Royals heading home after sour season start

DETROIT - The most anticipated and most anxiety-inducing Kansas City Royals team in years treated Thursday morning like any other.

The team’s youthful core of Eric Hosmer, Billy Butler and Alex Gordon packed bags bound for today’s home opener in Kansas City after a rain out postponed the series finale against the Detroit Tigers. Catcher Salvador Perez playfully wrestled backup outfielder Jarrod Dyson to the ground. Rookie pitching sensation Yordano Ventura shrugged off his two-day shift to the bullpen.

The Royals opened the season with two excruciating walk-off defeats against the Tigers, the American League Central overlords and a club Kansas City seeks to unseat.

Yet the Royals showed no signs of the strain. The anxiety belongs to the team’s fan base, not the 25 men on the roster.

“These players are excited to get back home and play in front of our fans,” Manager Ned Yost said.

The Royals square off against the White Sox this afternoon. Thus continues a season that some believe doubles as a referendum on the tenure of General Manager Dayton Moore. He raised a franchise from the ground, built a highly decorated farm system and delivered the rarity of a winning baseball season in 2013.

Now, can they take the next step?

The team’s first two games left something to be desired. The Royals’ offense went quietly against Detroit’s dynamic pitching duo of Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer. Their vaunted bullpen cost them in both games, and the managerial machinations of Yost invited questioning.

After a winter of spending and a spring training of waiting, the early results feel magnified. But the hopes for this club are still high. Rival executives and national prognosticators alike feel this team can contend for the playoffs in Moore’s seventh full season in charge.

The reasons for excitement are manifold. The decision two winters ago to trade Wil Myers, and a package of other high-profile prospects, to Tampa Bay for starter James Shields caused an outcry among certain segments of the fan base, but the arrival of Shields paid dividends on the field. The Royals won 86 games, their highest total since 1989.

Shields becomes a free agent after this season. He figures to fetch a nine-figure contract on the open market. Rival executives consider the Royals a long shot to retain him. So the external pressure on the club is heightened, in no small part because Myers won the American League Rookie of the Year award with the Rays in 2013.

Sports, Pages 22 on 04/04/2014

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