Nicky Lopez Takes Over in Late Inning Loss

It's been a season of improvements for Lopez, but yesterday was big for him in a game the Royals couldn't quite grab.

It’s too bad that the Royals couldn’t find a way to win that game yesterday because it would have been a lot more fun to talk about Nicky Lopez’s amazing day. He wasn’t the only one to take over, at least not defensively, but he was pretty spectacular and today is a great day to highlight what he did. I promise I’ll get to the rest of the team eventually. Let’s start with the obvious one and that’s Lopez’s two-run homer in the bottom of the third inning. First, watch it in all its glory.

It wasn’t the hardest hit home run in the world and it wasn’t the farthest hit home run in the world, but it also was every bit the legitimate home run that it seems.

Would it dong? @would_it_dong

Nicky Lopez vs Luis Garcia #TogetherRoyal Home Run 💣 Exit velo: 98.2 mph Launch angle: 31 deg Proj. distance: 381 ft This would have been a home run in 29/30 MLB ballparks. Only Fenway Park would've held this one in. HOU (0) @ KC (3) 🔻 3rd

Let’s talk about where the home run ranks in his seasonal and career ranks from exit velocity and distance. It’s tied for the 40th hardest ball he’s hit this season, which is both sort of impressive and not all that impressive. It’s the 91st hardest hit ball of his career. Also, not really that impressive. Well fine. But on distance, it’s up there. That’s his third farthest hit ball of the season trailing only a couple triples he hit earlier this year. It’s the ninth farthest he’s hit a ball in his career and one of those was a long foul ball, so that’s some pretty good stuff from the light-hitting infielder.

I was kind of hoping that he’d find a way to get through the entire season without a homer just to get into this exclusive club:

Royals Review @royalsreview

Best season by rWAR with 0 home runs, since 1995: 1. Rey Sanchez 2001 - 3.4 2. Ben Revere 2012 - 2.8 3. Walt Weiss 1998 - 2.8 4. Nicky Lopez 2021 - 2.6 5. Jamey Carroll 2010 - 2.5 6. Jason Kendall 2005 - 2.5 Lopez is on pace to finish with 3.8 rWAR.

But also, I’m pretty happy with the home run. Good for Lopez for finally getting that zero off the board and for giving the Royals a 3-0 lead at the time early in the game where it looked like they might run away and hide.

Part of why they were able to do that is because he also played some ridiculous defense. This play in the fifth was just stupid.

In the seventh, with Jose Altuve on third and nobody out, Joel Payamps slightly deflected a ball that Lopez was coming in on and he had to change course, barehand the ball, look back the runner and throw to first.

Then in the top of the eighth, Chas McCormick hit a grounder to Lopez that was in no way easy. But he made it look easy. This one admittedly isn’t quite as spectacular, but it was a nice play.

If I’m being honest, I actually have been starting to get every so slightly annoyed with the Lopez praise. I think it’s great that he’s turned himself into a competent hitter and he’s played such a solid shortstop this season, but I feel like there’s been some over the top praise for a guy who was still roughly a league average hitter. I say that knowing full well that I’ve also been extremely excited for him as he’s one of the players you can’t help but root for on a personal level.

He wasn’t the only one who flashed the leather, though. Whit Merrifield made a fantastic play in the sixth inning with the potential lead run on second with one out. Jake Meyers hit a ball up the middle that ranged way to his right and made a great throw to get him.

And then in the seventh with the potential lead run on third and one out, the Royals pulled the infield in and Yordan Alvarez hit a ground ball to Carlos Santana’s right. It may have been an easier play for Merrifield to make, but Santana took it and made a very difficult throw to the plate to get Altuve for what was what seemed like the 38th out at the plate in this series.

Ultimately, it wasn’t enough as the Royals offense just couldn’t get anything going after Lopez’s home run and didn’t put any more runs on the board before the game went to extra innings. The Royals had used all of their bullets in close games Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and in regular baseball yesterday and simply didn’t have much of a choice but to choose between Wade Davis and Ervin Santana in the 10th. It went predictably. Base hit, walk, base hit, walk, popup, sacrifice fly and out on the bases. And when it was all said and done, the Royals trailed by three heading into the bottom of the 10th, so they couldn’t complete their sweep.

There were plenty of people upset about the choice of Davis, but with Scott Barlow having thrown a lot of pitches on Wednesday and 30 between Sunday and Monday, he was probably unavailable. While Jake Brentz didn’t go on Wednesday night, he had thrown three days in a row, so I wouldn’t be too surprised if he was unavailable as well. Mike Matheny truly leaned heavily on his best in the first three games and it made the 10th a tough one for them. If you want to tell me that someone else should be on the team instead of those two who pitched, sure, but that’s a Dayton Moore issue, not a Matheny issue.

If they had completed it, they would have swept a division winner (assuming the Astros hang on to win the West) for the first time since August of 1984 when they swept the Tigers in a four-game set. They did sweep the White Sox in 1994 in a four-game series, so you can maybe put an asterisk on that as the White Sox were at the top of the AL Central when the strike hit that year. It might seem like that’s a long time, and it is, but to be fair to the Royals, you have to remember that four-game series aren’t the norm, so there are fewer of them. But still, that’s a long time no matter which one you recognize as the last one.

Just a quick couple notes on the starter, Mike Minor, who just doesn’t carry even a portion of the interest as the young starters. I thought he was generally fine, but throughout the first five innings, I couldn’t figure out how he was getting it done. The Astros weren’t quite on him, but they weren’t stymied by him either with 25 foul balls out of their 53 total swings. That’s pretty amazing actually. He never gave up that much hard contact with an average exit velocity allowed of 81.3 MPH, but it just felt like he was right on the edge.

And that sixth inning got him. His final pitch was a knuckle curve that just didn’t move quite enough and it gave McCormick a chance to hit one of the few hard hit balls of the day for a double that drove in Diaz and the game was tied. From there, as you know, the Royals simply couldn’t get anything else going. They had two runners thrown out trying to steal that ended innings, which isn’t great. They got a runner past first for the first time since Lopez’s homer in the ninth, but couldn’t get the game winning run home and the sweep was not meant to be. Still a good series, just a disappointing ending.