SURPRISE, Ariz. — The Kansas City Royals have reached the playoffs twice in the last 37 seasons. By that measure, no other team in the majors has been so futile.

Yet the Royals made the most of their chances, winning two American League pennants and the 2015 World Series. Their example poses an existential question: Would you rather root for a team that wins a championship but usually struggles to compete, or one that always contends but never wins it all? Which is the better model?

“It’s something we wrestle with internally,” J.J. Picollo, the Royals’ general manager, conceded here last week as he watched a morning practice. Picollo, a native of Cherry Hill, N.J., turned to his favorite football team as a way to explain.

“Was Andy Reid successful in Philly?” Picollo, a Philadelphia Eagles season-ticket holder, asked in reference to the former Eagles coach who had regular-season success there but did not win a Super Bowl until he left for Kansas City. “Hell, yeah, he was. I think it was 11 out of 14 years that he went to the playoffs — that’s pretty successful.

“Now, they didn’t win the Super Bowl, but if we’re able to get to the playoffs year after year after year, and do it in a way that makes our payroll work, then that’s a success as well.”

Picollo paused.

“But I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t want to win a World Series along the way, too,” he said.

Reid actually reached the N.F.L. playoffs nine times in a stretch of 11 seasons within a 14-year tenure with the Eagles, who won a title under his successor, Doug Pederson. But Picollo’s preference was clear — and he showed it in the hires he made to reinvigorate the Royals.

Last September, near the end of their sixth losing season in a row, the Royals fired their architect, Dayton Moore, and replaced him with Picollo, his top lieutenant. Hours after the season ended with a last-place finish in the A.L. Central, Picollo fired Manager Mike Matheny and the pitching coach, Cal Eldred. Their replacements came from the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cleveland Guardians.

The manager, Matt Quatraro, has coached in the playoffs in six of the last seven seasons, all with low-payroll teams. Quatraro was an assistant hitting coach for Cleveland and a third-base coach and bench coach for Tampa Bay. The pitching coach, Brian Sweeney, spent the last five seasons on Cleveland’s staff.

Tampa Bay has never won a championship, and Cleveland has not won one since 1948. But those teams are perennial contenders, relevant no matter how much they spend. The Royals, in the same group of low payroll teams, want to be the same way, and Quatraro can help figure out how.

“The margin of error for winning and losing is razor thin,” he said. “I mean, the Royals lost 97 games last year, but I guarantee you they were not losing, 8-0, in the second inning every night. How do you swing those games that you have a chance in the fifth, sixth, seventh inning in your favor?”

Quatraro, a former minor league catcher, listed the obvious ways: better pitching, defense and base running. What he added next said everything about the Royals’ new aspirations.

“It’s also making the quote, unquote, ‘right decision,’ by objective measures, and then you keep compounding those decisions,” he said. “So just because it doesn’t work tonight, if you trust in why you’re making it, you keep doing it, and it’s going to work out in the long run, right?”

Well, usually. The Rays, infamously, were burned by that theory in the final game of the 2020 World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. They stuck to their strategy of removing a starting pitcher after two turns through the batting order, even during a shutout. Out went Blake Snell, in came the bullpen, and there went the season.

Then again, the Rays had gotten to the World Series by using the same tactic, in nearly the exact situation, to win Game 7 of the A.L. Championship Series. It is the only time in the last four seasons that anyone has beaten the Houston Astros in the A.L.C.S.

“The best way that I can describe what they do — what the best teams are doing — is, if you counted cards in blackjack really well, you’re creating like a 53 percent edge on the house,” said Royals infielder Matt Duffy, who played for the Rays from 2016 to 2019.

“To the layman, it might seem like: ‘That’s it, 53 percent? I thought if you count cards, you’re going to win a bunch of money,’” Duffy said. But to a seasoned card player, that represents what Duffy called a “massive advantage.”

“So basically what they do is find those tiny percentage points in a bunch of different areas, and now instead of winning half of your games, you’re winning 56 percent of them,” he continued. “That is the difference between some of the best teams in baseball and some of the worst.”

Quatraro is introspective, Duffy said, eager to listen and learn. His experience with young teams in Cleveland and Tampa Bay should help in the Royals’ clubhouse, where Quatraro has been seeking players’ input, whatever their age.

“As he says, it’s our team, and we want it to be run by us with him just overseeing things, which is pretty nice to see out of a manager,” said shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., 22, whose power and speed make him a potential franchise cornerstone. “From my perspective, I have one year in the big leagues, and he’s asking me questions about what I think. I’m kind of like, ‘Oh, wow.’ That means something.”

Quatraro’s curiosity made him an ideal fit for the think tank that is the Rays, who chose him in the eighth round of their inaugural draft in 1996, two years before they even fielded a major league team. A flop for their first 10 seasons, the Rays have made eight playoff appearances — with only four losing seasons — since 2008 despite a consistently meager payroll.

“Mr. Sternberg always had this saying: ‘You can break a window in the house, just don’t burn the whole house down,’” Quatraro said, referring to the Rays’ owner, Stuart Sternberg. “That was kind of his thing: Any idea is worth exploring. Some of them dead end, some of them turn into something great, some of them don’t do either. But they’re worth it from the capital that’s created by someone’s ideas being explored — and that could be a player, coach, front office. It’s an open dialogue all the time.”

The Royals did a lot of things right in their rise to being champions in 2015, patiently growing their farm system, deftly adding veterans through trades, and committing to a speed-defense-bullpen style of play that fit their spacious ballpark and modest budget.

It was a throwback style. Their leadoff hitter, Alcides Escobar, had a .293 on-base percentage in 2015, but he was fast, and his aggressive approach embodied the Royals’ ethos. They controlled the tempo of games and constantly pressured their opponents, and it worked.

Yet Kansas City was a shooting star, and Cleveland and Tampa Bay were solar systems. While the Rays find affordable players with one or two elite skills — and relentlessly deploy those skills in unconventional ways — the Guardians’ strength is much simpler: pitching.

Cleveland has reached the playoffs in five of the last seven seasons, largely because of a consistent ability to identify and develop top pitching. That has been a weak point for the Royals, whose plan to build around polished college pitchers has mostly failed. The Royals’ staff had the fewest strikeouts in the A.L. last season while issuing the most walks; the time has come, Picollo said, to modernize the team’s infrastructure.

“Players are so informed when they sign now,” Picollo said. “With technology, metrics, use of pitches, pitch development — if you don’t have people on your staff that respect that, and want to have conversations with the players so they can participate in our development, the player’s going to suffer.”

If the Royals succeed in developing stars, Picollo said, they will someday ponder the question facing all low-budget teams: Keep fan favorites until they reach free agency, or trade them early?

The Royals clung tightly to their core of champions and had few viable replacements when those players left. The Rays and the Guardians have operated differently, enduring the pain of roster turnover for the payoff of sustained success.

That is now the Royals’ vision, too: They want the model of consistent winning. It is a compliment to their peers with Tampa Bay and Cleveland, and yet:

“I know what you’re saying,” said Mike Chernoff, the Guardians’ general manager. “But we’re envious of that ring that they have, for sure.”

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