Royals will rely on Nicky Lopez less than a week after demoting him to the minors
Nicky Lopez’s baseball life may never move quite as fast as it did this last week.
The Kansas City Royals’ projected starting second baseman heading into spring training, Lopez’s offensive regression forced the club to send him back down to the minors before the season.
Royals manager Mike Matheny described it as a “tough conversation” when he broke the news to Lopez that he wouldn’t be the club’s starting baseman and he wouldn’t even be on the major-league roster.
Then after the Royals broke camp in Arizona, an injury to Adalberto Mondesi turned Lopez’s world sideways again as he was suddenly on his way to Kansas City and penciled in as the club’s starting shortstop for Opening Day against the Texas Rangers.
“Yeah, it’s crazy how things work,” Lopez said before Thursday’s game after he cracked a smile. “Yeah, we had a conversation. Obviously, I knew I was getting sent down. It’s easy at that point to kind of feel sorry for yourself, but you kind of have to flip the script and be like, you know, let’s get better. Let’s use this as an opportunity.”
The Royals optioned Lopez to the minors on Sunday and slotted versatile former All-Star infielder/outfielder Whit Merrifield as their everyday second baseman to start the season.
Matheny, who’d been a strong public advocate of Lopez’s since he took over as manager prior to last season, couldn’t deny that Lopez hadn’t realized the offensive potential he’d shown in the minors.
Last season, Lopez led all second baseman with eight defensive runs saved, and ranked second among AL second basemen in putouts (74), assists (135) and double plays turned (34).
However, in his 159 MLB games, Lopez has slashed .228/.279/.307 with 92 strikeouts and 36 walks.
In some ways, Lopez’s swing had taken steps backward. He began working on fixing his swing in his several days in minor-league camp, but he’ll be counted on for defense first and foremost now that he’s back in the starting lineup.
“There’s no doubt at all and zero question about what he can do defensively,” Matheny said. “This is an elite defender, and that’s what we’re going to ask him to do — go out and catch the ball, make the plays at shortstop.
“He’s already made some nice adjustments and some things that he has been working on. Now, taking those in just a short period of time from work in the cage and (batting practice) and applying those into a major-league game, let alone Opening Day, that’s a big ask.”
Lopez said during his time in minor-league camp, a plan had been put in place by the hitting development staff, including director of hitting performance Alec Zumwalt, special assignment hitting instructor Mike Tosar, minor league hitting coordinator Drew Saylor and assistant hitting coordinator Keoni DeRenne.
“(They) helped me kind of reflect on it for a little bit, get past it and then start looking towards how can we get better and how can we get back to what I did so successfully in the minor leagues,” Lopez said. “So thank God for them.”
A fifth-round selection in the 2016 draft, Lopez hit well throughout the minors. He raked at Triple-A Omaha in 2019 before being called up to the majors. He posted a .353/.457/.500 slash line, scored 27 runs and stole nine bases in 31 games.
The previous year while splitting time between Double-A and Triple-A, he slashed .308/.382/.417, led all Royals minor leaguers in hits (155) and won the organization’s George Brett Award as their top minor-league hitter.
“I’m trying to just get back to my old ways of what I did,” Lopez said.
He watched a lot of video and tried to dissect it and get back to the type of hitter he’d been prior to reaching the majors. He said some of his struggles have been a result of trying to emulate other players and copy what has been successful for them.
“I felt like I was trying to be someone I’m not,” Lopez said. “I kind of got away from being who Nicky Lopez is. I’m not a guy who is going to leave the yard. I’m not a guy who is going to have this strong, powerful swing. I’m more of a contact guy. It’s more of knowing who you are, getting back to knowing who you are.”
This story was originally published April 1, 2021 at 1:22 PM with the headline "Royals will rely on Nicky Lopez less than a week after demoting him to the minors."
