The season Erik Kratz hoped to have for the Toronto Blue Jays has come to be with the Kansas City Royals, his four demotions to triple-A Buffalo over four often frustrating months now simply reminders of detours taken on an unusual route to the American League Championship Series.
Getting ready to take on the Baltimore Orioles for a spot in the World Series, there are no complaints from the catcher. To borrow from Drake, he started with the Bisons and now he’s here.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: Watch the ALCS on Sportsnet Friday starting at 7:30 p.m. EST. Listen on Sportsnet 590 The FAN.
“I was just excited to get an opportunity to be in the big-leagues again,” Kratz says over the phone of the July 28 trade that sent him and Liam Hendriks to the Royals for Danny Valencia. “That’s your goal, you want to be on a big-league team, help a big-league team try and make the playoffs and it was exciting to join a team like K.C. that was in it, not in much different a position than the Blue Jays at the time.”
The trajectory for both teams changed dramatically after the deal, the Blue Jays’ hold on the second wild card quickly slipping away while the Royals rallied from 2.5 games back to eventually claim the first wild card. They proceeded to beat Oakland in the one-game playoff before sweeping away the Los Angeles Angels in the division series, becoming post-season darlings through their unlikely run.
Kratz, 34, has done his part in a limited role, hitting two homers with three RBIs in 13 games during the regular season as the backup for the very impressive Salvador Perez. While awaiting his first action of the playoffs, he’s been actively supporting his teammates with his enthusiasm and experience.
The swing from being stuck in the Blue Jays’ revolving roster door to being part of the Royals’ run is a significant one.
“Constantly going up and down doesn’t bode well for your confidence, whether it was a numbers game or it wasn’t a numbers game,” says Kratz. “Coming here, it was definitely more of what I had expected from the beginning of the season, it’s ‘Hey, you’re on this team, we need you to help the team, and we’re trying to make a run at the playoffs.’ That’s what I got here in Kansas City and it’s been a blast. There’s no doubt this group of guys wants to win and we’re showing everybody that.”
While Kratz has no prior experience playing in the post-season, he did appear in two late-season games for the 2011 NL East champion Philadelphia Phillies. He’s shared the lessons he picked up from that stint with a Royals teams largely new to the pleasures and pressures of October baseball.
The way they’ve handled it has been impressive.
“You know the lack of experience everybody talks about? The guys haven’t been overwhelmed,” says Kratz. “They’ve done an incredible job of taking it one game at a time – we haven’t gotten ahead of ourselves, we’ve stayed focused on the at-bat, the pitch that’s about to happen, nobody’s letting the situation get too big for them. With the crowds in K.C., it could have gotten too big, like, ‘Wow, this is unbelievable, this is so crazy.’ But the guys have done a great job battling each pitch, and at the end of the game being like, ‘That was awesome, that was fun, let’s do it again tomorrow.’”
That’s the vibe he’s sensed since joining the Royals, who picked him up roughly two weeks after they also added another former Blue Jay in reliever Jason Frasor from the Texas Rangers during their limited wheeling and dealing before the deadline.
Kansas City was in the midst of a recovery from a dismal run in which it lost 10 of 13 when Frasor arrived, and it was a steady build to the franchise’s first playoff appearance since 1985.
“Aside from the blockbuster trade they made for me,” Kratz says facetiously, “they didn’t make any moves, so I think it worked backwards. Some people think, ‘Oh, they didn’t make any moves, they don’t want to win,’ but it went the other way, ‘They’re not making any moves, the boys are here, we’re going to do it.’ Everybody got confidence out of that.”
Learning a pitching staff on the fly can be challenging for a catcher, but Kratz points that “it’s pretty easy when you have incredible arms like we do over here.” The tricky part, he explains, is when a catcher tries to work with a mediocre arm and doesn’t know how to maximize the skillset.
That’s not an issue for a Royals staff supported by an outstanding defence that routinely steals hits, and if needed Kratz can always lean on Perez, who is particularly adept at getting the most from whoever is on the mound.
“The way he handles our pitching staff and allows them to be who they are while still controlling their emotions is incredible,” says Kratz. “He’s gone out to the mound when he’s needed to, he hasn’t let the game speed up on him and he’s done an incredible job. Being on a national stage like this, a lot of people are really going to know who he is if they didn’t before.”
The ALCS provides all the Royals with a chance to make an even bigger impression, particularly against a favoured Orioles team that finished with the league’s second-best record at 96-66. They trailed only the 98-64 Angels, who were chewed up by the 89-73 Royals.
“The Orioles aren’t that much different than the Angels,” says Kratz. “Their lineup is pretty power-packed, we have to keep them in the yard, we have to not give them free bases, we have to respect that their lineup is really good.”
It’s a much better focus for Kratz than the oscillations from majors to minors he experienced with the Blue Jays, who optioned him to Buffalo on March 28, recalled him March 30, optioned him April 13, recalled him May 2, optioned him June 24, recalled him July 9, optioned him July 22 and traded him July 28.
“Getting traded over to the Blue Jays (Dec. 3, 2013) I had some expectations of what kind of opportunity I would get and when the season started without making the team was a shock to my pride, a shock to what I thought the opportunities were going to be,” he says. “Leaving Toronto, there were some guys in the clubhouse I had a great time with, I got to know a lot of the coaches real well, I enjoyed my time with them and some of the runs we’d been through. I enjoyed the winning up there.”
He’s enjoying it with the Royals, too, and doing more of it.
