KANSAS CITY -- By the time the second inning ended on Wednesday night, Alec Marsh had thrown 52 pitches, and the Royals bullpen was beginning to stir.

By the time the third inning ended, the Tigers had built a three-run lead and forced Marsh out of the game after just 2 2/3 innings.

A deficit when facing American League Cy Young frontrunner Tarik Skubal is not an ideal situation, and it wasn’t for the Royals on Wednesday in their 4-2 loss at Kauffman Stadium with the Tigers sweeping the three-game series and handing the Royals their fourth consecutive loss and sixth in their past nine games.

Time to panic? Not quite. The Royals’ playoff lead has dwindled, but they still sit in the second AL Wild Card spot, 2 1/2 games behind the Orioles in the first spot and 1 1/2 games above the Twins in the third spot after they blew their lead against the Guardians on Wednesday night. Detroit is now just a half-game behind the Twins for the final AL Wild Card spot. Both the Royals and Twins hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Tigers.

Time to worry? A two-game lead for a playoff spot is a lot dicier than a four-game lead, which is what the Royals (82-71) would have had if they won Wednesday. But they’ve got nine games left, and getting back on track with some wins is the quickest way to avoid the ensuing chaos as the standings shake out.

“I don’t worry about it,” Salvador Perez said. “I think we’re going to be fine. I think we’re going to make it to the playoffs. That’s the kind of mentality we have here. Everybody has some bad series. It’s part of the game.”

After an off-day on Thursday, the Royals host the Giants for the final three home games of the regular season and head on the road to Washington and Atlanta for the final six games of the regular season.

“I know we still control our own fate as far as getting into the playoffs, and that’s all you can really ask for,” manager Matt Quatraro said. “We have to play better. We have to win some games, clearly. We can’t count on someone else losing a whole bunch of games at this time of year. But you don’t want that anyway. You don’t want to count on the other team. You want to believe in yourself. And we wouldn’t be in this spot if we didn’t have guys that we believed in.”

On Wednesday, the Royals struck first off Skubal with a run in the bottom of the first inning. After escaping a bases-loaded jam in the first inning, Marsh gave the run right back in the second with an errant throw to first base on Jake Rogers’ infield single.

Three more Tigers runs in the third meant the Royals were turning to their bullpen early.

Marsh’s 2 2/3 innings made it his shortest start of the year, allowing four runs (three earned) on five hits, three walks, a wild pitch, the error and a hit batter with five strikeouts.

“Those are the games you want to pitch in, right?” Marsh said. “It’s very exciting coming into this game, getting the chance to face that guy on the mound that they have too. Kind of maybe just hyped things up a little bit instead of keeping it simple and doing what we’ve been doing. Things just escalated quickly and got away from me.”

Kansas City’s bullpen was excellent Wednesday, highlighted by Daniel Lynch IV giving the Royals 3 1/3 scoreless innings, extending his scoreless streak to 14 1/3 frames since he was recalled on Aug. 26. In that span, he’s allowed just five hits and three walks while striking out 16.

The Royals didn’t take advantage. Skubal did not allow a hit after Yuli Gurriel’s RBI single in the first inning and just three more baserunners after that. The Royals got another run across in the eighth after Bobby Witt Jr.’s bloop double -- setting a single-season Royals record with his 87th extra-base hit of the season -- and Perez’s RBI single.

But that was it. Detroit’s pitching was impressive all series, especially their relievers. Quatraro pushed back when asked whether his hitters were pressing in a tough offensive stretch.

“It’s hard to tell exactly what it is, but I think we have enough guys in that lineup that have been through this and understand what it takes to win a game in September or October that I don’t think that [pressing] is the case,” Quatraro said. “... We had some good at-bats that didn’t get results, we had some bad at-bats that we need to improve on. But overall, we need to stack together more consistently quality at-bats.”