As difficult as winning the World Series is, Will Smith has made it look easy. One of the game’s top left-handed relievers, Smith is the only player in the history of Major League Baseball to win a trio of titles in consecutive seasons while wearing a different uniform each time. Pitching crucial innings for the Atlanta Braves in 2021, Houston Astros in 2022 and Texas Rangers last year, Smith now brings his fierce competitive nature and devastating breaking stuff to the Midwest on a one-year deal in an attempt to spearhead a Royals renaissance. “We saw the kind of group with these guys here, the way they were trending up in the right direction,” Smith said. “J.J. (Picollo) and the front office did a really good job of bringing really good veterans in to help mesh everything together.”
Few would believe Smith was serious about continuing his World Series streak when he put pen to paper with Kansas City, which lost 106 games in 2023. However, the Royals’ structure of burgeoning young stars, combined with a collection of experienced contributors, helped draw him in. Although Smith has had the knack for singling out future champions, World Series-caliber clubs aren’t built overnight. What the Texas Rangers accomplished last fall, perfectly blending homegrown talent with a large sum of marquee acquisitions, is a relative outlier among recent championship teams in Houston, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. The top of the baseball mountain is familiar yet far territory for the Royals. Last lifting the Commissioner’s Trophy in 2015, Kansas City has yet to return to the postseason since snapping a 30-year championship drought in that magical run.
