A closer look at the struggles of Royals designated hitter Kendrys Morales

On early Sunday evening, as the light disappeared and the proceedings dragged on at Kauffman Stadium, the big man with the manicured beard and the “Manos de Piedra” tapped his right toe and threw his hands toward a fastball, unspooling a violent swing that felt perfectly timed and synchronized.

The left-handed swing ambushed a 3-2 pitch from the right arm of Atlanta reliever Jason Grilli. The swing drilled a baseball over the center-field wall for a walk-off home run. The swing, from the bat of designated hitter Kendrys Morales, delivered a 4-2 victory in 13 innings.

And one day later, the swing offered a measure of hope inside the Royals clubhouse. After six weeks of struggling — six weeks of empty at-bats and waning production — perhaps Morales is finally poised for a breakout.

“It’s just a matter of time before he gets it going again,” Royals manager Ned Yost said on Monday. “And yesterday may be what gets him going.”

For now, the Royals are still waiting for a few more data points. In 37 games this season, Morales is batting just .201 with a .257 on-base percentage and five homers in his role as the club’s designated hitter. He has struck out 31 times in 152 plate appearances. And his OPS-plus — a metric that adjusts for ballpark and league averages — is just 64, less than half his total from a season ago.

No matter how you slice the numbers, Morales has not come close to matching his revelatory production from 2015 (.290, 22 homers, 106 RBIs). His quiet start is one reason the Royals’ offense ranks just 13th in the American League in runs scored entering a rain-delayed three-game series against the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday night at Kauffman Stadium.

The Royals prefer to exercise patience with Morales, citing his career track record and valuable production in 2015. To this point, Yost has seen little need to move him from his spot in the middle of the Royals’ batting order.

Yet the specifics of Morales’ slump are intriguing: A 32-year-old switch-hitter, Morales entered Tuesday batting just .151 with a .202 on-base percentage in 114 plate appearances from the left side. From the right side, he has hit a muscular .356 with a .421 on-base percentage in 38 plate appearances.

The splits are extreme — from the left side he has been nearly unplayable; from the right side he has been an All-Star — yet the Royals do not believe the numbers are sustainable.

For the first part of his career, Morales profiled as a much stronger hitter from the left side. His left-handed stroke supplied the power — 108 of his 137 career homers have come from that side of the plate — and observers often wondered if Morales should give up hitting right-handed.

On Monday, Yost recalled matching up left-handed relievers with Morales during his stints with the Los Angeles Angels and Seattle Mariners. In short: Yost and Royals hitting coach Dale Sveum have all but dismissed the idea that Morales would ever think about hitting exclusively from one side of the plate.

“You get to total desperation on something you’ve done your whole life, and OK, maybe you just say, ‘Maybe I’m better right-handed,’ ” Yost said. “But he’s not there yet. Yeah, he’s struggled. He knows why he’s struggling.”

The simplest reason for Morales’ struggles, according to rival scouts and advanced metrics, stems from the way opposing teams are defending him with extreme shifts and attacking him with offspeed pitches.

When Morales hits from the left side, opposing teams have almost exclusively put three defenders on the right field side of second base. The defensive alignments are not altogether new for Morales, but they have confounded him. In 114 plate appearances from the left side, he has just eight singles.

In addition — and perhaps more importantly — Morales has been neutralized by an increase in offspeed pitches from opposing pitchers. According to Pitch f/x data compiled at FanGraphs.com, Morales has seen sliders in 15 percent of counts this year. That’s the highest total of his career — and considerably higher than last year (9.9 percent).

As a result, Morales is seeing fastballs in just more than 47 percent of counts, a career low. Scouts have noted that Morales spent much of April waving at off-speed pitches in the dirt. For now, Morales is still trying to make the adjustment.

On Sunday, Grilli made the mistake of feeding Morales a fastball on a 3-2 count. The pitch crossed the plate at the knees. Morales unleashed a gorgeous left-handed stroke. The baseball landed an estimated 414 feet from home plate. It was his second homer this month from the left side.

When the postgame celebration was over, Morales sauntered through the Royals’ clubhouse. He had hit the third walk-off homer of his career, and it had come from the left side of the plate, the source of his year-long slump. Yet in the moment, he downplayed the homer, instead concentrating on the victory.

“The most important thing was we got a win,” Morales said, through translator Pedro Grifol. “However, we got it, whether it was a home run or a base hit or an error. The most important thing is we got a win.”

This story was originally published May 16, 2016 at 9:48 PM with the headline "A closer look at the struggles of Royals designated hitter Kendrys Morales."