Kansas City Royals’ Merrifield took advantage of small ballpark for his 2nd grand slam
There’s no place like your home ballpark, unless, of course, you’re looking to snap out of a home run drought and your home ballpark is where home runs go to die.
Kansas City Royals All-Star second baseman Whit Merrifield was approaching two months since his last home run when he stepped into the batter’s box in the seventh inning to face Astros right-handed relief pitcher Cristian Javier with the bases loaded and two outs in Wednesday’s series finale at Houston’s Minute Maid Park.
Javier tried to get a first-pitch fastball past Merrifield. Not only did Merrifield catch up to the 95-mph fastball, but he sent it into the left-field seats for the second grand slam of Merrifield’s career.
His first-career grand slam came in the seventh inning of a game in the same ballpark on May 7, 2019.
“The first one I hit would’ve been gone just about anywhere,” Merrifield said. “I hit that one really good. And this one, it’s just the Crawford Box.
“It’s nice to have something in left field that’s 305 (feet) or whatever it is. That definitely would’ve been a double at Kauffman. There’s no way that would’ve been a homer. So pick your spots, pick your stadiums.”
Merrifield, who hit 16 home runs in 2019, blasted his first grand slam off of pitcher Framber Valdez. It went an estimated 382 feet and made the score 8-1 in that game on the way to a 12-2 Royals win.
Wednesday, he benefited from the short porch in left field and a 19-foot wall in front of the elevated box seats named for Crawford Street which runs parallel to the ballpark wall in downtown Houston.
“I play at Kauffman, I don’t think any balls are out,” Merrifield said when asked if he knew he’d hit it well enough for a home run. “I knew I hit it decent. I saw it going right at the edge of the Crawford Box. I actually thought it might slice into the corner.”
The distance down the line to the Crawford Boxes is just 315 feet and 362 feet in left-center. In Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, the distance down the line is 330 feet and 387 feet in left-center.
Merrifield, who now has nine home runs this season, hadn’t hit a home run since June 29 against the Red Sox at Boston’s Fenway Park. He now has eight multi-hit games in the Royals last 15 games, and he has batted .369 during that span.
His four RBIs pulled him within two of Astros second baseman Jose Altuve for the most by a leadoff hitter in the majors. Merrifield now has 65 while Altuve has 67.
At the time in the seventh inning, the clutch two-out blast from Merrifield flipped a two-run deficit into a two-run lead for the Royals. Leading into Merrifield’s at-bat, Michael A. Taylor singled and Emmanuel Rivera and Cam Gallagher each fouled off two-strike pitches on their way to drawing walks.
“Great at-bats against a tough pitcher in [Lance] McCullers to work walks and get me up there, so credit to them,” Merrifield said. “Those were probably two of the best at-bats of the game.”
Merrifield’s blast marked just the fourth time since 1999 that a Royals player hit a grand slam in the seventh inning or later to turn a deficit into a lead, according to Bally Sports Kansas City’s Dave Holtzman.
The others came courtesy of Carlos Beltran (2002), Salvador Perez (2017) and Hunter Dozier (2019).
“That whole inning happened with two outs,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “A two-out single by Michael, and then a really good walk by Rivera too before the good walk by Cam to give Whit a chance in that spot. It was just a real nice approach and fighting through at-bats, realizing that the game can turn in a hurry in a park like this and it did.”
The Royals bullpen, which hadn’t allowed a run in the first five games of the current road trip, gave up three runs to lose the game 6-5 in 10 innings.
This story was originally published August 26, 2021 at 6:42 AM with the headline "Kansas City Royals’ Merrifield took advantage of small ballpark for his 2nd grand slam."
