KANSAS CITY — One day last August, in the midst of one of the worst years in franchise history, Royals manager Matt Quatraro called a meeting. It had been a brutal summer, a young team taking regular beatings, a pitching staff falling apart, a first-team manager trying to survive.

Quatraro hated defeat. What manager wouldn’t do that? But what really irked him was the feeling that his players were more worried about next winter or next season than the moment ahead. He didn’t want to sleepwalk for the last two months. He didn’t want to waste today.

“In this game, and in life, there are very few guarantees,” he said a day earlier this month as he reflected on the story.

What came out of it wasn’t exactly planned. Quatraro simply spoke from the heart. The Kansas City Royals had nothing to lose. The future was not promised. Start making changes today.

Today.

Quatraro kept saying that word. It wasn’t intentional. It just came out. But something about the mantra stuck. It carried the club through a 15-12 finish last September, through a changeable winter and through a sneaky start in April as the rest of baseball watched curiously. It took the Royals from a franchise-record 106 losses in 2023 to their first postseason appearance in nine years to a two-game win at Baltimore in the Wild Card Series and carried them through Thursday night at Kauffman Stadium. Game 4 of the ALDS against the New York Yankees, in which the defining image of a 3-1 loss was shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. leaning alone against the railing in the home bench.

Witt, the 24-year-old Royals star, watched the Yankees celebrate their series win. He wanted to take everything in.

“That’s where I want to be,” Witt said.

Bobby Witt Jr. scores in the sixth inning of Game 4 of the ALDS on Thursday. (Jay Biggerstaff-Imagn Images)

The end of the line in Kansas City was painful. Over the last four decades, the Royals have been distinguished by glorious success and long playoff droughts. Amazingly, this was the first time since 1984 that a Kansas City playoff appearance ended before the World Series. But there was hope in the clubhouse at home that it could be motivating.

The royals got a taste for it this year. They won 86 games – an improvement of 30 wins over the previous year. They brought playoff baseball back to Kauffman Stadium for the first time since 2015, when they won the franchise’s second World Series. They gave the Yankees, the top seed in the American League, a scare, losing three games by a total of four runs. Now they want to do even more.

“It’s kind of like something that lights a torch in you and leaves a bad taste for the future,” Witt said. “Because that’s what we want for Kansas City Royals baseball now. We will do this every year. We’re getting into the offseason. Now it depends on how far we will go.

“It’s not about how we get there. That’s how far we’ll go. That’s what we’re going to work for and that’s what we’re going to do.”

The details of the recent loss in Game 4 revealed a theme: The margins between the Royals and Yankees were narrow but consistent. Kansas City had starter Michael Wacha and a number of relievers fighting hard to hold the Yankees to three runs. New York had star player Gerrit Cole pumping 98 mph fastballs to all quadrants of the strike zone. New York had Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton and secured a run in the top of the sixth. The Royals had center fielder Kyle Isbel belting a 98 mph fastball with a runner on to make the score 3-1 in the bottom of the seventh.

The sound of the bat colliding with the ball caused Cole to turn around and peer into the night sky. For a moment it looked as if the ball would fly into the bullpen in right field and decide the game. But he ran out of gas and fell into Juan Soto’s glove at the base of the wall, 370 feet from home plate. In Major League Baseball, it would have been a home run in 24 of 30 parks. But Isbel said he didn’t understand everything.

This flyout by Kyle Isbel would have been a home run in 24 stadiums, including Yankee Stadium pic.twitter.com/AFowuqqUsi

– Sportsnet Stats (@SNstats) October 11, 2024

“I got it in my barrel a little bit,” Isbel said. “I thought it had a chance. But it’s a big stadium. Personally, I have to get everything. I saw him drift back a little, so I had some hope. But it just fell a bit short.”

The ball also had to fight through a crosswind that was 6 miles per hour early in the game. They weren’t the kind of gusts that would knock over a ball. But it was enough to make one wonder.

“I thought it was a home run,” Witt said. “It’s one of those things where baseball is a crazy game. The wind, whatever it is, changes and that’s where the draw happens.”

Witt stood in a quiet clubhouse, surrounded by reporters, whose most noticeable sound was the sound of pats on the back, handshakes and thank-yous. The sudden death of a baseball season can come quickly. You spend eight months with a group and then say goodbye. On Thursday, the Royals could take solace in the fact that much of their core will return. Witt is a rising superstar. Catcher Salvador Pérez will be back for another year. Starters Cole Ragans and Seth Lugo will lead the rotation. One player who may not return is Wacha, who started Game 4 and allowed two runs over 4 2/3 innings. He has a player option to become a free agent.

“It’s a crappy feeling right now,” Wacha said. “We feel like we should play one more time, have one more game. It’s not a very good feeling.”

It didn’t matter that very few people expected the Royals to be here battling the Yankees in October. They had three 100-loss seasons since 2018 and averaged 97 losses from 2021-23. That year, they became only the third team in MLB history to make the playoffs a year after losing 100 games – and the first to win a postseason series.

“Even though we lost the series, we lost 100 games last year, and this year we proved that we can play baseball and play at this level,” third baseman Maikel Garcia said through interpreter Luis Perez.

The Royals may rue the missed opportunities. All teams do it. They had a chance to steal Game 1 against Cole in New York and lost 6-5. They had Lugo, an All-Star this season, in Game 3. They lost that one too by one run. Their pitchers walked too many batters. Witt and first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino combined for three hits in the series.

“Our guys had higher expectations for themselves, and that’s how you should approach this game,” Quatraro said. “You don’t come here and think, ‘Oh, I hope we get a little better.’ That’s not how it works at the major league level.

“I think it’s okay that it sucks right now.”

For 197 days, the royals of 2024 lived by a simple coda: Today.

Thursday was the last day.

In some ways, the mantra will endure beyond this year. The best, Witt said defiantly, was yet to come. That’s why he wanted to sit alone in the dugout and watch the Yankees celebrate on his home field. The Royals will be back, he said. They know what they want to be.

“That’s the reality,” he said. “This is who we are now.”

(Top photo of Bobby Witt Jr.: Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)