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.

The KC Royals reacquired an old friend at the midsummer trade deadline and immediately made him part of the starting rotation. On August 10, he spearheaded a shutout win and earned his first victory as a Royal.

Before July 15, 2019, Mike Montgomery was perhaps best known to KC Royals’ fans as one of the club’s prospects traded to Tampa Bay in the winter of 2012 for James Shields and Wade Davis. A Royals’ first-round draft pick in 2008, Montgomery put together a nondescript 25-33 five-season minor league record before he caught Tampa’s eye.

Montgomery never made it to the majors with the Rays but found himself with a 21-27 major league record and pitching for the Cubs last July. The Cubs needed a catcher for the stretch run and KC apparently saw something they still liked in Montgomery. The Royals shipped Martin Maldonado to Chicago to get Montgomery back.

Montgomery, however, lost three of his first KC starts, posting a 6.70 ERA in 16.1 innings; a no-decision was his best effort.

Then, on August 10, with Kansas City facing the Tigers in Detroit’s annual Negro Leagues commemorative game, Montgomery displayed what the Royals liked about him. In seven innings, he struck out 12 Tigers without walking any to lead KC’s 7-0 shutout. It was his first win as a Royal and the first of two consecutive excellent starts for Montgomery–he notched another win six days later by shutting out the Mets for six innings in a 4-1 KC win.

Although Montgomery wouldn’t win another game after his victory over the Mets, his 12-strikeout performance against Detroit suggested what the Royals still saw in him was good. The performance provided promise for 2020 and a top Royal moment for August.

Not surprisingly, the 2019 Kansas City Royals had several losing streaks.  It took some home runs and good pitching to end one at Fenway Park.

Losing 100 games requires several losing streaks–a team can’t lose that many times without suffering frequent strings of consecutive losses. Such was the case for the KC Royals in 2019.

The Royals, losers of 103 games after dropping 104 in 2018, lost two and three straight games several times; they lost four games in a row four times, and five, six, seven and 10 consecutive games one time apiece. The 10 game skid came early in the season; the seven-game streak–the second longest of the campaign–started in Kansas City on July 29th and ended in Boston on August 6th. The Royals lost three games to Toronto, three to Minnesota, and one to the Red Sox before beating Boston in a Fenway Park night game.

Had the streak-ending contest consisted only of the first three and final three innings, the Sox would have extended the KC loss string to eight: the Royals were scoreless and managed only one hit (Whit Merrifield‘s lead-off single in the first) in those six frames and Boston scored twice.

The middle innings were much, much different.

In the fourth, Hunter Dozier worked Boston starter Andrew Cashner for a full-count walk, then scored on Jorge Soler’s 30th home run of the season, a first-pitch bomb to left that gave KC a 2-1 lead. Jakob Junis worked around a single and a walk to hold Boston scoreless in the inning’s bottom half.

Ryan O’Hearn hit a Cashner 3-2 delivery out to right to lead off the KC fifth. The homer, O’Hearn’s seventh, put the Royals up 3-1. Junis worked a 1-2-3 inning to preserve the lead.

The Royals finished Cashner off in the sixth. Merrifield led off with a single and moved to second on a wild pitch to Alex Gordon; two batters later, Dozier drove in Merrifield with an infield hit. Soler then belted a 1-0 Cashner offering out to left-center for his 31st homer, and KC had a 6-1 lead. Junis, now dominating the Sox, retired the side on ground balls in the bottom of the inning.

KC couldn’t manage a hit the rest of the way, but it didn’t matter. Junis, who limited Boston to just a run in six innings, gave way to Richard Lovelady to start the seventh. He allowed Boston only a run in his two innings and Ian Kennedy closed the Sox out in the ninth for the 6-2 win.

Ultimately, this game had no impact on the standings. The Royals finished fourth in the AL Central and Boston, the defending World Series champion, missed the postseason with a third place finish in the AL East, 19½ games behind New York. But Soler slammed two homers en route to a club-record, Junis pitched one of his best games of the season, and KC snapped its second-longest losing streak of the year. It was a top August moment.

The two worst teams in the American League Central met in Detroit for the finale of a four-game series. One team was looking for a win to take the series; the other needed a win to tie it. A home run barrage by the winner decided things.

As they opened a four-game series in Detroit on August 8th, the KC Royals and Tigers had little to play for. Not much of the season remained, and that part of the campaign left behind was in tatters for both clubs. There would be no postseason for either team–the Royals were 35 games below .500, the Tigers 45 below.

The spoils were indeed small after the first three games of the series. The Tigers won the first two and the Royals the third; Detroit would win the series with a win in the finale, but the best KC could hope for was a win to tie it.

Despite the good Sunday afternoon weather, less than 20,000 paid to see the game, a probable reflection of its insignificance in the grand scheme of the stretch runs then developing around the majors. Those who did show up were treated to a home run barrage–but probably not by the team they preferred.

Even in the homer-happy season 2019 was, the Royals put on a dinger show worth watching…and wasted no time doing it. Whit Merrifield led off the game with a full-count homer to left. It was his 14th round-tripper of the season.

Then, after Alex Gordon flied to deep left for the first out of the inning and the game, Hunter Dozier clubbed his 21st home run, a bomb to left-center that gave KC an early two-run lead.

Jorge Soler hit the Royals’ next blast two innings later. In steady pursuit of Mike Moustakas’ club record 38, Soler slammed Daniel Norris‘ two-out, 1-1 pitch for his 34th, scoring Dozier to make it 4-1.

Kansas City had to wait five more innings, until the eighth, for its next home run, but the wait was worth it–first Dozier, then Soler, tagged Tiger reliever Drew VerHage, Dozier for his 22nd homer and Soler for his 35th. They were back-to-back shots to begin the inning and gave the Royals a 6-2 lead.

The Royals added four more runs in the ninth on Merrifield’s two-run single and Soler’s two-run double; the hits gave Merrifield three RBI’s for the game and Soler five. Jakob Junis pitched six strong innings, limiting the Tigers to their two runs, and Scott Barlow and Jake Newberry closed out the 10-2 win.

Until the KC Royals hit five homers on September 11th, the five they clubbed out of Comerica Park August 8th stood as the team’s home run high for the season and provided another top August moment.

A home run in late August put Jorge Soler in position to break an important KC Royals’ record. He wouldn’t snap that record until September, but tying it in August was a top moment of the month.

The path Jorge Soler took to the Kansas City Royals, one he probably hadn’t planned but which ultimately led to Kauffman Stadium, had its beginnings in Cuba, found its way through Chicago and ended when a trade landed him with the Royals.

Before baseball fans in the United States knew who he was, Soler made a name for himself in his native Cuba, where he played in international competition and drew the attention of major league scouts. Soler’s 2011 defection from Cuba triggered a bidding war in America; the Cubs secured his services in 2012 with a reported $30 million contract.

Soler justified his 2014 call-up to Wrigley Field with a .306 average over 544 post-signing minor league games, including a .340, 15-homer 2014 AAA performance before the Cubs summoned him to Chicago. In 24 big league games that season, Soler drove in 20 runs, hit five homers and slashed .292/.330/.573. Over his next two Cub campaigns, he hit an injury-plagued .253 with 22 home runs and 78 RBI’s.

The Cubs won the World Series in 2016 but, with Aroldis Chapman likely gone to free agency after that season, they needed a closer and focused on the Royals’ Wade Davis, who was set to become a free agent after the ’17 season. Coupled with Kansas City’s pressing needs to get value for Davis and find another bat, and Chicago’s need to fill the bullpen hole Chapman’s sure departure would leave, the clubs agreed to exchange Davis for Soler.

Royals’ fans widely questioned the move, criticism that Soler’s first two KC seasons seemed to justify. Although injuries limited his playing time, his performance when healthy didn’t mirror the Royals’ expectations–in 35 2017 games, he hit only .144 with two homers and six RBI’s; in 2018, he hit nine homers, drove in 28 runs and batted .265.

But Soler exploded in 2019. By the end of June, his 22 home runs put in jeopardy the club’s season record of 38, set only the year before by Mike Moustakas. Six July homers brought Soler’s total to 28, a manageable 10 short of Moustakas with two months to play.

Any doubt that he would at least tie (and likely break) Moustakas’ record was put to rest before August was half over. Soler went on a home run binge, slamming seven in the month’s first 10 games; this assault on the record included four homers in a four-game series at Detroit, capped by two in the series finale. Those four blasts brought his season total to 35, just three shy of the mark.

A homer on August 25th at Cleveland, and another at home August 29th against Oakland, left Soler with one to go for the tie.

Baltimore’s 14-2 drubbing of the Royals the next night gave fans little to cheer about…except for one thing. With one out in the bottom of the first inning, Soler put the suspense to rest, slamming John Means‘ second pitch out to deep left to tie Moustakas’ record.

Breaking the record was all that was left and Soler took care of that four nights later at Kauffman Stadium. His 39th homer came against Detroit’s Daniel Norris with two outs in the third and scored Whit Merrifield and Nick Dini; it accounted for half the club’s runs in its 6-5 victory over the Tigers. (Ryan O’Hearn walked off the Tigers with his own home run in the bottom of the ninth).

Soler finished the season with 48 homers and his final blast, hit in the first inning of the club’s’ final game, established a new major league record for Cuban-born players. He became the first Royal to ever lead the American League in home runs. And he finished the year with 33 doubles, 117 RBI’s, an OPS+ of 138 and a .265/.354/.569 slash.

His club home run record was a highlight among the season’s many lowlights; his record-tying blast in late August was the top Royal moment of the month.

Like most of the months before it, August wasn’t good to the 2019 KC Royals. But some exciting wins and the tying of an important team record provided several top moments.