‘What we saw’ in April: Kansas City Royals rising from ashes of 11-game losing skid

Whether you think he was being rational or just rationalizing, speaking intellectually or optimistically, this is the first thing Royals manager Mike Matheny said when he was reminded Wednesday night about the 11-game losing streak his team was trapped in last week:

“I don’t think anybody wants to hear it, but we weren’t playing terrible baseball … It’s just we weren’t getting different components each night,” he said. “It sounds ridiculous when you lose 11 games in a row to say that there was some good stuff happening, but there was. We’ve got to be honest when there is.”

Even so, from the vantage point of winning for the fourth time in six games by grinding past Milwaukee 6-4 on Wednesday night, there was a nearly tangible sense of relief and resetting that enabled Matheny to share some of the toll that hideous stretch was exacting.

“I think there’s a number of us that lost weight that weren’t anticipating losing. We lost sleep,” he said. “I think each year … you forget how hard those (runs) are. You forget how consuming they are.”

As in what he called “24-7.” And that the urgency burns in such a way you can’t wait until game time hoping to fix it. Or at least end it.

And then put it behind and figure out what they learned about themselves and the team … and minimize any further losing streaks inevitably looming in the course of a season.

One way you do that is to create winning streaks, which the Royals did on Thursday in the most modest of senses by winning back-to-back games for the first time since a season-best five straight wins from April 21-26.

And another is to be resourceful enough to stoke a turn in fortune with everything from walks to steals to bunts and spectacular catches, such as Michael A. Taylor stealing a home run from Jackie Bradley Jr. on Wednesday night.

Throw in home runs by Taylor and Jorge Soler and some fine pitching, as the Royals got with a decent start by Brad Keller and good bullpen work punctuated by Josh Staumont’s fifth save.

And, shazam, it’s all at least momentarily a bit reminiscent of the first weeks of the season, when the Royals were on their way to a 16-9 start that represented the best record in baseball … before the stunning and abrupt 11-game meltdown.

“This, to me, is what we saw for an entire month,” Matheny said. “So how do you weigh the month, plus this last little stretch, as opposed to those 11 games?

“To each his own. But I’m watching our guys get better. And I’m watching them taking days like these last few to rebuild that confidence in the kind of team we are.”

At its best, that means the sort of team that in the last week pulled off four wins in games started by pitchers Lucas Giolito, Carlos Rodón, Brandon Woodruff and Corbin Burnes, who had combined for an 11-7 record and 2.10 ERA entering the games.

At its best, it’s a team that is seeing its rotation stabilize (with Danny Duffy’s injury to be re-evaluated soon), its bullpen seemingly reinforced with Kyle Zimmer back and in a matter of days should be revitalized by the return of shortstop Adalberto Mondesi from his oblique strain.

It’s also a team that at least seems to generally understand it has to manufacture runs and make its own luck more than relying on big swings.

“We’ve got to figure out a way to get 90 feet that other people can’t,” as Whit Merrifield put it the other day in Chicago.

Indeed, while Matheny joked that putting balls in the fountains is OK by him, he also knows this win was forged as much or more by the sequence after Soler’s 442-foot seventh-inning home run that tied the score 3-3.

Then came a dose of small ball in the form of a single by Kelvin Gutierrez, a stolen base by pinch runner Jarrod Dyson, a Taylor walk and a Cam Gallagher sacrifice bunt to put runners on second and third with one out.

All of which set up what proved to be the game-winning RBI, a walloping bunt by Nicky Lopez.

Meanwhile, something else has come out of the last week, too: A reassurance that if you keep going about this the right way, a team can emerge from the worst of funks … albeit later than anyone would have wanted.

That’s part of what Matheny meant when he said he wasn’t that discouraged during the streak.

Players still were showing up with the right attitudes, something Merrifield observed, too, noting they came with the same energy and approach to win that day.

“That never left,” Merrifield said in Chicago, later adding, “What’s happened has happened. You learn from it and move forward.”

So they have, at least in the sense that they’ve won the last week to improve to 20-22 with ample reason to feel they’ve got a fresh start.

They’re only as good as their next game, of course, and we’ve already seen how rapidly this team can go to different extremes.

But maybe they figured out something about “how we, collectively, figure out ways to shorten those (losing) times,” as Matheny said.

And with an off-day Thursday, he added, with a smile, “Hopefully we’ll get some of that sleep back, too.”