Hosmer not resting on laurels after Royals’ run

Eric Hosmer hit a basketball, football and volleyball for a PlayStation commercial at Surprise Stadium, the spring training home of the Kansas City Royals.

Hosmer said the basketball was the easiest to hit because “it’s so big.”

A baseball must have looked basket-ballsized to Hosmer in the post-season last year.

Hosmer hit .351 and set a franchise record with 12 RBIs in 15 games during the playoffs and World Series. He had six multihit games in the post-season, three of them with three hits.

“A lot of guys didn’t have numbers they wanted to in the regular season, but turned it up in the post-season,” Hosmer said.

Hosmer was one of them. He hit .270 with nine home runs and 58 RBIs, all career lows. Not numbers Hosmer desired. “Definitely not,” Hosmer said. He hit .321 with a .509 slugging percentage after July 1. But he missed 29 games with a broken right hand after being hit by a pitch from Jon Lester on July 20. He tried to play through it, but went on the disabled list Aug. 2.

The Royals’ season ended with a 3-2 loss to the San Francisco Giants in Game 7 of the World Series.

“I know the taste it left in all our mouths,” Hosmer said. “I know it made the off-season feel like it was that much longer. The way it ended, it was tough. It was tough to look at all these guys after that loss because all these guys had invested so much.

“We all truly believed we were going to do it, so to come up short and the feeling we had, it didn’t seem like it was time to be over.”

The 25-year-old Hosmer agreed to a $13.9 million, two-year contract on Feb. 18. His agent, Scott Boras, called him as he was packing to drive to the Phoenix airport to fly to Tampa for his arbitration hearing the next day.

“It went from get your suit ready to you don’t have to go,” said Hosmer.