While most sports fans were focused on the second week of the NFL season, Kendrys Morales had himself a day, picking up three solo home runs and a triple in the Kansas City Royals‘ 10-3 win over the Detroit Tigers.
According to ESPN Stats & Info, the last Royals player with at least three home runs in a game was Danny Tartabull on July 6, 1991. The 32-year-old Morales also set the franchise record for most total bases in a game (15), per CBS Sports MLB.
Joel Goldberg of Fox Sports Kansas City also unearthed this fun stat:
Morales’ first home run came as he led off the top of the third inning. His high fly to right gave Kansas City an early 3-0 lead. He got the Royals on the board again in the fourth with an opposite field shot over the left-field wall.
Tigers reliever Jose Valdez managed to limit Morales to only three bases following a stand-up triple to right-center in the sixth, but Jeff Ferrell wasn’t quite so lucky as Morales collected his third home run:
Grantland’s Rany Jazayerli was disappointed Morales didn’t get one more shot in the ninth inning; he was one batter away from a sixth plate appearance:
Hitting three home runs in the same game is undoubtedly a major feat, but Bruce Schoenfeld of Travel and Leisure magazine highlighted an even more impressive accomplishment from Morales’ stat line:
Sunday’s game further enforces how shrewd an acquisition the veteran designated hitter was for the Royals in the offseason. As Baseball Prospectus’ Matt Sussman joked, it’s not as if Kansas City received a ton of praise when the deal first happened:
Tigers manager Brad Ausmus had already been on the receiving end of Morales’ offense enough to know how much he has helped his team, per ESPN.com’s Katie Strang:
Although this year’s Royals team isn’t quite so anemic when it comes to power, it was still 22nd in isolated power (.142) and 12th in weighted on-base average (.318), per FanGraphs, entering Sunday. Morales has done his part, ranking third on the team in home runs (18) and first in runs batted in (102).
The Royals are one of the best teams in the American League, but they could run into trouble matching the Toronto Blue Jays blow for blow in the postseason—should the two meet—if they couldn’t count on Morales delivering timely hits.
How he performs will go some way in setting Kansas City’s playoff ceiling.
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