When the Royals flip back through the script they wrote for this 2018 season, the plot holes will jump off the pages.
There is the list of decisions made about the relief corps that banished the Royals bullpen to the cellar of baseball with a league-worst 5.33 ERA.
There is the feeble offense that entered Saturday slugging a 29th-ranked .373 and that during a five-win month of June batted a majors-low .193.
And don’t forget the two fluke injuries that knocked significant right-handed power out of the lineup at different junctures in the season: Catcher Salvador Perez slipped on stairs while carrying luggage three nights before opening day and partially tore a ligament in his knee; and outfielder Jorge Soler tripped out of the batter’s box in the midst of a nine-game losing streak and fractured his toe in June.