Royals about to find out how hard it is to repeat success

If the Royals continue their winning ways over an extended period, like the franchise did in the 1970s and 1980s, they’ll have taken the road less traveled in 21st-century baseball.

If the Royals overcome the odds of tacking on three more winning seasons to their current streak of three, they’d join select company. Of the 30 franchises, only 13 have experienced six or more consecutive winning seasons since 2000.

No team in the American League surpasses the Royals’ current streak of three straight winning seasons. The Indians also have three. The Cardinals (eight), Dodgers (five) and Nationals (four) have baseball’s longest streaks of winning seasons.

So, before the Royals can begin to consider repeating as AL Central Division champions — much less World Series champs — and taking a shot at an AL pennant three-peat, which hasn’t happened since the New York Yankees won four straight during 1998-2001, it’s best to start with the difficulty of finishing above .500 on a consistent basis.

Then maybe the Royals can begin to think the way manager Ned Yost and general manager Dayton Moore did when they worked for the Atlanta Braves, in the midst of that organization’s 14-full-season run of division titles that started in 1991.

“It’s not a drive, it’s a mind-set,” Yost said. “It’s the mind-set we had in Atlanta and it’s the same way here.

“Winning a world championship is the toughest thing to do in sports. You’ve got 30 teams every year trying to figure out how to do it.”

But at least the Royals have gotten this far, and reaching this point didn’t seem like a battle as much as a drawn-out conflict fraught with miscalculations and missteps and losing. The worst occurred during 2002-06, when the team surrounded its only winning season in a 20-year period with the four 100-loss seasons in franchise history.

In the middle of the 2006 season, the Royals introduced Moore, and although the 100-loss seasons soon ended, the losing records did not. The pieces finally came together for an 86-76 record in 2013 that produced this line from Moore: “In some ways, I feel like we’ve won the World Series.”

The comment, at his season-ending news conference, drew a puzzled reaction, but there was no mistaking the feeling of triumph getting over .500 after years of futility.

More pieces started falling into place as the improvement continued, and now the Royals find themselves on the winning side of things, with expectations and decisions to be made to remain and to become strong.

There are lessons to be learned from others who have been in a similar position recently. Take the Philadelphia Phillies.

After a six-year ramp-up period, the Phillies returned to the playoffs in 2007 for the first time in 14 years. The next four seasons were special. Philadelphia made the playoffs each year, went to the World Series twice and won it in 2008.

But the roster aged and the Phillies decided to hold on to aging and expensive stars Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins. Those commitments and midseason acquisitions came at the expense of the farm system. The Phillies haven’t been in the playoffs or above .500 since 2011.

Arguably the most successful organization of the 21st century was outbid on the free-agent market for one of its greatest players after the 2011 season. Albert Pujols turned down an offer from his team, the St. Louis Cardinals, and signed a more lucrative deal with the Los Angeles Angels.

Cardinals fans, who had just watched their team win a second World Series in six years, were crushed. But Pujols’ WAR (wins above replacement) in each of his four years with the Angels has been worse than in any of his 11 years in St. Louis.

The Cardinals got two compensation picks for losing Pujols: pitcher Michael Wacha, an All-Star last season, and outfielder Stephen Piscotty, who hit .305 last year in his major-league debut.

The Cards haven’t missed the playoffs since winning the World Series, claiming three straight NL Central Division crowns. The Angels have made the playoffs once in the last four years.

“The payoff of letting Albert Pujols go became clear in record time,” wrote Howard Megdal in The Cardinal Way, published earlier this year.

The examples may be extreme but prove how quickly fortunes can swing on decisions made in the glow of success.

The Royals made some long-term moves during the offseason, extending Alex Gordon and Salvador Perez and signing free-agent pitcher Ian Kennedy to a four-year deal.

But Moore prefers to discuss the present and not two or three years down the road. Although the Royals have several key pieces back from their pennant-winning teams, history is against them. Four of the last five World Series winners missed the playoffs the next year. Two — the 2013 Giants and 2014 Red Sox — posted losing records.

The last team to repeat a World Series title? Those turn of the century Yankees, during 1998-2000.

To Moore, the best way to sustain success is to win the next one and not think about the one after that, yet.

“You can’t be consumed with what players are going to be here for what period of time,” Moore said. “We’re not going to focus on next year or the year after.”

This story was originally published April 3, 2016 at 6:54 AM with the headline "Royals about to find out how hard it is to repeat success."