KC Royals: Top 5 Royals moments from June 2019

The KC Royals were 2-1 in March 2019. The club didn’t see a winning month the rest of the season, posting losing records in each until the season ended in late September. But June had some exciting moments. Here are five of them.

The 2019 major league regular season stretched from late March to late September, a period a bit longer than half a calendar year. Winning presents the illusion of a faster season; losing, on the other hand, can fool the senses, making the actual passage of 162 games seem excruciatingly slow. For the KC Royals, a 59-103 record made for a long 2019 campaign.

Only in March did the Royals post a winning record, a 2-1 mark accomplished in a season-opening three game set with Chicago and then quickly forgotten in the mire of a second consecutive lost season.

By the time June 1 rolled around, the Royals had managed to lose exactly twice as many games as they’d won — their 19-38 record left them in the American League cellar, 19½ games out of first place and effectively eliminated from contention with over 100 games left to play. Only the Orioles, with one more loss and one less win, had a worse record at that point.

The club lost almost two-thirds of its games in June–a 10-17 record left it a mere fraction of a fraction short of precisely two-thirds — but the month provided some good moments among the bad. An early-month win broke one of the longest losing streaks of the season; the club drafted and signed a potential superstar; a talented rookie had a milestone hit; a rising star fueled an exciting late-inning rally; and an established star had one of the biggest of his big games.

Here, in a continuation of our review of good Royals moments from 2019, are the KC Royals’ Top 5 June moments.

The KC Royals and Detroit played a historic game on June 13th. And a Kansas City rookie returning to his college stomping grounds made some personal history.

On June 13, 2019, a pleasant late-spring evening in Omaha, the KC Royals and Detroit Tigers made history. The clubs squared off at TD Ameritrade Park in the first major league game ever played in Nebraska. The Royals, playing as the home team in the city that its Triple-A affiliate calls home, won the contest 7-3.

That TD Ameritrade was the venue for this game was especially meaningful to KC second baseman Nicky Lopez, a rookie called to the majors only a month before — the ballpark was home to Lopez for the three seasons he played for Creighton University and the site of many moments that inspired the Royals to make him their fifth-round draft choice in 2016.

Lopez was struggling coming into the game. He was hitting .133 for June (4 for 30) and slashing .204/.250/.276 since his May 14th big league debut. After sitting him the night before in Kansas City, Manager Ned Yost gave his rookie the chance to play in front of his college ball fans.

Lopez took advantage of the opportunity, and one second-inning moment would give him a memory to last a lifetime.

On the second pitch of the inning, Lopez drove a Matthew Boyd pitch into the Detroit bullpen; it was the first major league home run for the slumping second baseman, a highlight of his rookie season and, undoubtedly, what will prove to be a highlight of his career. The solo homer accounted for the first run of the Royals’ four-run victory.

Lopez added a single in the fourth and finished the game 2-4 with two runs scored, a good night’s work for a former Creighton Bluejay playing for his college crowd.

It was a memorable moment for Lopez…and one of the Royals’ top moments of June.

Before the KC Royals played their June 12th game, they made a high school senior rich and secured an important player for the future when Bobby Witt Jr. signed with the club.

A day before Kansas City rookie Nicky Lopez hit his first big league home run, and just hours before the then-last place Royals would lose a home game to Detroit, the club held a news conference at Kauffman Stadium.

The June 12 news was big: the Royals had signed Bobby Witt Jr., their top 2019 draft choice and second overall pick of the draft, to a $7.789 million deal, the second largest signing bonus in big league history and the largest such bonus for the Royals.

That the Royals would choose Witt with their first pick was widely anticipated and probably a foregone conclusion. The supremely talented son of long-time major-leaguer Bobby Witt Sr., he was sure to be taken by someone high in the draft pecking order; even if the high school senior chose to delay his pro career and follow through with the letter of intent he’d signed with Oklahoma, chances were slim and none that he’d still be available to KC when he finished his collegiate career.

Witt projects as a shortstop (something will have to give if Adalberto Mondesi is still at short for KC when Witt arrives there) and appears well-equipped fundamentally for a long and successful career. He made his professional debut less than three weeks after signing; playing for the Royals’ Arizona Rookie team, he went 3-6, scored two runs and drove in another. He finished his 37 Arizona games with a .262/.317/.354 slash, 27 RBI’s, .670 OPS, nine stolen bases and eight extra base hits (including a home run) among his 43 total hits.

Although Witt’s signing had no impact on any June Royals’ game, the magnitude of his KC deal and the promise it holds for the future made the signing one of the biggest moments of the month for the KC Royals.

On the final day of the first week of June, and facing another loss, the Kansas City Royals regrouped, rallied twice, and defeated Chicago to snap a losing streak.

A 6-2 road loss to the Texas Rangers ended the month of May for the KC Royals, and unfortunately set the club on the path of its third-longest losing streak of the 2019 season (they also lost 10 in a row and seven straight). The defeat marked the first of six straight losses and dropped the Royals to 19-38, a record befitting their last-place position in the AL Central and their status as the second-worst team in the major leagues.

The May 31 loss at Texas triggered five more losses before KC won again — the club lost two more to the Rangers (5-1 and 8-3), then returned home and promptly lost three in a row to the Red Sox (8-3, 8-0, 7-5).

Then, on June 7, the Royals appeared on the way to their seventh straight loss — they trailed Chicago 2-1 going into the bottom of the sixth and had managed only four hits off Ivan Nova.

That’s when they came alive. Whit Merrifield shot a single through the hole between third and short and Alex Gordon shot another through the second-short hole, moving Merrifield to third.

Adalberto Mondesi then lined a double to right to score Merrifield and tie the game; Gordon held at third. After Jorge Soler struck out for the first out, Nova walked Ryan O’Hearn to load the bases. Cheslor Cuthbert‘s two-run single to right gave the Royals a 4-2 lead.

The Sox tied the game with two runs off Brad Boxberger in the top of the seventh.

But the Royals, determined to end their losing streak at six, took the lead back for good in the bottom half of the inning. Merrifield reached first on a fielder’s choice that wiped Billy Hamilton off the bases; Gordon’s bunt sacrifice moved Merrifield to second. Mondesi, who would finish with three hits and two RBI’s, singled to center to drive in Merrifield, then scored on Soler’s double for the Royals’ final run.

Jake Diekman held Chicago scoreless in the eighth, Ian Kennedy closed the game with a scoreless ninth and the Royals had their 20th win of the year.

The victory didn’t get the KC Royals out of last place. But it snapped a painful six-game losing streak; for that, it was the third biggest Royal moment of June.

Whit Merrifield had 13 three-hit games for the KC Royals in 2019, proving once again that he is deserving of the nickname “Three Hit Whit.” But his three hits in a June game against Seattle didn’t tell the whole story of a Whit-powered win.

Midwest KC Royals’ fans who stayed up late to watch the club’s June 18th contest at Seattle were likely tired the next morning, but theirs was undoubtedly a “happy” kind of tired. The Royals, powered by Whit Merrifield’s big bat, dominated the Mariners in a 9-0 win that marked Kansas City’s 25th win of the season.

The Royals were seeking their third win in a row after beating Minnesota and then Seattle. For his part, Merrifield had been conspicuously quiet — he was 2 for 9 in those victories, leaving KC to rely on others for most of the production.

Merrifield, though, is not a player to be held down long, a point he proved to the Mariners in KC’s lopsided, nine-run win. The evidence came early and often.

Merrifield’s night started with a lead-off single in the first; his hit facilitated the Royals’ first run, as he scored on a single by Alex Gordon. It was merely a sign of things to come.

After flying out in the third, Merrifield came to the plate in the fourth with Nicky Lopez and Bill Hamilton on base and the Royals holding a 3-0 lead. He worked Yusei Kikuchi to a 3-1 count, then blasted his fifth pitch to deep left for a three-run homer that doubled KC’s lead.

Merrifield drove in his fourth run of the game with a sacrifice fly on a 1-2 pitch from Matt Festa in the sixth.

He wasn’t done.

In precisely the same manner as he had punished Kikuchi in the fourth, Merrifield worked Jesse Biddle to 3-1, then hammered Biddle’s fifth offering out for his second homer of the game, and his fifth and sixth RBI’s. The six-run contribution accounted for most of the Royals’ runs, and the run he scored in the first inning gave him shares in seven of the club’s nine.

Not to be forgotten, Homer Bailey started for KC and pitched 7.2 scoreless innings; Jorge Lopez and Kevin McCarthy shut the Mariners down the rest of the way. But it was “Three Hit Whit” who once again got his three hits to power the Royals offensively, making the game the top Royal moment of June.

June was, unfortunately, one of many losing months for the KC Royals in 2019. But Nicky Lopez, Bobb Witt Jr., Hunter Dozier and Whit Merrifield led the way in giving fans some exciting June moments.