How the Royals rallied around one another, and starting pitching, to change their fate
The enduring image from the Kansas City Royals’ last six games might be manager Mike Matheny letting loose a primal fist-pump and roar in the visitors’ dugout at Cincinnati.
He’d just watched his infield turn a game-ending double play with the bases loaded to wrap up Wednesday night’s win over the Reds — KC’s fifth win in that six-game stretch.
The turnaround comes on the heels of a six-game losing streak in which each loss seemed almost exponential. Offensive futility proved the culprit on some nights, defensive miscues on others.
Reasons for the the Royals’ about-face are manifold: an improved daily outlook; a team meeting that helped circle the wagons; a pair of confidence-building, back-to-back wins against the Chicago Cubs and Minnesota Twins; and newfound stability in a rotation that had been largely smoke and mirrors for the first few weeks of the season.
“I think the energy is a little better in the dugout right now, the clubhouse,” Royals star catcher Salvador Perez said. “We’re having fun. We respect the game. We respect the other team and play hard.”
Perez, who missed the 2019 season while rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, has always been an enthusiastically energetic and jovial presence on the field and in the dugout for the Royals. His passion for the game is part of what’s made him such a beloved figure in Kansas City.
His teammates needed an injection of positive attitude to halt a slide that looked poised to derail their entire 60-game season. And that started with having a short memory, Perez said.
“We had to take it day-by-day,” he said. “The start of the season was kind of rough for us. But that’s over. We don’t have to think about yesterday. Yesterday is over. We’ve got to think about Friday now, and Minnesota.
“You know how baseball is, it’s up and down. Your concentration has to be on something we can control, the energy, defense, make some pitches, try to block balls behind home plate. All the little stuff we can control, we’ve got to do it.”
From the outside looking in, a sense of dread had become almost omnipresent during the Royals’ slump.
They mounted a ninth-inning rally that fell short with the tying run on third against the Cubs in Chicago on Aug. 4. Afterward, absorbing the gravity of a fifth straight defeat, a dejected Bubba Starling sat in front of a camera and told reporters he’d let down his teammates despite rocketing a sharply hit grounder down the third-base line (on which Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant made a great play to end the game).
Starling also voiced concern about the Royals’ lack of energy early, something his teammates noticed, too.
After a 6-1 loss at Wrigley Field the next night — Aug. 5 — they held a team meeting to talk it out.
“We just kind of decided we were going to have more energy,” first baseman Ryan O’Hearn said. “We came out that last game against Chicago (on Aug. 6) and I think that win, all the runs we scored, Brad (Keller) coming back, that was just kind of a turning-point game. That’s easy to say, since we won four starting that day, but I think that was just kind of a momentum swing.”
O’Hearn wasn’t the only one to say so. Last week, Ryan McBroom also proclaimed that 13-2 rout of the Cubs a turning point.
The Royals followed with a 3-2 home victory over AL Central-leading Minnesota, and went on to sweep the Twins in a three-game series.
Second baseman Nicky Lopez agreed with McBroom’s assessment that the final Cubs game was a turning point but added, “I think I was more impressed by the 3-2 win (Friday), personally, because it’s about time that we win a one-run game.”
Before that win, the Royals had gone 1-5 in one-run games this year. They’d also recorded just one comeback victory.
Their 13-2 blowout of the Cubs came in the first start of the season for Keller, last year’s opening day starter. Their one-run thriller came in a game started by Jakob Junis, the 2019 rotation’s workhorse. Both Keller and Junis began this season on the injured list with COVID-19.
That pair’s return, along with additions of rookies Brady Singer and Kris Bubic and veteran presence of lefty Danny Duffy, give the rotation a set five-man group for the first time all season.
“We bring back our guy who has been a number one for us in the past and all of a sudden we explode for 13 runs,” Matheny said. “Coincidence? I never think so. I believe that it’s the psychology of, ‘You know what? Here’s another guy back.’”
Assessing their team’s turnaround, reliever Trevor Rosenthal, Perez, Lopez and O’Hearn each mentioned the importance of finally having an intact starting rotation. In the five games through Junis’ last one against the Twins, the Royals’ starters were 1-3 with a 3.04 ERA, .208 opponents’ batting average and 29 strikeouts (9.8 strikeout/9).
But a stabilized and confident rotation, coupled with an improved bullpen that likely won’t be taxed as heavily as it was during the opening week of the season, is only part of the equation.
The Royals are hitting better, too.
In the five games leading into Wednesday night’s series finale at Cincinnati, the Royals were batting .324 (57-for-176) with a .979 OPS and 34 runs scored. They led the American League in doubles (39), extra-base hits (63) and total bases (270), ranked second in batting average (.259) and hits (161) and were fourth in slugging (.434) and OPS (.743).
