KANSAS CITY -- On a night when Vinnie Pasquantino homered, doubled and drove in five of the Royals’ eight runs in their 8-5 win over the Nationals on Tuesday at Kauffman Stadium, his favorite part of the game came very early, in his first plate appearance.
Pasquantino loved everything about the sacrifice fly he hit in the first inning -- from the process to the result to even how it set the Royals’ first baseman up for the rest of the game.
“You don’t want to let one at-bat affect the others, but there are some, especially good ones, that can build that confidence,” Pasquantino said.
After Maikel Garcia’s heads-up play going first to third on Bobby Witt Jr.’s ground ball back to the mound, Pasquantino stepped to the plate with a man on third and one out.
It was the exact situation he was so clutch in last year. In 2024, with a runner on third and less than two outs, Pasquantino slashed .441/.373/.735 with 38 RBIs, including 13 sacrifice flies, which matched a Royals single-season record that hadn’t been done since Mike Sweeney in 2000.
“Last year, I had a pretty good year with sac flies,” Pasquantino said. “This year, I’ve been garbage with guys on third and less than two outs.”
Entering Tuesday, Pasquantino was hitting .323 with a runner on third and less than two outs, but he has only hit two sacrifice flies, one homer and 19 RBIs. Pasquantino’s .232 average and .695 OPS with runners in scoring position, entering Tuesday, have both dropped from last year (.360 average, .957 OPS).
So with Garcia on third and a chance for an early lead Tuesday, Pasquantino wanted to come through for his team.
Then, he got down 0-2 to Nats lefty Mitchell Parker.
“[First,] he hangs a pitch I don’t swing at,” Pasquantino said. “I’m like, ‘Ah, I wish I would’ve swung.’ Then I swing through a fastball, and I’m like, ‘How am I down 0-2 now?’”
Pasquantino took the third pitch and fouled off the next two at the top of the zone. On the sixth pitch, a curveball, he went the other way.
“I do something I did all year last year,” Pasquantino said. “And it’s like, ‘There it was.’”
There was no denying the relief that Pasquantino felt when that run scored. It led to a mindset shift when he was at the plate in the bottom of the third with runners on first and second and two outs.
“There have been times this year where I’m like, ‘I got to get this done. I’ve got to get this done,’” Pasquantino said. “I get up there in that at-bat and I’m like, ‘What an opportunity I have right now. Just go have a good at-bat.’ And I did.”
That at-bat resulted in the three-run home run, as Pasquantino hooked a first-pitch inside fastball into the right-field corner. The ball staying fair told Pasquantino that his swing was in the right place after pregame work for the last several days focused on fastballs, as he tried to get out of a slump that had him hitting just .181 with a .683 OPS since the All-Star break.
Pasquantino added a double off the right-field wall in the seventh inning, giving the Royals insurance as the Nationals kept chipping away after starter Michael Wacha’s 5 2/3 innings of two-run ball.
The Royals got contributions up and down the lineup, but seeing a night like Tuesday’s from Pasquantino was just as important.
“There’s a reason he hits third for us pretty much every day of the season,” manager Matt Quatraro said. “... There’s a lot that goes into that. There’s a lot of mental consistency that you need to hit in the middle of the order and go with the ups and downs.”
Pasquantino has weathered those ebbs and flows of a season and has been a key contributor for this team, with a career-high 21 home runs and a .258/.320/.442 slash line. He has embraced his role as a power-hitting run-producer and grown in it, hitting in between the two faces of the Royals’ franchise in Witt and Salvador Perez.
“Sometimes, because of who I hit after and who I hit in front of, there’s some imposter syndrome creeping in,” Pasquantino said. “'What am I doing here?' That’s actually a conversation I had [Monday] after the game. And it’s not a lack of confidence. It’s just like, 'I got to be better.' It’s the constant pursuit of that: ‘How can I do what I feel like I can do for this team?’”
Nights like Tuesday showed exactly what he can do.