Royals’ Mike Matheny knows each game counts more, but his approach remains the same
With 60 games remaining in the regular season, the Kansas City Royals are in just as good a position to potentially win their division, make a playoff push and compete for a spot in the World Series as any of the favorites in Major League Baseball, including the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers.
That’s the unique aspect of the 2020 MLB season. Normally, 102 games would’ve already been played by the time the final 60 served as a home stretch.
By that time, some teams typically would have played themselves out of contention. Others would have created a significant cushion between them and their closest competition.
This year, everyone will be on equal footing coming down the home stretch because the home stretch is all that’s being played. That also means that in comparison to a normal-length season, every game will count almost three times as much as it has in past seasons.
That also puts an added emphasis on roster construction and management because any player capable of impacting a game in a critical way holds vital importance.
“We’re going to put the best team we can on the field from day one and we’re going to go with it,” Royals general manager Dayton Moore said. “I’m sure we’ll make a change here and there along the way. Every out is important. Every inning is important. Obviously, every major league game is important. So, we’ll look at it more as a sprint in this case, and that will be the mindset.”
This year’s 60-game season represents a little more than 1/3 of a typical 162-game regular season (37 percent).
Getting off to a fast start also seems critical to the hopes of every team, including the Royals. After all, the shortened schedule simply doesn’t allow time to dig out of an early hole.
Last season, the Washington Nationals bounced back from a 27-33 start to win the World Series. They’d have been a fourth-place team in a 60-game season.
The Royals need look no further than last year to see how a slow start took the wind out of their sales in the opening weeks of the season.
Bullpen woes hampered the Royals from the start last year. In the first eight games of the season, relievers posted an 8.10 ERA, walked more than they struck out (21 to 19), allowed a .309 batting average against and blew three of five save opportunities.
With that, the team came stumbling out of the gate. Through the first 20 games of last season, the Royals were 7-13. Through 40 games, they were 14-26. After 60 games, they’d gone 19-41.
Royals manager Mike Matheny, who has yet to manage a game for his new club, refuses to place added pressure on the opening days of the season despite the shortened schedule.
“I had a number of people, some of our staff included, who talked even about us playing 162-game season and how important it was to come out of the gates and we’ve got to have this good start,” Matheny said.
“The truth is a lot of times we can get distracted outside of what we need to do right now. It happens so easy in our game. If we tell ourselves that ‘If we don’t win so many out of the first so many then we’re done.’ First of all, it’s not completely true. And secondly, it becomes a distraction.”
Matheny seemingly made the distinction between the relative importance in the standings of each game in a shortened season and the mental approach he believes players and coaches need to have each day.
His point being that players can’t take a big picture view of every single action on the field and how it may affect the larger season. Instead, they must embrace that timeless baseball cliche of one pitch at a time.
At the same time, Matheny clearly didn’t want to downplay the importance of each game.
“We’re going to chase every single win,” Matheny said. “I mean I can’t say it any more clear. If we started the season and it was you know do or die today, I’m going to go after this game with everything that we have without hurting anybody — that’s going to be that balance. How do we not hurt anybody? How can we go about chasing every single one like, it’s the last chance we’ll ever have to get one?”
Matheny added that if the shortened season equates to his team trying “harder” than it would’ve to start a normal-length season “then shame on us.”
In his mind, that desire to chase every win didn’t change or intensify with a shortened season.
“We’ve got a responsibility to play the game a certain way, every single time we have the honor strapping on that uniform and it just makes it very consistent from a communication standpoint and then from an application standpoint if everybody just knows this is what’s expected of us,” Matheny said. “We leave nothing in the tank every single moment we’re out there.”
This story was originally published June 26, 2020 at 5:32 PM with the headline "Royals’ Mike Matheny knows each game counts more, but his approach remains the same."
