Two years ago, in the opening weeks of a season that would end with champagne, the steel spine of a champion signaled its warning to the rest of the baseball.
The Royals’ bullpen was a menace, a scowling, swaggering, fear-inducing unit that rolled five or six deep. In the month of April, the collection of power armed allowed just eight earned runs. On most nights, the formula was doled out using just three initials: HDH.
Two years later, as another baseball season approached, nobody inside the Royals organization believed its 2017 bullpen could approach such dominance. The names have changed, of course.