Royals’ power surge stirs hope of addressing missing dimension

Probably the main thing to know about the Royals uncorking their 2015 exhibition season with exhilarating and rare back-to-back-to-back home runs in a six-run first inning against Texas is this:

The guy who served up this smorgasbord, creaky 35-year-old Rangers pitcher Colby Lewis, apparently was pleased with merely pitching at all as he seeks to resurrect his career.

It also bears mention that baseballs tend to soar here, particularly on days like Wednesday when there was a sturdy, steady breeze blowing out at Surprise Stadium.

Then there’s the fact that any resemblance between these rehearsals, in this case a 13-2 Royals win, and a game that counts is purely coincidental … thus rendering suspect anything that happens.

All that said, that doesn’t mean nothing that happens here matters or should resonate.

And that there’s not at least reason to pause to ponder what a semblance of power might mean for a team that had the sparsest home-run ledger in Major League Baseball in 2014 and still extended the season to game seven of the World Series.

For one thing, the last time the Royals hit three straight home runs was in 2006 (in regular-season games, anyway, since there is no discernible similar record for exhibitions). And that was just the sixth time in franchise history.

“That’s something that you don’t get to see every day …” said newcomer Alex Rios, whose solo home run to left followed Eric Hosmer’s three-run, 445-foot launch to dead center and fellow newcomer Kendrys’ Morales’ blast to right. “It just happened, and it just happened to be the first game, so that gives a little more drama to it.”

Having it come from Hosmer, a budding star when last we saw him, and the two new guys acquired for just such juice adds a nice symbolic touch, too, as the Royals at least for a day enhanced the anticipation and good vibes that came with last season’s resurgence.

Now, last season’s success might suggest having power in their arsenal doesn’t matter all that much. And maybe it’s like manager Ned Yost said Wednesday, that the Royals have developed so many ways to win that power is “almost like a luxury.”

Just the same, that downplays the point that the Royals last season made the playoffs despite an emaciated margin for error and got to the World Series in part with a sudden binge of postseason homers.

Pitching, defense, small ball and manufacturing runs might be what distinguished the Royals, but that offensive style was a combination of adaptation and necessity caused by an absence of power more than it was a preferred approach.

When the Royals replaced Pedro Grifol with Dale Sveum as hitting coach last May, Yost said his message to Sveum was simple.

“‘I want freaking homers and doubles, and I want to score runs,’” Yost said. “‘Now, take it from there, Dale.’”

The Royals did hit more but still finished with a measly 95, 49 below the American League average and 116 fewer than league-leading Baltimore — which the Royals out-homered 4-2 in the AL Championship Series.

Now Yost simply says it “goes without saying” that everybody wants more doubles and home runs but adds, “You adjust and you adapt. … You just play the game with what you’ve got.”

But having that capacity ultimately is much more than a luxury, which explains why the Royals were willing to pay right fielder Rios $11 million and designated hitter Morales $6.5 million this season.

Never mind that each is coming off injuries and arguably are some years past their prime.

Morales is 31 and peaked in 2009, when he hit 34 home runs and drove in 108 to finish fifth in the AL MVP race. But injuries have hampered him since 2010, and last season he missed 10 weeks before hitting eight home runs and knocking in 42.

Rios is 34, and his most productive season was 2012, when he hit 25 home runs and drove in 91. He had just four and 54 in 2014, when he played most of the second half of the season with an ankle injury and, later, an infection in his thumb.

But the risk-potential reward was worth it to the Royals, who believe that healthy versions of each can help spackle in their gaps, spark their offense and protect prospective cleanup hitter Hosmer.

Even if no one seems an immediate threat to Steve Balboni’s franchise single-season record of 36, a signature statistic if ever there was one about the dimensions of Kauffman Stadium and the players the Royals have had, the Royals also reason that Mike Moustakas, Alex Gordon and Salvador Perez are yet capable of producing 20-plus homers.

But somebody needs to.

“We’ve got to be able to drive the ball better,” general manager Dayton Moore said amid the Royals signing Rios and Morales. “When we come up with the bases loaded or first and second, we need somebody who can be a presence, drive the ball in the alley and clear the bases.”

Case in point on Wednesday: The Royals started on a familiarly mundane note with Alcides Escobar walking to lead off the game and Jarrod Dyson and Lorenzo Cain singling on tappers through the infield.

Then up stepped Hosmer, who pulped the ball.

Afterward, he suggested that the approach he came to at the end of last season has flowed into this exhibition season.

“Just more relaxed,” he said. “Going up there with a plan, and basically just trusting your plan.”

As for the bigger plan, if Hosmer really is to arrive once and for all, if he is to become a 35-0 home-run hitter, he’ll need at least some perceived threats behind him.

Morales and Rios furnished that in the first inning on Wednesday, and all three later doubled.

But how much does any of this have to do with when it matters?

“Let’s see, let’s see,” Rios said, later adding, “It’s irrelevant what you do during the spring.”

Except, he added, “You just have to get a good feeling and then bring that feeling to the season.”

So they got a day closer to that on Wednesday, which beats the alternative — and flashed the difference that added dimension could mean to this team.

This story was originally published March 4, 2015 at 8:25 PM with the headline "Royals’ power surge stirs hope of addressing missing dimension."