It has been a genuinely unhinged week to be a Royals fan, and it started with the kind of inning that makes you want to throw a remote through a TV. Kansas City opened its game against the Mets by turning a routine play into a disaster, and New York cashed in immediately.
The Royals' infield unraveled in the bottom of the first as the Mets jumped ahead 3-0.
That was just the appetizer. The Royals managed to commit 3 throwing errors in the same half-inning, capped by a throw from Jac Caglianone that had Barstool's Eric Hubbs practically speechless -- he called it one of the worst throws he'd ever seen, with no clue what Caglianone was even trying to do. The sequence turned into what got labeled a 3-error little league homer, the kind of defensive collapse that gets its own headline the next morning.
The Royals Gave Up A Three Error Little League Homer That Included One Of The Worst Throws You'll Ever See On a Baseball Diamond From Jac Caglianone https://t.co/MvtU3KSGye
Somehow, that ugly start turned into one of the best individual nights of the season. Down 9-4 to the Mets, the Royals ripped off 12 unanswered runs for a 16-12 comeback win, and Tyler Tolbert was the engine the whole way -- a two-run homer in the second, then singles in four straight at-bats after that, finishing 5-for-6 on the night.
Tolbert kept adding to the streak in real time as Barstool Baseball tracked every at-bat.
By the time Tolbert singled again later in the game, he'd reached base in 12 consecutive plate appearances, tying an MLB record that had only been touched twice before: Johnny Kling in 1902 and Walt Dropo in 1952. He also shattered the Royals' own franchise record of 8 straight, set earlier in that very same hot streak.
Then, two days earlier in Philadelphia, Kansas City did something even weirder. In a 15-1 blowout of Phillies ace Cristopher Sanchez, the Royals scored in all 9 innings -- something no American League team had ever done, and something only 21 teams in MLB history had pulled off. With 24 perfect games on record, scoring in every single inning is statistically rarer than throwing one. Tolbert went 5-for-5 with a homer in that game too, and the Royals stacked up 22 hits total, part of a 9-game run of scoring at least once that snapped a franchise mark dating back to 1998.
So in the span of a week, the Royals gave up a 3-error little league homer, tied a 124-year-old hitting record, and pulled off an inning-by-inning scoring feat rarer than a perfect game -- all against the same opponent, more or less back to back. Kansas City's season has been a mess in stretches, but this stretch, at least, is impossible to look away from.