As recently mentioned by Jonah Keri at Baseball Prospectus the Royals are working on a historically bad decade of one-run-game performance. With tonight's loss, the team is 169-217 in one-run games since 1995, including a terrible 5-13 record this year. While one-run records are usually expected to gravitate towards .500, especially over the long run, what we can begin to see here is the accretted effects of a decade in which the Royals have employed some of the game's worst bullpens. Add in a usually sub-par offense that has a hard time picking up that needed run in the 8th-9th-10th inning, and you've got a consistent problem.
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