck, they were a product of horrible baseball all around. The lowest scoring average of opponents in any of those streaks was 6.5 runs/game, while the highest scoring average for the Royals was 3.67 runs/game.
Here's a breakdown of the Royals scoring through the first three months:
- April - 5 runs/game
- May/June - 3.9 runs/game
Of course, they broke out quite a bit in these last two games, but the fact is the Royals don't have a "good" offense at all (Jeff Francoeur's statement after Sunday's game notwithstanding) -- 3.9 runs/game would just be a bit higher than the 3.6 runs/game that the much maligned San Francisco Giants offense scores. And I think I'm going to take the results of two months over one month for a proper indication of offensive competency.
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