The narrow path to 90 wins

Denny Medley-USA TODAY SportsEvery year, I put the Royals’ schedule into a spreadsheet and follow a simple formula to create a path to a 90-win season:

Win or split series at home.

Win or split road series against weaker teams.

Don’t get swept.

I don’t figure in any sweeps and split all four-game and two-game series. What I usually end up with is something like a 50-win home record and a 40-win road record.

The same map can be used for different benchmarks. For example, a .500 record is a -9 (9 games behind the pace) on the season. 100 losses is -28. So even in a year like last year, I can see how quickly they are falling behind other target records.

As I was thinking about this year, I thought…