Michael Massey making himself part of the KC Royals’ infield conversation going forward

Michael Massey’s first two years in the Kansas City Royals organization were mostly about getting healthy and getting his body ready for the daily grind of a professional baseball career. He had a debilitating back injury at the end of his collegiate career that lingered with him after the 2019 MLB Draft.

The herniated discs temporarily took away some of his athleticism, but the Royals believed in the legwork their scouts had done over the course of several years. They were fully aware of his injury issue, but they were also intrigued by the potential, his makeup and the sweet left-handed swing.

When he fell to the fourth round despite having been dubbed by Baseball America the “best pure hitter” in the Big 10 Conference, the Royals felt fortunate to grab him out of Illinois. Then-assistant scouting director Danny Ontiveros said of drafting Massey, “We just really like his swing and like the way he plays. He’s a really intense competitor, a leader, a winner.”

Three years later with a pandemic year that wiped out the Minor League season mixed in, Massey has made it to the big leagues and put himself in the conversation about the club’s future infield plans along with the likes of phenom Bobby Witt Jr., super-versatile defensive whiz Nicky Lopez who had a career offensive season last year, and the oft-injured but supremely-talented Adalberto Mondesi.

It doesn’t hurt Massey’s case that in the past two seasons between High-A (99 games), Double-A (54 games) and Triple-A (33 games), he batted .312 with 37 home runs in 186 total games.

“I’ve always been a line-drive, gap-to-gap kind of guy,” Massey said earlier this week. “Sometimes in the minors, I’ve been able to hit maybe a few more home runs than even I would have thought and, for sure, what other people would have thought.

“I don’t really think that’s my game. I know I had 21 last year and 16 this year down there. But I think it’s more of just line drives, singles, doubles, making contact, driving in runs, and I’ll accidentally hit some out. I don’t know that that’s necessarily going to be my game moving forward, hitting the ball out of the ballpark. Those things might just come. Gap-to-gap is really my approach.”

Massey’s first home run in the majors came on Thursday night against the Tampa Bay Rays. It snapped a streak of 33 consecutive scoreless innings for the Royals.

The homer came in Massey’s lone game, so far, batting in the leadoff spot in the lineup. Fellow rookie MJ Melendez has taken the majority of the at-bats from the leadoff spot.

Massey contends that any time he has tried to muscle up and hit home runs, it has made him a worse hitter. Typically, that leads to more swing and miss and less productive at-bats.

The line-drive, gap-to-gap, drive-the-ball-the-other-way approach was something ingrained in him from a young age by his father.

Massey explained that one of his father’s favorite hitters was Hall of Famer Paul Molitor, who collected 3,319 hits and batted .306 for his career. Molitor only surpassed 20 home runs in a season once during a career that spanned parts of 21 seasons.

Meanwhile, more than one person in the Royals organization has seen Massey as comparable to former Phillies left-handed hitting second baseman Chase Utley, who won four Silver Slugger awards in his day. Utley did log five seasons of 20 homers or more, though Utley also didn’t play home games in Kauffman Stadium.

Through his first 17 games, Massey has batted .321 (18 for 56) with a .356 on-base percentage and six extra-base hits (four doubles, one triple, one home run).

The adjustment to facing major-league pitching is ongoing, but Massey seems to have a fairly simple approach to handling the potential overwhelming amount of data available on each pitcher.

Massey boils it down to knowing what the opposing pitcher has got, what he likes to throw, but then Massey trusts himself to react.

“The crazy thing is the pitcher doesn’t have to pitch according to what’s on a sheet,” Massey said. “I like to look at the stuff more so, because that’s what you’re going to see. You’re guaranteed to see the shape of his curveball, what’s his fastball do, does his changeup sink or run away from you. That’s the only guarantee really.

“The percentages, sometimes, can be mixed. He can throw whatever he wants out there. A lot of it depends on where you’re hitting in the lineup, what you did the night before on some pitches. Did you swing through four changeups? Well, there’s a pretty good chance you might get some changeups today regardless of what the report says. Knowing what each individual pitch does, I think is what I look at the most.”

Royals manager Mike Matheny has been impressed with what he’s seen from Massey at the plate in Massey’s first significant taste of the big leagues.

Massey made his debut during the Toronto road trip with 10 unvaccinated players from the major-league club placed on the restricted list, but he returned to the minors after the series. He was called up again earlier this month in Chicago.

“He stays with his idea of what he tries to do,” Matheny said. “He stays up the middle. He can pull. He can go to the opposite field. He’s just a very well-rounded approach. He’s got a real nice idea when he walks into the box of what he’s looking to do.”

Matheny believes Massey has got the ability to be a consistent hitter in the big leagues with the potential to bat in the top third of a lineup.

His ability to drive the ball to the opposite field at Kauffman Stadium also made an impression on Matheny.

“For the ball to go the other way like it has, he hit the top of the wall once — right around there in straightaway left,” Matheny said. “There’s not many guys that can do that. We know he’s got pull power too.”