| Welcome to this week’s Royals Beat newsletter. My name is Anne Rogers, and I’ll be delivering news and insight to your inboxes all season long. |
| SAN FRANCISCO — Summer clouds and hints of stormy skies led Andrew Benintendi to point upward and twirl his finger around in the fifth inning last Friday against the Orioles, signaling to his teammates that he might need some help if a ball came toward him and he lost it in the lights.
Michael A. Taylor took note, and when Adley Rutschman hit a fly ball to Benintendi that inning, Taylor sprinted over. Sure enough, Benintendi lost the ball, and Taylor laid out for the diving play. Benintendi helped him up, thanking him for the assistance. Jonathan Heasley, the pitcher, raised his arms in thanks, too.
The Royals find themselves doing that a lot with Taylor.
“Ball goes up, basically in left field — normally a guy will start making his way over there but not going like Michael was going,” manager Mike Matheny said. “He’s made us expect the unexpected. He just thrives on doing something outside of the ordinary.”
Taylor’s defense is the main reason why the Royals signed and extended the 31-year-old. Not only for those diving, highlight-reel plays — remember when he robbed Andrew Knizner of a home run at Busch Stadium? — but also for the plays he makes look routine. It’s harder to describe those, because Taylor makes the catch look effortless.
“That’s a big thing. People see the diving plays and kind of put a gold star by that, like, ‘Oh that guy’s so good because he made that diving play,’” Whit Merrifield said. “When in reality, MT is making that play look routine. It might not look like it, you might think someone else is better because he made a diving play, but it’s the same ball and MT is making it look easier.” |
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| So yes, Taylor’s defense is still elite, which we’ve known. But the other reason the Royals wanted him? They thought there was more to unlock in his swing. And this season, he’s unlocking it.
Entering Monday’s series opener in San Francisco, Taylor was hitting .278 with a .784 OPS this season, which has also included a two-week-long stint on the COVID-19 related injured list. On Sunday against the Orioles, he hammered a ball to the opposite field — over the fence in right — for his fourth home run of the year.
Taylor has a 127 wRC+, which is third best on the Royals’ roster — behind Edward Olivares’ 163 and MJ Melendez’s 129 — and up from his 77 wRC+ last year. Taylor is also striking out less than he ever has, with a 19.6% strikeout rate, and walking more, too, with a 12.8% walk rate.
When asked about it, Taylor said he’s seeing the ball better and more consistently than he has before in his career, which allows him to make better decisions. He shortened his swing, too, with new pregame drills he added in Spring Training that have given him more time at the plate.
“The goal was to make more contact,” Taylor said. “I felt like I’d miss a lot of pitches, I’d foul a lot of balls off and put myself in a bad situation with two strikes, then I’m just battling from there. And that would lead to way more strikeouts than I wanted.”
The numbers support Taylor’s feeling. He’s swinging less (49% swing percentage) but making more contact (74% contact rate), and his contact on balls in the zone has significantly improved, up to 87.1% from 80.6% last year. That means he’s making better decisions on when to swing and what pitches to swing at — leading to more production.
“We know he has power, and every once in a while, he’ll display it,” Matheny said. “It’s, like, big power. Surprising power. … We’ve known that there’s more in there, and I know he’s known that, too. He just wanted an opportunity to prove it. There are times, like right now, that he’s proving it. He’s a very well-rounded hitter.” |
| A NEW HOBBY FOR THE BULLPEN |
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| A few weeks ago, I walked into the Royals’ clubhouse and saw Scott Barlow organizing packs of cards near his locker, handing a few to Josh Staumont, who was sitting next to him, and putting a few more in his backpack.
“Are those baseball cards?” I asked.
“Hockey cards,” Barlow said with a smile.
Not often do you see professional athletes channeling the fan inside themselves and opening packs of cards from their sport or others. I asked Barlow how he got into it.
“It’s all Clarke’s fault,” Barlow said.
Turns out, fellow reliever Taylor Clarke has been collecting football, baseball and basketball cards for some time now. It was something he and his dad did together when he was a kid, and he got back into it a few years ago with his twin sons, who turn 7 years old this week. When Barlow helped Clarke out of a jam in the eighth inning of the Royals’ win over the Rangers on May 11, Clarke bought his hockey-fan teammate a box of cards as a thank you. Staumont quickly got into it, too, but with Pokémon cards.
“They’re heavily involved in it now,” Clarke said. “Scotty’s wife came up to me in the family room after a game the other day and she’s like, ‘I don’t know if I should thank you or hate you because every time we’re out, I have to stop at Target or Wal-mart to go check out the card section.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I know the feeling.’ My wife was right there and just eye-rolling, nodding along, like, ‘Welcome to our world.’”
The trio of relievers visit card shops when they’re on the road, a fun way to explore the city they’re playing in. Clarke has all the shops he likes pinned in his phone’s map, but his favorite is in Phoenix: Batter’s Box Baseball Cards.
“I love buying certain cards, knowing what I want, but there’s something about the randomization of opening the pack and seeing who you might get that’s just so fun,” Clarke said. “I think it’s that nostalgic feeling that sparks it for me.”
Clarke’s sons have visited the Royals’ clubhouse a few times now that they’re out of school and in Kansas City full-time, and they received autographs from the likes of Bobby Witt Jr. and Nicky Lopez on their player cards. The Clarke boys keep eyeing a signature they want from across the Truman Sports Complex, too.
“We’ll get like a Patrick Mahomes card, and they’ll be like, ‘Oh, can we go over there and have Patrick sign it?’” Clarke said, laughing. “I’m like, ‘I don’t think that’s how it works.’ I don’t think they quite understand how fortunate they are to be able to come in and do all this. The guys in here have been really great about it.” |
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| On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier. He faced down despicable racism and unfair treatment to pave the way for the Black stars who came after him. But, of course, these injustices didn’t just stop after Jackie. Future Black stars had to deal with similar obstacles during their careers.
After Jackie, a documentary executive-produced by UNINTERRUPTED’s LeBron James and Maverick Carter, Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Stanley Nelson (“Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre,” “Attica”) and in association with Major League Baseball, tells the often overlooked story of the second wave of talented Black baseball players after Jackie Robinson, including Bill White, Curt Flood and Bob Gibson, who were up next in the fight for racial equality. Watch the trailer here and tune in when it airs on the HISTORY channel on Saturday, June 18, at 8 p.m. ET. |
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| TRIVIA
The Royals are visiting the Bay Area for a week, with three games in San Francisco and three in Oakland. Who was the winning pitcher in Game 3 of the 2014 World Series, the only game in San Francisco that the Royals won?
A) Kelvin Herrera
B) Jeremy Guthrie
C) James Shields
D) Yordano Ventura |
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| Let’s go down on the farm to Single-A Columbia, where catcher Carter Jensen, a Kansas City native and the Royals’ third-round Draft pick last year, is starting to heat up offensively.
Jensen, who turns 19 on July 3, notched his seventh homer of the season and hit the walk-off single in the Fireflies’ win over Augusta on Sunday. The Royals’ No. 14 prospect, per MLB Pipeline, has had a slow start to the year, slashing just .179/.297/.353 on this very young Single-A team, which has won just 16 games. But lately, he’s starting to show signs of the power-packed hitter the Royals saw in him. In nine June games, Jensen has an .843 OPS. He has limited the strikeouts, too, with just an 8.6% strikeout rate this month as opposed to 24.8% on the season.
I’ve mentioned the three prep pitchers the Royals took in the Draft last year several times; Frank Mozzicato, Ben Kudrna and Shane Panzini are all settling into Columbia and seeing their pitch count and intensity increase with each outing. Just as important as their development is Jensen’s, both learning to catch those young arms and maintain his big-time pop at the plate. The Royals are starting to see flashes of that in his first full professional season. |
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| TRIVIA ANSWER
B) Jeremy Guthrie
In the Royals’ 3-2 win in Game 3, Guthrie allowed two runs in five innings, with no strikeouts and no walks. He was the losing pitcher in Game 7, but that was at Kauffman Stadium. |
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