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The Kansas City Royals have been disappointing. Here’s what needs to come next

Over a two-year stretch in the midst of baseball’s steroid era, the Royals did something quite unusual — they scored pretty frequently despite the absence of the home run.

In fact, they were one of the American League’s worst power-hitting teams, but they led the league in average and scored more than most of their counterparts. And thus with an outfield trio of Johnny Damon, Jermaine Dye and Carlos Beltran, you couldn’t help but wonder.

Man, if only they could pitch.

It’s a windup, I know, but it’s one with a point: The 2022 Royals would be lucky to claim an if-only luxury. It would represent improvement. The teams on the other end of this comparison, by the way, lost 182 games over two seasons. And they at least had the lineup clicking.

This one opened the initial six weeks of the season as one of baseball’s worst-hitting teams. After firing their hitting coach and, in turn, overhauling their approach at the plate, they’ve actually managed to turn the lineup’s production around for a week — you know, just in time for everything to collapse around it.

The pitching staff blew six leads in six days. The Royals have the worst bullpen earned run average in the American League now, and the bullpen’s ERA is actually better than the rotation’s ERA.

In baseball, things can turn in an instant, but it feels less like the Royals need to take just one step forward and more like they need to push a boulder up the mountain. They have become one of those teams in which you’re waiting for something to go wrong every night, and if you’re patient enough — might even have to stick around for the full nine innings — something will often give.

The Royals envisioned improvement this season resulting in somewhere in the neighborhood of a .500 record, but those calculations are so far off that they must analyze the guidance that prompted that belief. They’d have to finish 66-53 to get there.

Heading into Thursday’s game, no team in baseball had won fewer games, and the Cincinnati Reds put together (or tore down) a roster that basically broadcast to the entire league their intention to do anything but actually win baseball games.

There’s no quick-fix to the Royals’ 15-28 record — that’s the most damning indictment of their roster. The problems are multi-layered, from underperforming veterans in the lineup to a pitching staff that appears ready for a new voice, reluctant as the Royals are to make that switch. But for every change, it feels inadequate to reversing 15-28.

So, where does that leave them? Well, it leaves them facing a decision they did not anticipating making in late May.

Whether to go ahead and flip the switch.

To play the kids.

The Royals are stuck in a lot of ways this season, their own self-infliction, but they’re in a bit of an odd spot in which the prospects that comprise baseball’s fifth-ranked farm system — the ones that will determine whether this rebuild works or must be recoiled — can still be every bit as good as they projected. The Royals have asked you to be patient as they build it back. They’ve been greeted with a willingness, but that tolerance is rightfully running thin in a city that knows this routine far too well.

Is there an end date?

Earlier this week in Arizona, a 23-year-old Royals rookie launched a baseball 407 feet that would have left any ballpark in the major leagues. An inning later, a 21-year-old rookie hit a baseball 111.3 miles per hour.

The following day, as the Royals embraced a long-awaited and much-needed reprieve ahead of a four game series in Minnesota, the team’s fourth-ranked prospect belted two home runs, including a grand slam, in a minor-league game. The team’s top-ranked prospect blasted another.

Without even squinting, you could actually see the makings of a future big-league lineup. Maybe it should be the present-day lineup, too. The Royals are having those discussions as you read this, but so far they’ve waited on calling up the likes of Nick Pratto and Vinnie Pasquantino to the major leagues.

The outside noise is that Carlos Santana and Ryan O’Hearn are blocking Pratto and Pasquantino from reaching the majors, which, if true, would be rightfully frustrating. But that’s not the reason for this specific delay. The Royals scouts simply don’t think Pratto and Pasquantino are ready quite yet. They don’t believe they’re too far off, either, but just not yet. When that analysis changes, the Royals will make room, no matter the necessary resulting transaction.

Pratto still swings and misses too frequently. In the major leagues, the swing-and-miss rate only increases. The Royals are not alone in preferring to solve that sort of problem before a player makes his major-league debut.

Pasquantino has just 152 Triple-A at-bats after getting only 200 in Double-A a year ago. But, man, an OPS of 1.034 is hard to ignore. His stay in the minors revolves around a particular pitch, and pitch location, in which the Royals would like to see improvement before a call-up. We could be on the verge of talking days, not weeks. When the first number of the OPS precedes the decimal point, there’s a lot going right, even if not everything with the player’s approach at the plate is going right.

In an ideal world, the Royals would prefer those two players — both first basemen, though Pratto has played in the outfield recently in Omaha — would walk into a major-league clubhouse that has won a few games, not one on a six-game losing streak that finally concluded Thursday in Minnesota. The hope is they can blend into a big-league team, not feel as though they need to carry it out of a slump.

At some point, though, the Royals will determine it’s best those lessons come in Kansas City, and no longer in Omaha. I can’t imagine that determination comes after July 1. Frankly, it might not come too long after June 1. The last time the Royals built this thing, on the backs of position players like Eric Hosmer, Lorenzo Cain, Mike Moustakas and Alcides Escobar, those one-time prospects struggled either upon arrival or shortly after. Moustakas even required a return visit to Omaha.

With Pratto and Pasquantino, isn’t it better to have those struggles arrive now, in 2022, as opposed to next year?

It’s not throwing in the towel to embrace the youth sooner rather than later. It’s turning both eyes toward the piece of the rebuild on which this front office’s post-2015 success will ultimately be judged. It can no longer be just about winning in 2022, because they’re not accomplishing that. It’s about best preparing a future core, the source of optimism. About the only source of optimism.

The list of ways in which to embrace the latter can grow. It’s Pratto and Pasquantino. It’s M.J. Melendez, Kyle Isbel and Emmanuel Rivera receiving regular at-bats, even after the returns of Salvador Perez, Cam Gallagher and Michael A. Taylor.

In some cases, that might require some positional experimentation, particularly with Pratto and Melendez. In others, it might necessitate some trades to clear the runway. Andrew Benintendi is an impending free agent. The Royals would undoubtedly be worse without him in 2022, but might they be better in 2023 if Isbel, Melendez and Edward Olivares (when he returns from a quad injury) are seeing regular playing time? Sure. Teams don’t usually make serious calls in May. They do as the trade deadline nears in late summer.

These aren’t the options from which the Royals should be choosing seven years after last making the playoffs. But you get to pick only from the options before you. The best teams make the most of the worst moments.