Kansas City Royals 2012

Spring training at TheSportsNotebook enters its third day*, as we take a look at the Kansas City Royals. When you think of long-suffering franchises, Kansas City is certainly at the top of the list. They had a winning season as recently as 2003, so they don’t have the long sub-.500 streak of teams like Pittsburgh or Baltimore. But on the flip side, the latter two were at least in the playoffs during the 1990s. Kansas City, on the other hand, has not been in postseason play since they set the standard for comebacks in 1985, rallying from 3 games to 1 deficits in both the American League Championship Series against Toronto and the World Series against St. Louis.

That’s right, even with the three-divisonal alignment instituted in 1994 and the wild-card that finally came into being a year later after the ’94 strike, Kansas City has never made the playoffs since that epic run in ’85 when I was a sophomore in high school. It was also the year Back To The Future was the top-grossing film, and the Royals are hoping this year can inspire a similar theme at Kaufmann Stadium, as the fans hope to at last wake up the echoes of George Brett, Frank White and 20-year-old Bret Saberhagen. TheSportsNotebook evaluates the 2012 Royals on the basis of their ability to get on base, hit for power, starting pitching and relief pitching.