KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ Sitting inside a hotel room in Little Rock, Ark., Sean Manaea glanced at his cell phone and saw a familiar phone number flash across the screen. The moment came last July. The call came from a member of the Royals' office. The day changed the life of a top prospect and altered the course of baseball history in Kansas City.
On that day, Manaea, 23, had been traded to the Oakland A's for second baseman Ben Zobrist, a deal that would bolster a first-place Royals team and set the stage for a raucous postseasons run in 2015. Manaea didn't see the deal coming, of course, because you never do. A first-round pick in 2013, he always envisioned himself making his big league debut in a Royals uniform, toeing the rubber at Kauffman Stadium. Instead, he became indirectly tied to a World Series championship, the young asset who delivered Zobrist.
Fourteen months later, on a September night at Kauffman Stadium, Manaea earned another odd distinction, the former top prospect who had a hand in dethroning the defending champs. The Royals are not officially out of it, of course, not even after an 8-0 loss to the Oakland A's on Wednesday night. After a third straight loss to the last-place A's, they remained five games out of the second American League wild-card spot with 17 games to play. From a mathematical standpoint, they are still alive.
Yet everything else about Wednesday night felt positively funereal. There was a lifeless performance on the field. There was a quiet stadium. There was Manaea, the former Royals farmhand, throwing five scoreless innings while allowing just three hits.
To say anyone inside the Royals' organization regrets trading Manaea and right-hander Aaron Brooks for Zobrist would be patently false. The franchise has a 2015 World Series championship flag flying above Kauffman Stadium, a glorious mural of a championship parade on the club's Hall of Fame, and a core of players with sparkling rings.
And Manaea, a 6-foot-5 southpaw, entered Wednesday with a 4.40 ERA in 1202/3 innings. And yet, the return provided some poetic symmetry. A season ago, the Royals roared to an American League Central title, exchanged a slew of top prospects for invaluable rental pieces, and went on a postseason run for the ages. In 2016, the magic dried up.
In a season defined by crippling injuries, bullpen disappointment, and a spirited late-season surge, what remained of the Royals' faint playoff hopes were punctured Wednesday by one of those old prospects.
Well, that was part of the story.
The other part concerned starter Yordano Ventura allowing five runs in 41/3 innings; the other part concerned an offense that could produce nothing; the other part concerned a bizarre inability to compete against the American League. With one more game against the A's on Thursday, the Royals are now 7-19 against the division, including 2-9 mark against the A's and Los Angeles Angels.
On Wednesday, the Royals finished with just four hits against Manaea and the A's bullpen. The A's managed all the offense they needed in the first inning.
Ventura opened the game by issuing two walks in the first and yielding a two-run double to A's first baseman Yonder Alonso. After posting a 3.03 ERA after the All-Star break, Ventura fell to 10-11 as his season ERA crept back to 4.42. He surrendered another three runs in the third before being replaced by Brian Flynn in the fifth.
The performance felt like a brutal hangover after two demoralizing losses. On Monday, the Royals were shellacked 16-3 as right-hander Dillon Gee was knocked around. On Tuesday, reliever Joakim Soria registered his seventh blown save as the club wasted a 3-1 lead.
As the window closed on the wild-card race, each loss felt like a hammer strike, the nail slowly cutting into the coffin. On Wednesday, the reality was numb and painful.
The Royals' season is not dead yet _ not officially anyway. But with more nights like Wednesday, the end could come very soon.
