At the beginning of the season, very few people thought that the Royals would be particularly relevant. To be sure, many thought that the Royals would be better—probably a lot better—than they were last year. But “better” and “good,” of course, are not exactly the same.
On March 15, which seems like forever ago, I wrote an article about how many wins it would take to make the playoffs just in case it was relevant (and to dream a little). Essentially, the average first Wild Card winner over the last decade ended up with 94 or so wins, with the second Wild Card at about 90 wins and the brand new third Wild Card spot at about 87 wins.