KANSAS CITY -- The calendar has flipped to June, but Andrew Benintendi is still hitting like it is May.
The Royals’ left fielder crushed his second career grand slam on Tuesday night and continued his torrid stretch at the plate, pushing his team to a 10-5 win over the Pirates and a two-game series sweep of its Interleague opponent at Kauffman Stadium.
Kansas City is now a game over .500 for the first time since May 7, as the club enters a big four-game series against the Twins this weekend at The K. The Royals have won 11 of their last 17 games on the heels of an 11-game losing streak.
“I hope it’s the last time we look at [.500] and all we do now is keep adding tallies,” manager Mike Matheny said. “Figuring out ways to distance ourselves from that mark. I don’t want this team ever thinking about being a .500 club. We talk about having high expectations for ourselves, and it comes with nightly figuring out ways to keep us above that line.”
If the Royals’ offense continues what it’s shown the past five games, the team has a good chance of staying over that line. Kansas City’s 12 hits marked the fourth in its last five games with 10-plus hits. In those five games, the Royals scored at least five runs, and are batting .320 (56-for-175), while averaging 7.2 runs and 11.2 hits per game.
To finish out the regular-season series against the Pirates, the Royals scored 17 runs in this two-game set. On Tuesday, they came back from a three-run deficit and added on while starter Brady Singer yielded five runs (four earned) in 5 2/3 innings.
“Yesterday was one of those Kansas City Royals games, where we had pressure, guys making things happen on the bases, making good defensive plays,” Matheny said. “And today gave a different look, where we showed some of the power. It was a well-played series for us. Did a lot of things that we were hoping to see.”
The power in the series finale was provided by Benintendi, who put together his fourth career five-RBI game with the grand slam and an RBI single in the first inning, and Salvador Perez, who had his seventh career two-homer game.
In the fifth inning against Pirates starter Wil Crowe, Benintendi came to the plate with the bases loaded and none out. The Bucs had thrown inside in his two previous at-bats, so he had that on his mind as Crowe hurled a fastball middle in. Benintendi shortened his swing and jumped on the ball, sending it into the Royals’ bullpen a projected distance of 393 feet, according to Statcast.
The slam was Benintendi’s first home run at Kauffman Stadium in a Royals uniform -- all four of his previous homers this season were hit on the road. Three of them came in May, the month that all the work he’s put into his swing paid off: Benintendi finished May with a .340 average and an .821 OPS after beginning the year hitting .225 and posting a .624 OPS in April.
Benintendi has talked at length about how he’s changed his approach to not try to hit homers, instead focusing on making hard contact and spraying line drives to all parts of the field.
“I understand the player that I am and what I can do on a consistent, day to day basis,” Benintendi said. “I try to go up there and try to hit the ball hard. That’s all I can control. Swing at good pitches, control the zone, try to barrel it up.”
But when he gets a good pitch to hit, he’s not afraid to let the power come through.
“Benny’s just really put on a show here for the last month,” Matheny said. “It’s so good to see because he’s not trying to do what he did today. He’s just trying to take what they’re giving him. Take good at-bats, find the barrel, use the whole field. And then he gets a pitch he can do something with, and he’s got the power to make it happen.”
With Benintendi and Perez as the 1-2 punch in the middle of the order, the rest of the Royals’ lineup did its part. In the fifth, Michael A. Taylor tripled and Nicky Lopez walked to get on base for leadoff man Whit Merrifield, who ripped his second of three singles. Then, Carlos Santana -- who was also on base for Perez’s first homer in the fourth -- walked to load the bases for Benintendi.
“Those are guys we want to see consistently up in those situations, and reasons like what we saw today makes it right when you see it all come together,” Matheny said. “We still have some other guys we’d love to get hot and are trending in that direction. But it’s great to see the guys we want being productive, producing.”