My Favorite 2022 Royals Games

The end of the year is a great time to look back.

The 2022 Kansas City Royals were hardly anyone’s idea of a good time, especially early in the year, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have some fun games. I know that Bally Sports ran their Christmas Eve marathon of five memorable games from last season, but I always like to look back on the season that was and find some of my favorites. Spoiler alert: They’ll all be wins, which sort of limits the pool to choose from, but there were some fun games, including a fun few weeks there when the young talent really got going.

Let me know in the comments if there’s anything that you would have had on the list as we wind down the calendar year and look forward to 2023 both in life and for the Royals. This is my order from the 10th best to the best.

July 23 - Royals 6, Rays 3

This was the game, for me, that made me sit up and really take notice of what Brady Singer was doing. He was solid (and I’ll get to another one of his early starts) heading into the break, with a 3.82 ERA in 11 starts spanning 66 innings. he did a nice job of limiting walks and striking hitters out and looked for all the world like a legitimate number three starter. But he just looked different in his first start out of the break. Maybe it was that he had nine days between starts because of the break and because of the Toronto series. But he was nasty.

He struck out two in the first, two in the second, two in the third, two in the fourth, two in the fifth and two in the sixth. He didn’t allow his first hit until the sixth and just had the Rays off balance in the entire game. I wrote about it as part of the Weekend in Review, but just to give you some of the highlights, he got 17 swings and misses on the 94 pitches he threw. His sinker got him a bunch of called strikes as usual and the Rays just couldn’t figure out his slider. He got 21 swings on 34 sliders and gave up an average exit velocity of 71.3 MPH on it.

See? Nasty! Including that game, Singer would finish the season with a 2.53 post-break ERA in 13 starts spanning 81.2 innings. I don’t know if he can maintain looking like a legitimate top of the rotation starter with a fairly middling whiff rate, but he sure looked the part for a long time in 2022 and this was the start that catapulted him. The offense was buoyed in this one by home runs from Bobby Witt Jr. and Michael A. Taylor and doubles from Witt, MJ Melendez and Whit Merrifeld. And the loss went to…Ryan Yarbrough.

June 10 - Royals 8, Orioles 1

The Royals didn’t play many games that were simply never in doubt, at least not in their favor anyway. This one was one of those games. The Orioles hadn’t yet gotten going and entered this one at 24-34 with the Royals at 19-37, so not exactly a clash of the titans. In hindsight, it’s hard to know what the story is here from this game. At the time (and probably still, truthfully) it was seven brilliant innings from Jonathan Heasley. He gave up just one hit and struck out seven and that was it. He kept the Orioles off balance all game with a nice pitch mix.

One thing that jumps out about Heasley when remembering this game is that he had walked 18 and struck out 15 heading into it. So no matter how bad the Orioles were at the time, Heasley was a pitcher who was really bad and this was a start that is the type that you think about for a long time when deciding whether or not to give up on a guy. I wrote in that week’s Weekend in Review about this game about how he had a borderline difficult situation in the fourth with the game still within reach for Baltimore. A runner was on first with nobody out after an error and he had a 3-2 count on Anthony Santander and ended up getting him swinging.

It was a heck of a moment for Heasley, who is one pitcher I believe will benefit the most from a new coaching staff. But on this night, he benefited from his offense and a great catch from Melendez that I still think about periodically.

Melendez, Salvador Perez and Taylor homered in the effort while Merrifield, Andrew Benintendi, Melendez and Perez doubled and Witt tripled in an eight extra base hit effort for the offense. It was a fun game that was ultimately over before the Orioles came up a second time.

May 3 - Royals 7, Cardinals 1

The Royals entered this game 7-14 and the season was already on the rocks. With Ryan O’Hearn hitting cleanup against the Cardinals, who always seem to take it to the Royals in Kansas City, this one felt like it could be a season swan song in early May. But, instead, it was a lot of fun! The Royals only scored in three different innings, but they got some great performances from players who should matter moving forward.

Edward Olivares went 4 for 5 with two doubles, a run scored and an RBI, but the real heroes of the day were Witt and Melendez. This was the big league debut for Melendez and also a big league broadcast for Jake Eisenberg. We’ll get used to that this year as he’ll be on the call for all (or maybe almost all) 162 games for the Royals in 2023, but he was kind of a minor league callup because of an illness that took out most of the broadcast team. So he had the special honor of calling Melendez’s first game, but also Witt’s first big league home run.

I wrote the next day about how youth was finally served for the Royals as it felt like we’d been waiting forever for a lineup with Witt and Melendez and maybe it just took Melendez’s presence to get Witt going. It was a fun game and while the excitement didn’t last too long (they were drubbed the next day), it gave us a glimpse of what could be.

May 17 - Royals 2, White Sox 1

If the first game on this list was the beginning to an incredible finish for Singer, this game is the one that made us believe again. You might recall that Singer didn’t start the season in the rotation. In hindsight, it was a bad call, but at the time, you’ll have to remember that he was coming off a rough season with the mental part of his game rightfully questioned. Then add in that he had a rough spring and it makes sense that he pitched out of the bullpen. After a rough relief outing in a drubbing by Cleveland, he pitched twice more in relief in the next two weeks and, while the sample was small, he looked great.

So he went to Omaha to stretch out as a starter and reemerged for the second game of a doubleheader against the White Sox as the 27th man. And boy was he great. He ended up throwing seven shutout innings with just four hits allowed and no walks while he struck out nine. He threw 93 pitches and 70 of them were strikes. As I wrote the day after, it was the 13th-highest percentage of strikes in Royals history in a game where the pitcher threw 80 or more pitches. His slider was once again filth and his sinker was doing its thing, but he threw his changeup. Was it great? No. But as I’ve written before, Singer doesn’t need the changeup to be great. He needs it to be good enough that a hitter has to think it might be coming. And while he wasn’t perfect, this start was the start of a very fun year for him.

August 7 - Royals 13, Red Sox 5

There is a more fun finish from the day before a little way down the list, but this game was great because, again, it showcased the youth. Melendez was the star here. He went 2 for 3 with two sacrifice flies and ended up driving in six runs. This was fairly early in the every day work for him as the leadoff hitter and he seemed to be taking to the role quite well. He did end up slumping a bit as the season wore down, but I think it’s important to remember it was his first six-month of his career. Still, this game had some crazy highlights even beyond Melendez.

The bottom of the Royals order was filled by three rookies - Michael Massey, Nate Eaton and Kyle Isbel - and they shined. Each of the three went 2 for 3 and all three scored three runs. Massey also added two RBI, including his first career double while Eaton picked up his first career double and his first career triple. Isbel also had a double and a triple. The Royals only had four games in all of 2022 where a player both doubled and tripled and two were in this game. Interestingly enough, Eaton did it once more and Melendez also did it a few weeks earlier. It’s not the rarest thing in the world, but it’s also not the most common.

This game was also notable because of the terrible defense we saw from the Red Sox in center field, which was sort of fun to watch from an opponent’s perspective. Still, for an offense that had a propensity to struggle, it was nice to see them pour it on, especially when they had to late in order to maintain their big lead. I wrote about it in the Weekend in Review following the series.

September 3 - Royals 12, Tigers 2

This was another fun one because the offense absolutely lit up the Tigers pitching staff. By this point in the season, every lineup featured at least five rookies, so it’s no surprise that they took care of business, but the Royals got homers from Nick Pratto, Witt, Isbel and Melendez. Witt’s was a three-run homer and Isbel’s was a grand slam. There isn’t a whole lot to say about this game beyond that other than that it was fun to watch and the rookies drove in all 12 runs while another rookie, Heasley, pitched seven innings and allowed just two runs. It’s these games where the rookies do the work that were so much fun down the stretch when the season lacked meaning. You can find the writeup for this game in this Weekend in Review.

June 21 - Royals 12, Angels 11

This game was equal parts fun and awful, but a win in the end made it worth the wait. The Royals jumped out to a 5-0 lead with Heasley on the mound and Heasley looked pretty solid actually. The Angels lineup wasn’t what you’d call impressive, but it still featured a top four of a hot Taylor Ward, Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani and a playing well then Jared Walsh. So while there was a big break in the lineup after them, those four were tough. And through three, Heasley allowed nothing and then just allowed a solo home run in the fourth.

He got through the fifth 1-2-3, but the wheels fell off on the sixth. He walked Ward and Trou before he gave up a home run to Ohtani that led to the Royals bullpen coming in. And it was back and forth from there. A 5-0 lead turned into a 6-6 tie through six. Then it was 8-7 after seven, but the Royals fought back with a run in the eighth and two in the ninth to go up 10-7. It was just one of those games, though. Scott Barlow put two on for Ohtani that started with a bunt single from the number nine hitter and Ohtani hit a ball about a million feet to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth. The two teams traded disappointing 10th innings before the Royals scored two in the 11th on a Merrifield double and an Isbel single.

The save came from an unlikely source - Daniel Mengden. He was kind of the last resort in the bullpen and got the job done, amazingly. The fun was that it was Witt’s first two-home run game of his career and the team picked up nine extra base hits, which was something they did just twice all season. It was this game and the last one on this list. So it was pretty noteworthy. If you want the win probability chart, be prepared for a rollercoaster that I wrote about the day after.

August 6 - Royals 5, Red Sox 4

It’d be very easy to say that this game was so notable because it ended with a walk-off bomb from Pratto, and that’s true, but there was a lot more to this game that I think is very interesting. First, the Royals had multiple home runs, all from rookies, which was a very common theme in the second half this season. But maybe more interesting is that the first pitch of the game was sent over the wall by Melendez and the last pitch was hit out by Pratto. That’s very, very cool.

The game itself was very back and forth with the Royals taking that early lead, giving it up in the second, taking it back in the third, giving it back in the top of the fourth and taking it back in the bottom half before the Red Sox tied it in the sixth. While the line on Daniel Lynch in this one was middling with four runs allowed in six innings, I thought it was interesting that he didn’t walk anyone and he struck out six. It was his second consecutive start with no walks and was early in the point of the season where he actually posted a very respectable walk rate of 7.0 percent. That will play, as they say.

When you combine Lynch with the real fireworks, I’d say this was a pretty fun one.

September 25 - Royals 13, Mariners 12

This was, by far, the craziest game of the year and it started off so mundane. Max Castillo was pitching against Luis Castillo in what appeared to be a Castillo mismatch, but the Royals version was actually outpitching the high-priced Mariners version…for awhile. Through four innings, the score was 2-1 Royals, but the wheels fell off in the fifth.

The Mariners started the innings with a walk, a hit by pitch, a single and two more walks before Max Castillo was lifted. Amir Garrett came in and got an out before hitting a batter to drive in a run, walking in another run, giving up a single to score run and then giving up a two-out single to score yet another run. Jose Cuas tried to quiet things down, but he gave up a single to the first batter he faced and when it was all said and done, the Royals were down 9-2. The Mariners would score two more in the sixth to go up 11-2.

The Royals offense had hit double digits just five times all year heading into this game, so I think it was fair to assume the game was over. I personally went to the grocery store to get a few things. When I got back in the car, I had just heard Michael Massey homered to make it 11-4 in the sixth and I think I snarkily tweeted something about how the Royals did well all series against good Mariners pitching and were only going to have one win to show for the whole series. Okay, so I was wrong. Luis Castillo walked O’Hearn and his day was over after 5.1 innings.

After Castillo exited, nine of the next 10 Royals reached base. Melendez made the only out, but he drove in the fifth run for the Royals while making the second out. Then it went double, walk, walk, single, single, double, single. The inning only ended with an out on the bases by Hunter Dozier (shocking, I know). In the end, the Royals scored 11 runs on seven hits and led the game 13-11. How crazy was 11 runs in an inning? They only scored more than that in six entire games and one was this one. It was an inning that was aided by terrible control by Mariners pitchers, but really fun to watch. Anthony Misiewicz did give up a run in the seventh, but Dylan Coleman and Barlow closed it down for a wild Royals win.

July 14 - Royals 3, Blue Jays 1

There were more exciting wins this season in terms of action, but I don’t think there was a whole lot better than this one. The day before this game, we had learned that 10 Royals would be unable to make the trip to Toronto due to vaccine requirements. That meant the Royals could put them all on the restricted list and basically call up whoever they wanted, whether they were on the 40-man roster or not. They called up Angel Zerpa, who started this game, Maikel Garcia, Freddy Fermin, Eaton, Pratto, Rivero, Massey and Brewer Hicklen as players who hadn’t seen big league time or had seen minimal time.

So their first game was just Zerpa, who had pitched in relief three days earlier in his second big league game, against Kevin Gausman, who came into the game with a 2.86 ERA and 1.68 FIP on the year. No big deal.

And the Royals competed. They honestly blew some chances with a ton of outs on the bases (shocking, I know) and had 12 hits. They didn’t get on the board until the fifth inning when Nicky Lopez started the inning with a double and he was driven in by Edward Olivares who was thrown out trying to stretch that into a double of his own. That was followed by a home run from grizzled veteran Witt. In the bottom half of the fifth, the Blue Jays answered with a solo home run of their own, but Zerpa battled like crazy and got through the inning without any more damage.

From there it was quiet. Jackson Kowar (Jackson Kowar!) pitched two excellent innings of relief and showed the changeup off that we just hadn’t seen enough of in his big league time. Taylor Clarke continued to pitch well to keep it at 2-1 heading into the ninth when the highlight of the game happened with one out in the ninth.

I mean come on. We got to know Eaton pretty well later in the year, but he was basically a non-prospect getting a shot and he hit a bomb in his first big league game in that situation. Like I said, there were better games, but I think that might have been the most fun to watch as a fan and I can’t believe this wasn’t included on the Christmas Eve marathon. At least I wrote about it the next day, right?

So those are my top-10 favorite games in descending order from the 2022 season. I have to admit, it was a little difficult to find 10 that were worthy. Here’s to hoping that it’s difficult to keep it to 10 in 2023.