(610 Sports) -- If you haven't been paying attention, you might be surprised to hear that the Kansas City Royals have the best record in baseball. Following an offseason in which the team was aggressive in the free-agent market, notably adding switch-hitting first baseman Carlos Santana, outfielder Andrew Benintendi, starting pitcher Mike Minor and key pieces to their bullpen, the team has gotten unexpected impact from a player that the team sent to the minor leagues, just a few days prior to the start of the regular season.
Nicky Lopez struggled at the plate in the 202 truncated MLB season, hitting just .201/.286/.266 in 56 games and that didn't get better in spring training headed into this season. Lopez was sent down to the minor leagues, just a few days before the start of the regular season but instead of letting that define him, he took advantage of the opportunity to clear his head and relax his approach at the plate.
On Wednesday, Nicky Lopez talked with 610's Cody & Gold about getting recalled to start the season and what he has changed in his approach that has him hitting well above his career averages, with a .276/.348/.379 line, while still providing gold glove defense.
"It's been different, it's been a different month," Lopez said. "You know, I always thought there was a possibility of being sent down and obviously spring training wasn't what I wanted, there's a lot of thinking involved, a lot of me getting in my own way, a lot of not being myself and just kind of once that started happening, it's hard to play the game of baseball as it is, then it's hard playing when you're thinking about it and you're thinking about different things when you're in the box."
"I got sent down and a couple of days later, you know under the terrible circumstances, obviously, I didn't want to get called back up because of an injury," Lopez said in reference to Adalberto Mondesi's oblique strain that has had him out since the beginning of the season. "Because we're doing really well right now, could you imagine when we put Mondi back in this lineup, too?"
On what changed for him from the time he was sent down to being recalled a few days later, Lopez shared his thought process:
"But yeah, I got called back up, I kind of I kind of had to change my mindset of, "why did this happen," to "hey, I'm gonna use this as, not fuel, but I'm gonna use this to get better. I'm gonna recognize what I need to do to get better and what I need to do to get back to being Nicky Lopez and I think that was the biggest thing, that I have to be Nicky Lopez, I don't have to be anybody else. Sometimes when you struggle in this game of baseball, you kind of look at other people, and you try to hit like him or how he does it," said Lopez.
"I had to look at it as maybe this is just a blessing in disguise, maybe this is the best thing that ever happened to me, kind of look at it in a positive way, rather than a negative way. I went down and got right to work."
Following last night's game in which the Pittsburgh Pirates snapped the Royals' 5-game winning streak, there was a different feeling in the clubhouse, a feeling of disappointment and it was a good thing.
"No, yeah this is something different. I remember, I said it early on in spring training too, it's just a different feeling. We went on a good roll there and then we lost. It was one of those things, we're not expecting to lose anymore, we're done losing, we're done with those 100 loss seasons," said Lopez. "We wanna win now, we wanna continue to win. We like the feeling of winning."
We can all agree that whatever happened for Nicky, it's benefitting him, it's benefitting the team and it's a mindset that the whole team is sharing at this point and it has them sitting at the top of the standings.
Click the audio player below to listen to Nicky Lopez's full interview with Cody & Gold: