Kansas City Royals: 3 worst strike out performances in team history

The Kansas City Royals were dominated by Homer Bailey on Wednesday. Let’s look at three dominating games the team was on the receiving end of.

This will enter the record books as the most times a Kansas City Royals team has ever been struck out in a single game. Homer Bailey and the Athletics’ bullpen combined for a total of 19 strikeouts. It did take 11 innings but still an impressive performance.

Every starter left the batter’s box shaking their head at least once and even Cheslor Cuthbert got in on the action by striking out in a pinch-hit performance. The 2-4 hitters in the lineup, Adalberto Mondesi, Jorge Soler, and Hunter Dozier went down looking or swinging three times each. Not that there were many runners for them to strand as the lineup from sixth back to the top only were on base twice with a walk and a hit.

With seasons like this, we need to expect some negative records being set to go along with the enjoyable ones like Soler’s individual home run record. It seems a bit more cringe-worthy to have a pitcher who was on our roster eight weeks ago being a this dominant for another team.

I delved into the Royals’ history to see when, where and who was involved in games where Kansas City players were struck out at a high rate. One comes from a pitcher who you would suspect can tear apart a lineup any given day. Another involved extra innings and multiple pitchers much like the Oakland game on Wednesday did. Sadly one of the other entries on this list was not so long ago.

Houston, we have a problem. And it is not from a hurler you would normally expect this kind of performance from.

Would it surprise anybody that another contest from this season would be on this list? In the era of long ball or bust, it should not. The first stop in the time machine will take us back to May 8, 2019, as the Royals visited the Houston Astros (this seems to be a popular date for Kansas City players to strikeout).

One difference that stands out to me in this game is that Houston’s starter, Brad Peacock, has been a swingman for most of his career. In fact, in 2018 he only started one game while making 60 total appearances. Coming into 2019 with arms attached to people like Gerrit Cole, Justin Verlander, and Wade Miley, I would not have put Peacock’s name at the top to make this list.

On this particular day, Peacock did just that. After seven strong frames with only three hits and one walk allowed he had fanned 12 batters in Royals jerseys. Josh James came in to seal the deal by punching out five of the final six hitters for a total of 17 K’s in just a nine-inning game.

Two Kansas City players managed to avoid being struck out at all – Whit Merrifield and Billy Hamilton. Making it up for that was Adalberto Mondesi, Hunter Dozier and Ryan O’Hearn who were quashed three times while Jorge Soler, Chris Owings, and Terrance Gore fell on their swords (or bats) twice.

Two other games provided Royal opponents the opportunity to top the 17 strikeout mark by one and they are next.

An early season battle between former AL West rivals, the Kansas City Royals and California Angels, took place in Anaheim on May 8, 1996.

The starting pitcher for the Angels was Chuck Finley, who had been a very good left-handed arm for California for several years with his breakout year coming in 1986. He never was a dominant power pitcher but still registered some nice years and 1996 would be the first of three seasons he would eclipse the 200 K mark.

Finley pitched 7.1 innings of shutout ball and sat down nine Royals before turning it over to the bullpen. Troy Percival was in his first season as the closer for the Angels. For whatever reason, he pitched in the eighth inning of this game to set up the save for Lee Smith, who promptly blew the lead. This became the catalyst for five extra frames of free baseball.

Mike James proceeded to throw three innings, giving up no runs and striking out another three, setting the stage for Mark Eichhorn. Eichhorn was dealing that evening as five of the six outs he recorded were punch outs. His only issue was giving up two runs in between which allowed the Royals to win the game 3-1.

Some of the harder-hit Kansas City victims included Craig Paquette (4 K’s in 6 AB’s), Michael Tucker (3 in 6) and a long list of players who were rung up twice including Mike MacFarlane, Johnny Damon, Bip Roberts and David Howard. Howard would atone himself by driving in the winning runs with double in the 14th.

The final tally for the Halo’s pitchers was 18 K’s over 14 innings. A nice all-around performance for the pitchers involved despite the loss.