A Spring in Their Steps

The Royals are winning again in the spring. Could this be different than last year?

The Kansas City Royals find themselves in a familiar spot - near the top of the Cactus League standings. They’ve only been below .500 in two springs since 2015. Yet, in that time, they’ve been below .500 in all but two full seasons. But I don’t need to tell anyone about the prowess of the Royals during the season that doesn’t count for anything. And I hope I don’t need to tell anyone that wins and losses in spring training mean next to nothing.

Just look at Saturday’s game. Seth Lugo gave up five runs in 2.1 innings with three home runs allowed. That’s a bad game (I’m going to get to my thoughts since I saw it live). But the Royals still won. And they did so by scoring seven runs from the sixth inning on, largely with players who likely aren’t part of any plans other than contingency plans for the 2024 Royals. A win is nice, but it’s really how they get there that I want to focus on. Even that can be misleading because of the inherently small sample, but the process means so much more than the results.

I’ve been lucky enough to see the last two games live (and unlucky enough in my trip timing that I won’t see another game while I’m here). I’ve seen two wins. More importantly, my daughter has seen two wins and gotten to enjoy some beautiful weather at the ballpark. If we’re being honest, that’s what it really is all about, but you don’t come to Inside the Crown to read about how much my toddler daughter enjoyed watching games and clapping with the crowd no matter who the applause was for. You want to know my thoughts on what I saw. I will caution that when you see two spring games in the first couple of weeks, you’re likely seeing players once because guys just aren’t going back-to-back yet.

Let’s start with the good that I saw.

• Royals hitters seemed to be making a concerted effort to work the count on Saturday against the Guardians and Shane Bieber and some others who figure to see some big league time. They worked Bieber for three walks including some excellent first inning plate appearances that didn’t lead to anything because of an Adam Frazier double play. Maybe it was a one-off, but it really appeared that they were taking a much better approach at the plate. I didn’t see the same effort yesterday, but I also didn’t feel like there were too many poor plate appearances other than maybe Michael Massey swinging at a pitch he couldn’t do anything with on 3-1 at one point. I’ll be interested to see if the approach continues on the whole.

• Vinnie Pasquantino looked pretty good. I’m sure the Royals have seen everything they’ve wanted to see regarding his shoulder so far, but I wanted to see him take a big rip and come up empty. That happened and he was fine. In the first, he had a good approach and hit a ball hard on the ground. It seems pretty clear that his timing is still coming back. Then he walked in a nice plate appearance and the most interesting thing for me is that he was jammed on a pitch in the fourth inning and it still sailed into the left field corner. To have that kind of strength to get a ball to that spot, Arizona or not, on a ball on the hands is really impressive. When the timing comes around, I’m anticipating him getting red hot.

• Will Smith looked about as sharp as possible. He got the top of the Guardians lineup on seven pitches, all strikes. There are obvious caveats here. One is that you can’t judge much of anything on seven pitches and the other is that it wasn’t exactly Steven Kwan, Andres Gimenez and Jose Ramirez at the top because it was a spring game. Still, his slider was on point and any time you can strike out two guys on three pitches each and get a first pitch weak groundout, you’re happy. The Royals were being careful with Smith since he’s pitched so long in each of the last three seasons, but his debut was very good.

• Maikel Garcia had a great game on Saturday. He walked twice and I’m pretty sure he didn’t swing and miss once. But what I was excited about most was a big double to the right-center field gap. He did that last season some, so I want to see it more, but that particular swing was one that can take advantage of his ability to hit the ball hard much more than he showed last season. More of that from him.

• Salvador Perez and MJ Melendez both look locked in right now. Perez hit two balls on the screws and another one hard enough. He’s not really lifting yet, but it looks like his swing is about where he wants it and I wouldn’t be surprised if he can get into a bit of a Cactus League home run barrage once he’s playing a little more than every other day or so. And Melendez also had some good swings including a home run in a three-home run inning. I anticipated he’d have a big spring and, so far, he is.

• Bobby Witt Jr. hit a foul ball that was about as loud as any ball I’ve heard live. But a foul ball is nothing more than a strike. So often, a hitter will do that and then end up swinging too big and striking out. Witt, though, waited a couple more pitches and then hit an absolute tank to start the Royals scoring in their 7-3 win yesterday. I know how much we talked about his 30/30 (30/49) season last year, but I think we may underrate just how much power he has.

• Just some quick thoughts. Michael Wacha’s changeup looked really good. Nick Anderson was throwing strikes. James McArthur looked pretty solid as well. Oh and Nick Pratto had two more hits including one with two strikes and one on the first pitch. Why are those two things interesting? Last year with two strikes, Pratto hit .162 with a .276 SLG and .240 wOBA. On the first pitch, he hit .200 with a .200 SLG and a .216 wOBA. He needs to be more aggressive and he has been this spring. It’s a good start for him.

Now the less than good.

• Lugo got hit pretty hard and it didn’t seem like he had any answers. I’m not worried about him from a one-start perspective. He was pretty clearly working on his curve. For one thing, it’s a feel pitch and spring is for finding those pitches. If it’s not there on March 2, I don’t care. If it’s not there on April 2, I’ll be a little more worried. For another, the Arizona air is not forgiving to curves. Still, though, you’d rather be good than bad and he was bad.

• Daniel Lynch IV looked pretty much like he’s looked since his rookie season. A lot has been made of his velocity, and with good reason. He averaged around 94 MPH in each of his first two seasons and then that dropped pretty significantly last year. He had that shoulder injury, so it’s not a huge surprise, but it’s also something to watch this spring. He was 90-92 for the most part yesterday, which isn’t what you want. I saw him hit 93 once and he dipped to 89 once. There was an 88 too, but it sort of looked like a changeup that he didn’t grip right. He just didn’t get many swings and misses and wasn’t filling up the zone the way you want. I’ll be paying close attention to him the rest of spring because I really think the Royals would love if he outpitched Jordan Lyles.

• One player who entered the spring as a regular who played yesterday got a fourth plate appearance and it was Michael Massey. I wonder if maybe it was because he just wasn’t putting together good at bats. He ended up 0 for 4, which I couldn’t care less about, but I think back to that 3-1 pitch I mentioned way up above and, well, woof. I can’t go back and look at the pitch because of the lack of video in spring training so maybe it was just a great pitch (that does happen), but when you hit a dribbler on a 3-1 pitch, good chance you swung at a pitch you don’t want to swing at.

• It probably doesn’t mean much because he’s just a non-roster invite, but Dan Altavilla didn’t look like he had much to contribute. We’d heard stories of him in the upper-90s in winter ball, but he wasn’t especially close to that, at least not according to the stadium radar gun. I put his odds behind Tyler Duffey to make this club among the NRIs, but I thought he’d put up a fight. When you’re battling this many players, an outing like that can be really rough for you.

• Walter Pennington faced one hitter and, while he got him out, he didn’t strike him out. What the heck? I was promised a Pennington strikeout. Now he’s only whiffed eight out of the 10 outs he’s recorded this spring.

As I’ve said, trying to glean too much from any small spring sample is really difficult. I don’t mean to call anyone out, but someone mentioned to me that it seemed like Pasquantino was struggling after his first inning out. At that point, he’d put together 13 plate appearances in four-plus games without playing two days in a row. You just can’t judge anything on that. That’s not to say that you can’t have observations, and I wanted to share mine from my brief glimpse at the team here. I didn’t get the impression that this team is especially sharp right now, though I also would be kind of surprised if they were this early. The wins are nice. How they get there is more important.

I’m excited to see more of this team throughout the spring in televised games to see if they can get a little sharper. I do think the offense has started to find some timing, so I won’t be too surprised if they start to put up some true Cactus League offensive numbers. And then in about a week, we’ll start to see guys play longer in games and get into games on consecutive days. Then we can really start to see some things. Until then, the wins are certainly better than losses. It’s a bummer that I’ve seen my last game in person until Opening Day, but I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity. Now I get to enjoy the food down here before I head home later this week.