One of the timeless traditions of Major League Baseball is overreacting to how a team or player starts a season, good or bad.

Thus, it might be premature to project the Kansas City Royals as this season’s World Series champions. However, the Royals have certainly been one of the sport’s surprise teams during the first month and change of the 2021 season.

At 16-11, the Royals have the third-best record in the major leagues.

Kansas City manager Mike Matheny has been around the game long enough not to get overly excited about how well his team has gotten out of the gates. Yet he admits having tangible results is important to a franchise that hasn’t been to the postseason since 2015 when the Royals beat the New York Mets in the World Series.

“It sounds a little contradictory because I always talk about there’s not this ‘must’ message at the beginning of the season, because there's a bunch of time to make up,” Matheny said. “But I would also say that for teams that haven’t had a lot of success in the recent past I think it's important to show what we believe is true.

“Players need to see it to completely believe it. As much as talent is important, that belief is equally important.”

The Royals players are indeed believing.

“We had a good team,” first baseman Carlos Santana said. “We’re going out and having fun and believing we can win every game. There is a lot of talent on this team, and it’s starting to come together.”

Added third baseman Hunter Dozier: “We’re playing with a lot of confidence. We’re picking each other up. It’s just fun playing right now.”

Santana has been a big addition to the lineup after being signed to a two-year, $20-million contract as a free agent in the offseason. He is tied with six-time All-Star catcher Salvador Perez for the team in home runs with six and his 21 RBIs lead the Royals.

Though no Royals hitter is off to an overwhelming start. Yet Kansas City is averaging 4.62 runs a game, which is 11th in the big leagues.

Left-hander Danny Duffy, one of the few holdovers from the ’15 championship team along with Perez, has been outstanding. His record is 4-1 with a stellar 0.60 ERA through five starts.

No other Royals pitcher, though, is having a dominant season. Yet Kansas City is 10th in MLB in runs allowed with a 4.73 a game and Matheny believe the Royals have a starting rotation good enough to keep them competitive despite making a total of $28.1 million this season.

“I love when the rotation starts to see it as healthy competition, where they spend a lot of time together,” said Matheny, whose starters beyond Duffy are Brad Keller, Brady Singer, left-hander Mike Minor and rookie lefty Daniel Lynch.

“You can tell they’re paying close attention and trying to not just feed off of what the other guy did but learn from what the previous guy did. Go out and try to see if they can one-up the last guy.”

One red flag that is raised about the Royals’ start is their run differential is just plus-one. It is a figure more indicative of a .500 team than one five games over the breakeven mark 27 games into the season.

Whether that run differential eventually drags down the Royals remains to be seen. However, their rebuilding project is also not complete.

Lynch made his major league debut Monday night and there are plenty of highly touted prospects in the pipeline. Among those yet to reach Kansas City are left-hander Asa Lacy, right-hander Jackson Kowar and shortstop Bobby Witt Jr.

In the meantime, the Royals are learning how to win at the major league level, including having a 6-1 record in one-run games.

“I’m excited that we’ve seen this team do a number of different things,” Matheny said. “We’ve been able to get tough wins. We’ve also been able to manufacture wins and different components we were hoping to see at some point, we’ve seen them already.”