With advice from George Brett in hand, this Royals rookie fights to stay in majors
On the morning he made his major-league debut two weeks ago, Royals rookie Ryan O’Hearn fielded dozens of messages and phone calls.
Family members, friends, old teammates, mentors and others had flooded his inbox and had rung his cell. In the scheme of things, it was a normal occurrence for a minor-leaguer on the brink of his first call-up.
But one of the most poignant conversations O’Hearn had on July 31 began with a hello from Hall of Famer George Brett.
“Which was cool,” O’Hearn said. “He said just go out there and said my goal should be to never go back to Omaha.”
O’Hearn has spent plenty of time getting to know both Brett and Royals Hall of Fame inductee Mike Sweeney since the Royals selected him in the eighth round of the 2014 draft out of Sam Houston State. Hearing from them came as no shock.
But hearing from Brett came to seem like a stroke of fate. Brett, the Royals’ franchise leader in home runs, had called to give advice to a prospect trying to cement himself in the major leagues; then Brett had a chance to watch said prospect become the third player in club history to knock a homer in his first major-league game.
How’s that for foreshadowing?
Some time passed before it came up again, but O’Hearn showed off his power in Monday night’s 3-1 win at Kauffman Stadium, where he drove in all three Royals runs.
Shortly after he finished his final on-camera interview of the night, O’Hearn paced a few steps up the blue carpet in the Royals’ clubhouse and turned his attention to the television monitor mounted on the pillar in front of his locker.
The Fox Sports Kansas City postgame show had just replayed O’Hearn’s two-run homer from the second inning. It had just shown him bumping forearms with outfielder Brett Phillips, who scored ahead of O’Hearn, and exchanging high-fives in the home dugout. It had earlier shown O’Hearn sharing a deliberately delivered Salvy Splash with FSKC host Joel Goldberg, for whom O’Hearn could not contain a grin even as he shuddered from an ice bath on a mild August evening.
O’Hearn did not explicitly say in the moments following his three-RBI performance that he was proud. He was reserved, dedicating his words to the team effort and his process at the plate.
But this was a 25-year-old two weeks removed from hitting a homer in his major-league debut. He had done little else besides put together at-bats like one later on Monday that ended in a bases-loaded walk. Even as he stood watching the TV for a few seconds, his batting average over eight games sat at a paltry .160.
“Just to be able to battle through that and kind of get that extra run that we needed at the end there was great,” O’Hearn said. “With the bases loaded, less than two outs, it’s always those high-pressure situations. Just to kind of be able to relax and just have a quality at-bat is huge for me and my confidence.”
So although he might not have voiced it, O’Hearn was proud. He had every reason to be.
He crushed a first-pitch fastball thrown by Blue Jays starter Sean Reid-Foley for an opposite-field blast at Kauffman Stadium. It was the second major-league homer and fourth hit of his career, and it was well enough struck that it didn’t die in the deepest parts of the stadium like others did on Monday night. It traveled 412 feet instead.
“Alex Gordon smoked the ball three times and just managed to get it to the wall,” manager Ned Yost said. “O’Hearn’s ball was kind of on a line but it seemed to me like it got out there and just really jumped. That ball was really smoked and it just kind of, like, jumped, which means he hit it really, really hard.”
Left-handed power is what prompted the Royals to call up O’Hearn on July 31 when they placed Brian Goodwin on the disabled list because of a groin strain. They elected to move Cheslor Cuthbert and his lingering back injury to the 60-day disabled list to make room on the 40-man roster for a prospect who had slugged only .391 in 100 games for Class AAA Omaha this season.
But internal metrics had done the heavy lifting, highlighting O’Hearn’s stroke as one of the hardest in Class AAA in terms of exit velocity. He immediately made the Royals look good when he launched White Sox starter James Shields’ hung curveball over the right-field fence for his first career hit in his second at-bat of a 4-2 win.
O’Hearn could, of course, be shuttled back to Class AAA Omaha in the weeks before rosters expand Sept. 1 for the return of one of any of the injured Royals.
But for now, he moved into Eric Skoglund’s Kansas City apartment last week, just days after returning from a road trip that for him started July 23 with Class AAA Omaha and ended Aug. 5 in Minneapolis with the Royals. He’d lived out of a suitcase that barely made it on board the Southwest flight he took to join the Royals in Chicago without incurring fees for extra weight, purchased dress clothes to supplant the themed outfits he’d planned to wear on flights with the Storm Chasers and followed offseason hitting partner and fellow Texas native Hunter Dozier as he tried to get a lay of the major-league landscape.
For now, O’Hearn has received two Salvy Splashes and a fake home run ball. He’s avoided the ax and successfully followed Brett’s advice.
“(Opposite-field power is) something that’s kind of gotten me here,” O’Hearn said. “I’d like to think I can pull a ball, hit it to center and go anywhere. That’s definitely something that’s been one of my strengths.”
This story was originally published August 14, 2018 at 10:12 AM.