Opening day dud didn’t negate makeover, but KC Royals can’t let a bad start bury them

Say this for the Royals and their 2023 so-called season of evaluation.

As and after they were careening to a 56-106 finish, tied for the worst record in club history, the franchise made radical changes to its roster — including with an offseason free-agent signing binge of more than $100 million, fourth in Major League Baseball.

The result as of opening day on Thursday at Kauffman Stadium was a roster featuring just seven men who were around at this time last year. Reiterating the extreme measure, the 19 who weren’t included four of the five initial starting pitchers and the entire bullpen.

“I think it clearly states that we felt like we needed to make a lot of change,” general manager and executive vice president J.J. Picollo said before the game against Minnesota. “We had a lot of holes to fill. We didn’t have a particular number in mind.”

As of the deflating 4-1 loss to the Twins before a crowd of 38,775, you could exaggerate the moment and joke that they didn’t go far enough.

But beyond running an actual marathon, no sport is more of one than the eternity of an MLB season that renders each game a mere 1/162nd of the impending composite.

Each counts the same, as manager Matt Quatraro put it before the game, because “it’s not like college football where people vote for you. You either win or you lose, right? And we’ve got 162 of those …

“Obviously, you want to get off to a really good start. But you can’t get past ‘one game at a time,’” he said. “So as boring as that answer is, I truly believe that.”

That’s both the beauty and the beast of a season that will be laden with peaks and pitfalls and moments to cherish and to erase.

One fleeting game or not, though, what’s crucial right now is shrugging or willing or compartmentalizing this one away. And not letting this micro-sliver of the season compound itself and become part of something that has afflicted the Royals for most of their quite dry run since winning the 2015 World Series.

The Royals have made it a habit to descend into nearly instantaneous soul-crushing starts over and over and over again since then.

That has included a 7-16 April in 2017, standing 7-21 at the end of April in 2018 and 9-20 at the end of the month in 2019.

Then there was that 16-32 collapse out of the gates in 2022 and the 7-22 debut a year ago.

It’s a paradoxical matter to attack.

On one hand, you want to learn from your past.

Then again, you don’t even want to entertain that thinking, either.

That’s why veteran free-agent relievers Will Smith and Chris Stratton arrived at spring training in Surprise intent on nipping in the bud any talk whatsoever about last season — when in contrast to the Royals each played for the World Series champion Texas Rangers.

That sense of fresh start is essential, said Smith, who has been part of the last three championships on three different teams.

“They’ve already handed out the trophy for last year,” Smith said in Surprise a few weeks ago. “And I don’t care how many games these guys lost last year.”

So Smith was pleased to see last season seldom if ever come up during spring training.

And you could get a glimpse of why when Quatraro was asked before the game what could be done to avoid that this season.

Because how do you gird for it or guard against it other than just facing the moment at hand.

“Last year doesn’t matter. Really doesn’t,” he said. “It has no bearing on what happens today or any day forward. And that’s truthfully the motto. I (couldn’t) care less about April.”

Unless and until it becomes a thing, anyway.

But there’s ample reason to think, or at least hope, that this day said nothing about the tone or trajectory of the season or even the start.

The most vital key will be starting pitching, after all.

And the Royals got a fine six-inning, two-run and franchise-record nine strikeouts (on opening day) performance out of Cole Ragans, who had a phenomenal finish last season after being acquired from the Rangers.

While their only run came on Maikel Garcia’s home run to open the bottom of the first, making him just the second Royal and first in 40 years (Onix Concepcion) to do that on opening day, that doesn’t negate what the Royals spent the offseason crafting.

Now, a lot still has to go right for the Royals to make a significant jump, Picollo acknowledged before the game.

But that essentially means young players like Garcia, Bobby Witt Jr., Vinnie Pasquantino and MJ Melendez continuing to mature, free agents doing over the course of the season what they’ve done over the course of their careers and a lot of staying healthy.

Nothing unreasonable about that … and, thus, what it could mean.

Before the game, Picollo considered the question of whether this season could be successful without a playoff berth.

“I don’t want that to be the message, but we understand where we were last year as a club,” he said. “So it’s going to take a lot for us to win 30 more games than last year. But I don’t think it’s out of our reach.”

It’s not, of course. But first things first:

They can’t let April become the cruelest month again — something they know all too well even if they have to put that away to put it to an end.