TORONTO – When the Royals traded for four players in three deals ahead of Thursday’s Trade Deadline, there was a small but very important part of the conversation as team officials welcomed each one to the organization and figured out the next steps.
Do you have your passport with you?
Luckily for Mike Yastrzemski and the Royals, the outfielder had brought his with him to New York, where the Giants were spending an off-day on Thursday. He was playing golf when he got the call that he was traded.
Having his passport with him allowed Yastrzemski to take an early flight on Friday morning to Toronto, jump right in with the team and make an immediate impact, homering off Kevin Gausman in his first at-bat as a Royal on Friday night.
It was the first of four home runs for the Royals in a 9-3 win over the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre, backing Michael Wacha’s eight strong innings of one-run ball against a Toronto team that entered Friday tied for the best record in the American League. Kansas City, meanwhile, moved to .500 (55-55) for the first time since June 20.
With their new acquisitions and the core still intact, the Royals are trying to make a post-Deadline push.
The series-opening win in Toronto was a good way to start.
“This is our squad that we’re going to be rolling with,” Wacha said. “Not a lot of ball left to be played, so we got to go out there and keep winning series. We all know what’s ahead of us.”
Yastrzemski became the sixth Royal to homer in his first plate appearance with the club, joining Nelson Velázquez (Aug. 11, 2023), Lucas Duda (March 29, 2018), Adam Moore (Sept. 23, 2018), Yamil Benitez (July 24, 1997) and Jon Nunnally (April 29, 1995).
The two-run blast traveled a Statcast-projected 370 feet – a homer in only 10 of 30 ballparks, but a homer nonetheless – and flipped the Royals’ one-run deficit into a 2-1 lead in the second inning. And they never looked back.
“I like him,” shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. said of Yastrzemski with a grin.
So does everyone else who watched Yastrzemski hit the home run, along with two well-hit flyouts that showed his swing was still in a good place after a wild 24 hours.
Yastrzemski flew cross-country on Wednesday night with the Giants to New York, found out he was joining the Royals in the middle of a playoff race in a literal last-minute Deadline deal and flew into Canada on Friday morning.
Yastrzemski was still trying to get acclimated to his new team by the time the game started. When it did start, though, he finally took a deep breath.
“I think that was the first time I was able to relax today, just getting back to being out on the field,” Yastrzemski said. “It’s nice to put a couple of good swings on the ball and have a little bit of an impact here.”
Witt added a three-run home run, his 16th of the season, in the third inning. Salvador Perez and Adam Frazier homered in the ninth. And Wacha was brilliant, using his changeup to keep a dangerous Blue Jays lineup quiet by allowing only three hits and one home run while striking out five.
“That couldn’t have come at a better time for us after the last several days of the bullpen usage,” manager Matt Quatraro said.
The Royals look different than they did a month or even a week ago, and it’s not just because three of their hitters in the lineup – Yastrzemski, Frazier and designated hitter Randal Grichuk – were not a part of the team before the All-Star break.
This team is just flat-out playing better, having won eight of its past 11 and scoring at least five runs in eight of 13 games since the All-Star break, something it did in only 21 of 97 games before the break.
The lineup is deeper with the additions of Grichuk and Yastrzemski, who figure to platoon in right field, along with Frazier, who provides a lefty bat to use in the lineup or off the bench and who has made an immediate impact in the clubhouse.
Those three have improved the overall roster and given Quatraro better options to use throughout the game. The core of the lineup – Witt, Perez, Vinnie Pasquantino and Maikel Garcia – producing consistently has been the biggest boost.
“Guys are talking about what they see up there, how stuff’s playing,” Frazier said. “It helps everyone’s approach, puts tougher at-bats together throughout the game, which makes it harder on them. We can be tough one through nine, and pitchers don’t like facing a lineup like that.”