KC Royals: Top 5 Royals’ moments from August 2019

Like all the months in 2019 except March, August was a losing one for the KC Royals. They won only eight games, but there were memorable moments along the way.

For the 2019 KC Royals, the dog days of August signaled the approaching conclusion of a disappointing season, one lost to bad pitching, inconsistent hitting, uncertainty and instability at key positions, and a rebuild management seemed committed to calling something else.

August wasn’t much different from any other month for the Royals. They lost far more games than they won–19 of 27, to be exact–and spent the month as one of the worst teams in baseball. Their 19 losses brought their season total to 89, virtually assuring a second straight 100 loss season.

The loss of 70% of its August games was truly a team effort–the Royals gave up more runs than in any other month, and terrible performances by several Royals combined to make August the club’s second-worst month of the season. Alex Gordon and Bubba Starling hit .167; Brett Phillips hit .200; and Ryan O’Hearn, despite an otherwise excellent year, hit .206.

The disappointing season of Brad Keller, the club’s 2018 Pitcher of the Year, continued–he went 0-4 in August with a 5.13 ERA before arm fatigue shut him down late in the month. Glenn Sparkman suffered one of the downs of his up-and-down season, going 0-3 with a 7.58 ERA. Danny Duffy appeared only on August 3–he started against Minnesota and gave up nine runs (eight earned) in 4.2 innings, then landed on the Injured List with hamstring problems three days later.

And shortstop Adalberto Mondesi missed the entire month with a shoulder injury.

Although the bad of the KC Royals’ August far outweighed the good, the club had some memorable moments. Here are five of them.