Orioles & Royals are piling up the losses

Neither Baltimore nor Kansas City is on pace to win even 50 games in 2018.

There are very few certainties in baseball, but one constant in 2018 has been the Kansas City Royals and Baltimore Orioles piling up the losses at an historic rate.

The Royals enter Friday at 25-61 (.291), and haven’t won a series since May 28-30. The Orioles won a series relatively recently — taking two of three from Atlanta from June 22-24 — but have still lost 21 of their last 26 games. Baltimore has the worst record in baseball at 24-62 (.279).

Baltimore is on pace for 117 losses this season and Kansas City for 115 losses, the latter a mark reached just once since the expansion 1962 New York Mets, by the 2003 Detroit Tigers, losers of 119 games.

There haven’t been two MLB teams with winning percentages under .300 in the same season since 1939. Both the Orioles and Royals dropped 60 of their first 85 games, the first pair of teams to do this in the same year since way back in 1911.

Kansas City has 24 losses in their last 28 games, the worst stretch of futility in the majors since the start of 2017. Losses have come early and often for the Royals, so much so that manager Ned Yost is anticipating postgame questions these days. From Maria Torres in the Kansas City Star:

After the Royals lost 3-2 to the Indians on Wednesday night, manager Ned Yost took a seat in the Kauffman Stadium interview room and chose not to waste time.

“Erratic,” he said into the microphone.

Then he paused briefly. With a grin, he turned to Josh Vernier, a reporter for 610 Sports Radio, and said, “Your questions are the same every night, so I just went ahead and answered it.”

Baltimore has been in a similar rut, dropping their fourth straight on Friday and their 11th loss in the last 12 games.

“You’re always trying to give the other pitcher and other team credit, but we just didn’t mount much,” Orioles manager Buck Showalter told Eduardo Encina of the Baltimore Sun on Thursday.

The Orioles went the entire month of June without beating an American League team (0-15).

The Royals score just 3.45 runs per game and the Orioles 3.60, the worst two offenses in baseball. They are similarly putrid at allowing runs, with Kansas City last (5.40) and Baltimore 28th out of 30 (5.12). The Royals have been outscored by nearly two full runs per game.

These two teams aren’t alone in their futility, with the Chicago White Sox also on pace for 106 losses of their own. In most seasons that would easily be the worst record in baseball, but 2018 is different.

Kansas City, who lost free agents Lorenzo Cain and Eric Hosmer this offseason, is in rebuild mode, as is Chicago. Baltimore, however, actually tried somewhat this offseason, signing free agent pitchers Alex Cobb and Andrew Cashner to multi-year deals. Yet here they are, with the worst record in baseball.

Chris Davis is hitting an unfathomable .152/.225/.257 with seven home runs in 70 games, and he still has four years and $92 million remaining on his contract after 2018.

The Royals already traded their biggest remaining chip, sending reliever Kelvin Herrera to the Washington Nationals in June. Pending free agent Manny Machado has been the subject of trade rumors for months and will continue to be until Baltimore decides to deal him.

It wasn’t too long ago that these teams were perennial contenders. Kansas City went to back-to-back World Series, winning a championship in 2015. Baltimore averaged 89 wins from 2012-16 and reached the playoffs three times, including an ALCS matchup against the Royals in 2014.

But now that hope and promise is long gone, as both teams spend the summer of 2018 racking up loss after loss, with their only race the one to secure the top pick in the 2019 draft.