4 former KC Royals who’ve disappointed this season

A former KC Royals star shortstop isn’t having a good season in Washington.

Over an eight-season span during which the Royals went from bad to best, then back to bad again, Alcides Escobar was a fixture at shortstop, an energetic player whose stellar defense and adequate bat helped the club recover from too many dreadful seasons to win two straight American league pennants and a World Series title.

And it was Escobar who was among four key players who decided to test free agency when Kansas City failed in 2017 to qualify for the postseason and suffered its first losing record since 2012.

Eric Hosmer (San Diego) and Lorenzo Cain (Milwaukee) landed the lucrative deals Mike Moustakas and Escobar didn’t find; both returned to the Royals for 2018.

Moustakas was gone via a midseason trade to the Brewers, but Escobar stayed, then went back on the market in the offseason. He signed with Baltimore, didn’t make it out of spring training, and soon signed with the White Sox, who kept him in the minors until releasing him in August.

Escobar came back to the Royals on a 2021 minor league contract and played well at Triple-A Omaha (.274 with five home runs and 16 RBIs in 35 games) until the club sold him to Washington in early July. He flourished with the Nationals, hitting .288 with a .340 OBP in 75 games.

This season, however, is different. Escobar has played in only half of Washington’s 70 games and his dismal .220/.264/.288 line could foretell a DFA when he’s finished recovering from a hamstring injury that’s kept him on the Injured List since June 1. Currently on a rehab assignment at Triple-A Rochester, he’s hitting .231 in 13 games.

His season marred by injury, former KC Royals hurler Mike Minor struggles.

The move came suddenly and surprisingly. Entering the final year of the two-season deal he signed to reunite with Kansas City two Novembers ago, and expected to remain an important part of the Royals’ rotation this year, Mike Minor instead found himself traded to Cincinnati for reliever Amir Garrett before spring training ended.

The deal closed out Minor’s second stint with Kansas City. He spent the 2017 season with the Royals and, pitching exclusively out of the bullpen after missing two seasons recovering and rehabilitating from injuries, went 6-6 with a 2.55 ERA and six saves in 65 appearances.

Minor took advantage of free agency after the season and moved on to Texas, where he resumed the starter’s role he’d had for five years in Atlanta before joining the Royals. He won 26 games for the Rangers across 2018 and 2019, but none in 2020 before they shipped him to Oakland.

He returned to Kansas City last season and tied Brad Keller for club leads in wins (eight) and losses (12), and posted a grim 5.05 ERA. But on a team with a shaky rotation, his job for 2022 remained secure.

Until the Garrett deal, that is. Certain to immediately join a questionable Cincinnati rotation, Minor instead suffered a shoulder injury which forced him to the IL before the regular season even started.

Minor returned June 3, but the results haven’t been pretty. Washington roughed him up for five runs in four innings that night, Arizona dinged him for three in 4.1 frames five days later and another four in 6.1 innings five days after that, and Milwaukee scored four times in six innings against him Sunday. He’s 1-3 with a 6.97 ERA.

This infielder was good with the KC Royals but is slumping in Los Angeles.

Despite serving two seasons as Baltimore’s primary second baseman, Hanser Alberto came to Kansas City in 2021 as a utility infielder, a fair-hitting, decent-fielding proven player more than capable of filling in when regulars like Whit Merrifield, Adalberto Mondesi and Nicky Lopez needed time off.

But his role quickly expanded when Mondesi suffered the first of three injuries that sidelined him most of the season. Pressed into more action than the Royals probably anticipated when they signed him to the minor league deal he turned into a major league job, Alberto played in 103 games (probably fewer than he would have had Lopez not enjoyed such a good season) and hit .270 filling in at third, short and second. He was by all accounts popular with teammates and fans.

All that, and the uncertainty surrounding Mondesi’s health, seemed to make Alberto a logical choice to return in 2022. But the Royals had other ideas and released him in late October.

He caught on with the Dodgers in March and has played 34 times. He’s hitting only .242—32 points below his career average—with a .254 OBP, numbers that might not be sufficient to secure a spot on the postseason roster the National League West Division-leading Dodgers will undoubtedly need to assemble.

Four former Royals aren’t having good seasons.