MINNEAPOLIS -- Although the news was a foregone conclusion, the Royals were officially eliminated from the playoffs after Wednesday's 7-1 loss to Twins.

That fact caused manager Trey Hillman to look to the future. Kansas City has much work to do, he admitted.

"Honestly, I'm not trying to be the Grim Reaper. We need to get better in a lot of different areas," Hillman said. "We've seen flashes of it. Probably the most disappointing thing to me is the letdown that we've had defensively, because I know how hard we've worked on it.

"At this level, I believe that it should be the thing that is most rectifiable. If you put the right amount of work and the right amount of emphasis, I would have hoped it would have improved more than it has, especially something as simple as pop flies. We'll just stay the course on that. I know that we've worked hard on them."

The club is 7 1/2 games behind fourth-place Detroit and will almost assuredly finish last in the American League Central. Hillman's task next year will be reversing the culture of a team that finished last in each of the four years prior to the skipper's offseason hiring.

"I said this in Spring Training and I'll never retract it: In order to get to the playoffs, I think you have to raise the expectations and expect to try to get there," Hillman said. "It's disheartening that you're not in the position -- we knew a few weeks ago that we weren't in position, shy of a miracle -- but I think, even when you're in [the Twins'] situation ... even though they're in the situation of playing for a playoff spot, they are still playing for next year as well, too."

Hillman said Kansas City doesn't "have a plethora of talent at our Triple-A level," so the Royals will "have to try to improve possibly in the free-agent market as much as we can and continue to evaluate what we have and go from there."

Still, the skipper has hope for a bright future with a young roster.

"I'll always have hope, even if we know that we aren't able to do as much as we want to do with our roster," Hillman said. "There's always hope, ending a season, continuing to evaluate and looking forward to the next season, there'll always be hope."

Pitching matchup
KC: RHP Gil Meche (11-10, 3.96 ERA)
Meche was sharp on Saturday in a 3-1 win over the Indians, striking out 10 and giving up just one run on three hits in seven innings. Meche credited the increased use of a changeup against right-handed hitters with helping his strikeout total, which has reached a career high of 158. The right-hander's ERA is below 4.00 for the first time all season. This will be Meche's sixth start against the Tribe this year. He's 2-1 in his previous five outings, having allowed eight earned runs in the first of those starts, but just four earned runs in his past four.

CLE: LHP Cliff Lee (21-2, 2.28 ERA)
Lee already became the Tribe's first 20-game winner since 1974, and now he has a chance to become their winningest left-hander of all-time. The honor currently rests with Vean Gregg, who won 23 games in 1911. Lee became the Majors' first 21-game winner since the Marlins' Dontrelle Willis in 2005 with 7 1/3 strong innings against the Royals on Sunday. He allowed just one run on seven hits, with a walk and five strikeouts, to improve to 4-0 with a 2.15 ERA in four starts against the Royals this season.

Tidbits
Hillman said outfielder Mitch Maier looked better on Thursday, both in batting practice and in conditioning. He hopes for Maier to return during the weekend's series against Cleveland. Hillman previously said he expected third baseman Alex Gordon back during the Cleveland series as well. ... The Royals donned hats that featured the American flag inside the KC logo to commemorate 9/11: "I remember as a little kid, my mom and dad used to teach me respect for our military personnel and thank them for keeping our country safe," Hillman said. "It was funny how my mind-set changed when I went to Japan. I really have to thank them for keeping our world safe, because that's what they're doing. It went from our homeland and our country to really the whole world." ... Hillman is predicting the Twins for the AL Central crown: "Given the fact that they don't give as many free passes and they have a little bit better coverage in the outfield, even though the White Sox have slugging, I like [the Twins] a little bit better." ... The Royals improved their extra-inning record in 2008 to 7-6. ... Ron Mahay struck out his 400th career batter on Thursday.

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Up next
• Saturday: Royals (Zack Greinke, 10-10, 3.70) at Indians (Fausto Carmona, 8-6, 4.88), 12:05 p.m. CT
• Saturday: Royals (Robinson Tejeda, 1-2, 4.19) at Indians (Bryan Bullington, 2008 debut), 6:05 p.m. CT
• Sunday: Royals (Brian Bannister, 7-15, 5.81) at Indians (Jeremy Sowers, 3-8, 5.60), 12:05 p.m. CT