Crown Jewels: Cross Progress, Big Fellas and Royals Spring Breakout
The regular season is barreling toward us. Where has the spring gone for the Royals?
We are less than two weeks away from Opening Day, which means that it’s about time to see guys playing as much as a full game and starters should start going five or six innings in their last couple of outings before the season begins. The Royals have 10 games left in Arizona and then two in Texas. Maybe they can exorcise their Arlington demons during this series and score a run or two when they visit later this year. Ahh, to dream.
But seriously, this is crunch time of the spring. I had a player tell me years ago that this is the worst part of spring because you’re just done, but it’s when you need to be getting into game mode. He said it was like having senioritis, but having your most important tests at the same time. I get that. We’ve all been there. Most of us having done it while making anywhere from nearly a million to many millions, but we’ve all been there. So now it’s about getting through it. We’ve already seen the Royals get a big-time scare the other day with Bobby Witt Jr. getting hit in the forearm and having to leave the game. It seems like he’ll be back soon with no real issues, but it just highlights how important it is to just finish spring healthy. Everything else is secondary.
This week’s newsletters:
Gavin Cross Back on the Map
It’s been quite a journey for Gavin Cross since he was drafted ninth overall in 2022. He had a solid debut, hitting .293/.423/.596 in 123 plate appearances in low-A. I thought he looked great the next spring in the few glimpses we had and then the bottom fell out. He struggled to get going and then got Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, which is just wild. The hope was that he could get himself back on the prospect map with a big 2024 and he just never broke out. It wasn’t a bad season at all, but .261/.342/.428 in AA is not what anyone expected two years earlier when he was drafted.
A lot of what I’d read and heard about Cross is that he was probably a platoon bat, but he’ll do well defensively in right field. A platoon bat who can play defense is not the worst outcome when that bat is on the strong side. It definitely could be far more frustrating, but still not what you want from a top-10 pick. He got an invite to camp this year, which makes sense because he’s close-ish to the big leagues, a recent top pick and he didn’t fall flat on his face last year. And he’s really taken the opportunity and run with it, hitting .429/.529/.714 this spring. We all know spring numbers can lie, but that’s still impressive.
The three walks and three strikeouts are both numbers you like to see. I could probably go through the game logs, but based on tracked numbers, which includes most of the games, he’s swung and missed nine times on 33 swings. That’s a little high, yes, so there’s some work to be done, but let’s just say it’s not Drew Waters (20 whiffs on 46 swings coming into yesterday). The 27.2 percent whiff rate on swings is lower than Jac Caglianone’s 28.1 percent whiff rate. He’s done an exceptional job of laying off pitches in the zone, chasing just 14.3 percent of pitches that were not strikes, trailing only Jonathan India and Cavan Biggio, both players with known great plate discipline. And while the batted ball metrics aren’t striking, as I wrote yesterday, he has hit one nearly 114 MPH, which shows the power potential in the bat.
All in all, it’s a good spring statistically and under the hood, but I had a chance to chat with a scout contact of mine that I’ve known for a long time. He doesn’t work for the Royals, but he’s in Arizona catching as many players as he can and he’s had a chance to see Cross a few times now during the spring. One of the biggest things he told me is that he looks so much more like the Virginia version but a little more under control. He does think the upside is a little lower than it probably was when he was drafted, but what he’s seen this spring is that he can be more than a straight platoon player. There may be a need to sit him against the really tough lefties, but it would be nice if it was limited to that.
What I took away is that Cross has become a bit lower ceiling, but he thinks the floor is fairly high with the ability to lay off bad pitches and punish mistakes. Maybe he isn’t a superstar and making All-Star teams, but he can be a quality regular who hits somewhere around six or seven in a good lineup. That’s not the worst thing in the world, and he thinks there’s more there. I asked him if he’d consider starting Cross in the big leagues and he was pretty quick to say no, but then backed off that a little bit and said he’d give him a ton of chances in the last week and a half to see how he handles it. Either way, interesting to see that Cross is back on some radars.
Big Boys in the Outfield
For no particular reason, I decided to look up how many big guys have played a lot of outfield. Okay fine, you got me. I’m curious to see how likely it is that Jac Caglianone can make the transition during the season to help make his ascent to the big league roster a little easier for the team in terms of playing time. I wrote the other day that there are ways for him to fit without being an outfielder, but it certainly does help. I’ll admit too that some of this is based on Soren Petro’s comments about it, so I wanted to dig in a little further just to see what’s what.
Caglianone is listed at 6’5” and 250 lbs. If you’ve seen him, you know that is not 250 lbs. of goo. He is well built. That doesn’t change his total weight, but it probably makes him a little more likely to be able to handle it than someone who wasn’t exactly well built. In big league history, there have been seven seasons in which someone 250 lbs. or more played at least 150 games in the outfield. Lower the number to 240 lbs. and it’s 20 seasons. I think there’s a little bit of context needed for some of these players. For example, Austin Kearns is one of the players to do it at 240 lbs., but he was listed at 6’3” and 240 lbs. Does an extra two inches of height even things out for Caglianone? I don’t know the answer to that.
Drop the weight to 230 lbs. and you suddenly get to 50 seasons of 150 games or more. Vernon Wells at 6’1” and 230 lbs. is a very different shape than Caglianone’s height and weight, so, again how much can you glean? I honestly don’t know.
But the reality is that Caglianone doesn’t need to play 150 games out there. He would need to be able to play out there competently through the 2025 season. There are ways to alter the roster to make it work with him at first base after the season. Those ways don’t really exist on a team that should be contending and likely won’t be subtracting midseason. Let’s say Caglianone comes up on June 13 (that’s a date I have circled for ticket-selling purposes if all goes perfectly for him to start the season). That leaves 93 games. Assuming he’d sit let’s say eight times against some tough lefties and be able to play first or DH 30 times, that means he only needs to play 64.7 percent of his games in right field.
How many players at 250 lbs. or heavier have played 65 percent of their games in the outfield? There have been 58 seasons of that for players who have played at least 85 games. Suddenly, it feels much more possible. We’ve gone from Caglianone needing to be an outlier like Adam Dunn (an interesting comp that I hadn’t thought of before if Cags can start to walk more) to just needing to be a little bit weird in history. In recent years alone, we’ve seen Jordan Walker, Avisail Garcia, Eloy Jimenez, Josh Naylor (!) and Franmil Reyes man the outfield at that big for at least 65 percent of their games in a season they played at least 85 games.
I don’t know if Caglianone is able to play right field. I have a hunch he can be good enough out there that you deal with it to get his bat in the lineup for a few months and then determine what the plan is moving forward. The guy is 22 years old. He’s a good athlete with an incredible arm. If he plays 15 seasons, he’s spending most of them as a first baseman, but I don’t think it’s insane to think that he can play a year or two in the outfield, playing roughly two-thirds of the time out there. It’s not that rare. There’s every chance it doesn’t work, but there’s plenty of precedent.
Royals Spring Breakout
I am PUMPED for the Royals spring breakout game this year. I guess that’s what happens when there are actually prospects worth following closely. The roster is very interesting for them this season:
Pitchers - Felix Arronde, Luinder Avila, Drew Beam, Noah Cameron, Eric Cerantola, Ben Kudrna, Frank Mozzicato, David Shields, Blake Wolters, Hiro Wyatt, Steven Zobac
Catchers - Carter Jensen, Blake Mitchell (out with injury), Ramon Ramirez, Hyungchan Um
Infielders - Jac Caglianone, Austin Charles, Yandel Ricardo, Brett Squires, Jhonayker Ugarte, Javier Vaz (out with injury), Daniel Vazquez
Outfielders - Gavin Cross, Tyler Gentry, Asbel Gonzalez, Spencer Nivens, Carson Roccaforte
We’ve been watching a lot of these guys this spring. I’ve written about Caglianone and Cross in today’s newsletter alone, but Gentry had a great spring before being optioned. Avila looked like a legitimate bullpen weapon as soon as this year. Cameron was sharp at times this spring and made himself known for the fifth starter role early. Others have had playing time, so those are the ones I’m a bit less excited to see, though not unexcited.
But, and I’m not sure if they’ll get in there, guys like Beam and Shields and Wyatt are so interesting to me on the mound. Those three represent the spectrum of pitching prospects. Beam is polished and feels like he could move quick but doesn’t have a high ceiling. Shields is very polished, particularly for a high school arm, so he has a relatively high floor but a higher ceiling than so many in the system. And then there’s Wyatt, who feels like he could do anything between flaming out in AA and becoming an All-Star. Those three are fun for me.
On the position player side, I am intrigued to see Ramirez behind the plate. I’d guess he gets in there with Mitchell’s injury keeping him out of the game. He’s very young, but he has a chance to be a top prospect very soon. If you told me that Ugarte and Gonzalez would be two of the top five or six prospects at this time next year for the Royals, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised. They’re really high upside players. Nivens had that monster end to his season and is looking to build on that as he has eyes on being part of the outfield picture in the big leagues soon. Those are the interesting names to watch because we haven’t had the chance to see them yet, at least not much.
I love this idea and would like to see a few of these games every spring to give fans a chance to see more than just one other team’s prospects. This year, the Royals will take on the Diamondbacks, who don’t have a great system either, but they have a lot of interesting prospects as well. This game will be on MLB.tv if you have it. I wish we’d see these games broadcast on Fanduel Sports or even if KCTV5 would step up and broadcast it like they will 10 games during the season, but at least it’s available. Baby steps, I suppose.
I listened to Soren lose his mind over the thought of Cags playing the outfield on the podcast (great podcast btw), and I was pretty convinced he was falling into some pretty egregious logical fallacies. His argument is basically that there are hardly any 250lb outfielders who have been successful, therefore Jac won’t be successful. However, first, as you noted, this treats all players 250lb+ the same, which is extremely myopic. Josh Naylor’s body composition is NOTHING like Jac’s. Jac is 6’5’’, 22 years old, and built like a Greek god. Second, there are extremely few 6’5’’ 250 lb baseball players to begin with. So you would not expect there to be hardly any players that size playing at ANY position.
I think taller individuals are typically a little slower and less agile than their vertically challenged counterparts. But this is not universal. LeBron James is 6’8’’ 260 or whatever and can essentially play any position on the court. Magic Johnson was a 6’9’’ point guard. There will always be athletes that defy the physical prototypes for the positions they play.
I’m not saying Jac will be a great outfielder, but to simply say he can’t do it because he’s 250 lbs is a lazy and fallacious argument.
I ran track at Emporia State University as a sprinter and was the founding women’s track coach at Indiana University and coached five All-America athletes including three sprinters. I have seen Jac run out an infield single and he can sprint enough to play RF at the K. His arm is off the scales. I am not concerned about the weight. I talked once with Bill Easton who coached Wilt Chamberlain at KU in track. He told me that Wilt could have been an Olympic decathlon champion if he concentrated on track and Wilt had to be at least 240 pounds!!!