After the 2012 season, it’s easy to accept the Royals will always lose and nothing will change. It’s hard to be optimistic and defend a sports team who hasn’t been above .500 since 2003 and not in the playoffs since 1985.

So should I and other Royals fans be more optimistic? I think so. Look, if the Baltimore Orioles can make the playoffs, so can the Royals.

You could call the Orioles the Royals of the A.L. East. In 2011, the Orioles had a 69-93 record. The last time they won 70 games was 2006. The last time they went over .500 was 1997. This year, the Orioles went 93-69, winning the Wild Card play-in game against the Rangers before losing the ALDS against the Yankees.

The Orioles weren’t supposed to be this good. Their Pythagorean win-loss record was 82-80 and many figured the team would finish towards the bottom of the A.L. East.

The Yankees won the A.L. East, but only by two games over the Orioles. The Rays played well, but “only” won 90 games, missing the playoffs. The Jays were Royals-like at 73-89. The Red Sox finished 69-93 and showed Bobby Valentine the door.

So what made the Orioles so good? It had to be their top-shelf starting pitching. Well, not really. The starters had a 4.42 team ERA, ninth in the A.L. and 21st in the the Majors. Their “ace” pitcher, Wei-Yin Chen, had a 4.02 ERA, a 12-11 record, pitched 192.2 innings with a 2.70 SO/BB ratio.

The Royals starters had a 5.01 team ERA, 11th in the A.L. and 26th in the Majors. That’s not too far off from the Orioles. The Royals “ace” was Bruce Chen, with a 5.07 ERA, a 11-14 record, pitching 191.2 innings with 2.98 SO/BB ratio. If Luke Hochevar wasn’t Luke Hochevar and Jeremy Guthrie had a full season with the Royals, The Royals starting rotation could be better than the Orioles rotation.

How about the bullpen? The Orioles had a 3.00 team ERA, third in the A.L. and fifth in the Majors. Just behind them were the Royals with a 3.17 team ERA, fourth in the A.L. and sixth in the Majors. The Royals had 535 strikeouts, the most in the A.L., but the Orioles had a 1.21 WHIP, compared to the Royals 1.34 WHIP. The Orioles bullpen was a factor, but it wasn’t the main reason they made the playoffs.

How about the Orioles lineup? Center fielder Adam Jones led the team with a .287 average, 103 runs and 16 stolen bases. DH Chris Davis led with 33 home runs and 85 RBI. As a team, the Orioles had a .247 average, 677 RBI, 270 doubles, 214 home runs, scoring 712 runs while allowing 705 runs.

Meanwhile, DH Billy Butler led the team with a .313 average, 29 homers and 107 RBI. Alex Gordon led the team with 93 runs and Alcides Escobar stole a team high 35 bases. As a team, the Royals had a .265 average, 643 RBI, 295 doubles, 131 home runs, scoring 676 runs and allowing 746 runs.

The Royals had a better batting average and more doubles, but the Orioles had 83 more home runs and 34 more RBI. And the Royals gave up a lot more runs than they scored. Having a good team batting average and hitting doubles helps, but scoring more runs wins more games. The Orioles did a better job offensively than the Royals, but it wasn’t a big reason the Orioles played so well.

So what was it? The Orioles had something the Royals didn’t have much of: luck. There’s a stat called Pythagorean Luck, which is the difference between the actual win-loss record and the Pythagorean win-loss record. The Orioles were the best in the Majors with an 11 luck score and played way above expectations. The Royals were -2 and played slightly below expectations.

When the Orioles were in a close or extra inning game, they usually won. In one run games, the Orioles had a 29-9 record, the best in the Majors. The Royals were 27-26, which is at least above .500. The Orioles also had the best extra inning record in the Majors at 16-2. The Royals were 8-7, once again above .500. And the Orioles never lost a regular season game when they led after seven innings.

And love him or hate him, manager Buck Showalter did a good job managing the team. He’s obsessively detail oriented and after a while he usually wears out his welcome, but he’s a frontrunner for A.L. Manager of the Year.

Now the Orioles were far from perfect. The lack of an ace showed itself in the playoffs, even with the Yankees being offensively challenged. And a team can’t expect to win a majority of one run and extra inning games every year. And outside of pitcher Dylan Bundy and third baseman Manny Machado, the Orioles farm system is pretty shallow.

But the Orioles prove with timely performances, a average starting rotation and some luck, a team can win and make the playoffs, even in a strong A.L. East. There’s no excuses for the Kansas City Royals now. If the Baltimore Orioles can do it, the Royals can too.

Rejoice! The Royals won 8-2 against the Cleveland Indians Wednesday night, ending their 12 game losing streak. It’s a good thing, because if the Royals kept losing, who knows what would happen…

Alex Gordon found dazed and incoherent in the Royals clubhouse.

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May, 3, 2012: After losing their record setting 21st game to the New York Yankees, Royals coaches and officials were alarmed when they found left fielder Alex Gordon cowered in the corner of the Royals clubhouse, surrounded by empty bottles of Cherry RC and plates of half-eaten funnel cakes. Gordon was babbling incoherently and his mouth and face were coated in powdered sugar. Gordon leads the league with 42 strikeouts and seven face plants in left field while making defensive plays. Efforts to bring Gordon back to reality were unsuccessful.

"Yeah, we're a bit concerned about Gordo, but everyone handles adversity differently," said Manager Ned Yost. "We just need to wipe the powdered sugar off his face and he'll be ready for tomorrow."

Last week, I-70 Baseball’s Justin Hulsey wrote that it’s time for the Tony Larussa Era to end in St. Louis.

I don’t disagree with that; in fact, I’ve never been a fan of Tony La Russa, even back to his days managing the Athletics.

Hulsey and others have mentioned a handful of names as a possible replacement for La Russa, including Cardinals AAA manager Pop Warner, former big-league managers Bob Brenly and Bobby Valentine, and others. But one name that has only recently received any consideration is Tony Pena.

Royals fans are screaming at the top of their lungs right now. As a group, we Royals fans have a pretty poor opinion of Pena. He had one successful season before everything fell out from under him.

But I’m not so sure the criticism of Pena is completely fair.

And I think the Cardinals could do a whole lot worse than Tony Pena as their next manager.

Pena, of course, is the former catcher who played for, among other teams, the St. Louis Cardinals during an 18-year big-league career. Midway through 2002, he was named manager of the Kansas City Royals, replacing the extremely unpopular Tony Muser.

In 2003, the Royals put together a winning season for the first time since the 1994 strike. As a Royals fan, I was thrilled; I happened to have a partial season ticket package that year, and in July or August I received a letter from the team announcing that as a season ticket holder I could reserve a couple of playoff tickets. I sent in my deposit, and shortly after the Royals took a tailspin, settling into third place to finish the season. I was disappointed, but that September I got married, and I didn’t care so much about the playoffs after that.

For his efforts, Tony Pena won the AL Manager of the Year Award in 2003, and it was well-deserved.

The next year, however, the Royals were back to normal, and the team, which included many of the same players from the year before, lost 104 games, their worst-ever record to that point. Early into the 2005 season, Pena resigned, and many speculated he would have been fired if he hadn’t.

That 2004 season was what sealed Pena’s fate. But that season was not at all his fault. The Royals front office signed a handful of big-name free agents that season, and every one of them fizzled, most notoriously former MVP Juan Gonzalez and catcher Benito Santiago. Pena is not to blame for that.

Kansas City tried out a youth movement the next year, slashing their payroll to the second-lowest in baseball, and the team started out with an 8-25 record, prompting Pena’s resignation. It also paved the way for Buddy Bell to become the skipper. Bell, in my opinion, has to be one of the worst managers of all time, for the Royals or otherwise.

But for one brief shining season, Tony Pena and the Royals were near the top of the baseball world.

After he left Kansas City, he signed on as a coach with the New York Yankees, where he essentially tutored under Joe Torre and now Joe Girardi, both of whom wear World Series rings. He also interviewed for the Yankees’ top job when Torre left.

I think it’s about time for Pena to return to the helm.

And the Cardinals seem to make sense. As a former player, he’s already familiar with the organization and the city, and the fans overall seem to like him. He has managerial experience and he’s proven to be a winner as a player as well as with Kansas City and New York as a manager and coach.

In Kansas City, Tony Pena turned lemons into lemonade.

Perhaps in St. Louis, he can turn grapes into fine wine.

Matt Kelsey is a Royals writer for I-70 Baseball. He can be reached at mattkelsey@i70baseball.com.