Inside the Crown

The Weekend in Review is free for everyone every week during the season. If you’d like to get every newsletter, read all the analysis, comment on everything and be eligible for giveaways, become a paid subscriber today! No matter how much sense it makes for the Royals to not play on a Saturday (and they’ll have a Friday off here soon), it still feels wrong. It led to a three-game series featuring only two games over the weekend, which just feels weird for the Weekend in Review.

It’s been a while since there’s been a Royals game where so much happened that I just don’t know where to start or how to even present this game in the newsletter the day after. I could focus on the fact that the offense had 11 extra base hits, just one shy of the franchise record for a game. I could focus on the eight doubles, which were tied for the fifth-most they’ve ever hit in a game.

The Royals have finally reached the 30-win mark, only 17 games behind last year and 26 behind 2024. Of those 30 wins, I count maybe 10 that didn't cause much stress.

The Washington Nationals have a legitimately excellent offense. They’ve scored 14 more runs than anyone else. And that becomes even more impressive when you realize they’re often doing it with a bottom of the order featuring three below-average to downright bad hitters. When Keibert Ruiz plays, there’s a reprieve, but when Drew Millas catches, a bottom third of Jacob Young, Millas and Nasim Nuñez is often a free trio for pitchers.

The Weekend in Review is free for everyone every week during the season. If you’d like to get every newsletter, read all the analysis, comment on everything and be eligible for giveaways, become a paid subscriber today! If there was any hope remaining for the Royals to make a miracle run at the start of this weekend, you probably lost it all in the top of the first on Friday. And then probably got a little bit of it back, but then lost it again at the end. And again on Saturday.

Losing a baseball game is not a big deal. The team with the most wins of all-time lost 46 of them throughout the season. Losing two in a row is not a big deal either. The team currently holding the final playoff spot in the American League is on pace to lose 81 times, and many of those came after another one. But when the losses are just the same thing we’ve seen consistently on a loop, it’s easy to get upset.

It would have been easy to throw in the towel, both as a player and a fan, in the early going. While the Rangers didn’t score in the first inning as they did in all three games the two teams played in Texas, they did get a run in the second and then another in the fourth with some sloppy play. And in those first four innings, the Royals offense was able to work three walks, and that was it against Nathan Eovaldi.

The Weekend in Review is free for everyone every week during the season. If you’d like to get every newsletter, read all the analysis, comment on everything and be eligible for giveaways, become a paid subscriber today! Winning baseball is a whole lot more fun to watch, write about and read about than what we had been watching for a while. I know that this is the WEEKEND in Review, but a 5-2 week is just what the doctor ordered.

Often, it feels like the Royals play the same game on repeat, but last night was a sort of game that I don’t remember seeing a whole lot of over the last couple of years. The line score alone is one that makes it unique: You don’t often see a team score exactly one run in six consecutive innings. Though the last time that happened, according to Brandon Warne, who covers the Twins, was May 17, 2025, by…the Twins.

There are some games that you sort of expect the offense to struggle. Facing Chase Burns is one of those games. The second-year starter has been everything the Reds hoped he would be when they drafted him second overall just two years ago. The Royals caught a break when he got sick on Monday, but that break didn’t last the whole series, with him coming back for game three. But in the end, getting two runs against him was actually tied for the second-most runs he’s allowed in a game.