Hours before the Royals would complete the worst first half of a season in franchise history, manager Ned Yost sat in a dugout in Chicago last month and surveyed the future. He expressed optimism, and after receiving some pushback, he cited a statistic as his evidence.
Four of the past five teams to lose 100 games in a season, he explained, reached the playoffs within the ensuing three years.
The number was actually slightly incorrect — it’s four of the past six — but the point, first publicized by The Star’s Sam Mellinger in a column last month, stands.