KC Royals: 3 good takes from a series loss to the A’s

Despite falling to the Athletics 7-2 Thursday and dropping two of three to the A’s to begin a one week homestand, the KC Royals have once again proven that good things can happen even during a series loss.

The KC Royals continued to show an encouraging ability to bounce back.

The Royals showed how resilient they can be on a recent road trip, and did so again during their just completed three-game set with Oakland by putting themselves within reach of a win regardless of the score.

In Tuesday’s Game 1, Kansas City more than proved this after Jackson Kowar struggled to get through the Athletics’ lineup. He lasted a little over an inning, giving up five runs on three hits and walking four batters, an apparent result of the growing pains of getting used to being on a major league squad.

The Royals, though, made a great four-run sixth inning comeback, thanks primarily to Salvador Perez’s 43rd home run which scored three of those runs. Fueled further by Kyle Isbel’s first major league homer, a two-run shot the very next inning, KC went on to win 10-7.

And although the Royals were on the verge of getting blown out in Game 2 Wednesday night, they managed to make things interesting when, down 12-5, they climbed back and scored five runs in the last three innings to make it a close 12-10 loss. Once again, Kansas City showed it doesn’t give up easily, even when a game seems out of hand.

Andrew Benintendi is on a magma-hot tear down the stretch for the KC Royals.

Just last week, we wrote here about how Andrew Benintendi was, to borrow one of KC broadcaster Rex Hudler’s favorite phrases, lava hot.

Now, and to use another of Hudler’s go-to descriptions, Benintendi has become magma hot. He hit .428 with five RBIs against the A’s and in his last seven games has slashed .517/.531/.793 with two home runs and 12 RBIs. And over his last 15 games, he’s hit .400/.439/.667 with three homers, 19 RBIs, and five walks.

While he didn’t notch a hit Thursday, Benintendi more than made up for that in advance Wednesday when he went 5-for-5 with four RBIs:

And on Monday, the day before Kansas City started its three games with the A’s, Benintendi was named last week’s American League Player of the Week.

Salvador Perez is getting closer to breaking records with the KC Royals.

Tuesday, Salvador Perez hit home run No. 43 to propel the club to a comeback victory. Wednesday night, he hit No. 44 to tied Shohei Ohtani of the Angels for second place in the major leagues. But he wasn’t done.

Thursday, Perez smashed homer No. 45, which tied Johnny Bench’s 51-year-old record for the most home runs hit by a catcher playing at least 75% of their games at that position. The blast also brought him even with Mike Sweeney for second on the all-time KC home run list with 197. And it tied Vladimir Guerrero Jr. of the Blue Jays for the 2021 major league lead.

Perez also leads the majors with 112 RBIs on the season. Although he’s hitting .278, which trails Guerrero’s major league-leading .317 average by far, it is truly amazing to see Perez lead the big leagues in two of the three major hitting categories.

With 16 games left in the season, Perez’s race to surpass Bench, lead the majors in homers, and break Jorge Soler’s Royals single-season record of 48 home runs, is heating up. Perez is certainly well on his way: the Royals face-off against the Mariners next, and Perez hit four home runs against them on the club’s last road trip—including two grand slams in back-to-back games.

The Royals can take three good things away from their series loss to Oakland. They showed resilience, Andrew Benintendi stayed hot, and Salvador Perez didn’t let up in his quest to break home run records.