Crown Jewels: A Forgotten Man, A Stunning Turnaround and the Royals Play Today

The Royals play a baseball game today and that's a good thing.

From the moment a Yuli Gurriel lineout ended the 2024 season at 9:44pm on October 10, we’ve been waiting for the Royals to play another game. That wait, as of this afternoon, is officially over. No, the game doesn’t matter, but it’s real baseball. Daniel Lynch IV will take the mound and will be followed by Noah Cameron, Angel Zerpa and Evan Sisk, among others. It’s a good day. It’s the first step toward their goal of making the postseason again after missing it for nine years following their 2015 World Series win. I think they have a good shot at it too, though the competition in the American League seems likely to be tougher for a Wild Card spot than it was in 2024.

We’ve spent a whole winter talking about where they need to improve and add and while they can still make moves and plenty of players are actually still varying levels of available, the attention shifts to what they have. It’s exciting that we’ll get to see MJ Melendez’s new swing in action. Seeing Cole Ragans attacking the zone more than he did in 2024 will be interesting. How does Jonathan India handle left field? Or Michael Massey? All of it is just fun to watch. The baseball card results don’t matter all that much in spring, but seeing how they get to them is what’s super interesting.

Quick reminder that I’m giving away two memberships to the incredible Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in a few weeks. One membership will go to someone who was a paid subscriber before last week’s announcement of this giveaway. The other will go to a new subscriber who jumped on board after the announcement. The odds are good if you become a subscriber today!

This week’s newsletters:

Extensions and Security

ItC Mailbag: Joey Wiemer, Spring Training Performance, the Royals Rotation and Much More

Where’s Nelly? And is There Another?

Isn’t it funny how you completely forget about players sometimes? Yesterday, the Cubs designated outfielder Alexander Canario for assignment to make room for Justin Turner on their 40-man roster. It got me thinking of another Cubs outfielder with big-time home run power who the Royals acquired at the deadline in 2023 - Nelson Velazquez. He showed the kind of power the Royals haven’t seen a ton of in their history. He hit 14 homers in 147 plate appearances to end the year and even though he didn’t hit for much average, struck out a lot and didn’t walk a ton, you can envision that bat hitting sixth or seventh and doing some damage.

He struggled last spring but made the team anyway and actually was hitting .343/.395/.600 through his first 10 games with a couple of home runs and he was going the other way more. You might remember the Royals could have gone with Nick Pratto, who had a monster spring, but went with the guy they thought was better (even in struggles, I think they were right). But after that 10th game, it was a full-blown disaster. He hit just .171/.250/.318 in 192 plate appearances and was sent to Omaha and didn’t see the big leagues again. I don’t remember my thought process, but I don’t remember even thinking of him as a possibility to come up when Vinnie Pasquantino got hurt. Maybe I’m wrong and I did, but the Royals clearly chose a handful of baseball senior citizens instead of him.

And it sort of made me forget about him. He’s obviously still on the 40-man roster and in camp battling for a job. Is there a chance that he could be a helpful bat. Maybe they don’t count on him as the regular DH right away, but can he get in there against some tough lefties and spell some players in the outfield to collect 300 plate appearances? I suppose it’s possible. I’d have to dig in further to see what changed between 2023 and 2024, but in his impressive debut with the Royals, he hit the ball hard (91.0 MPH average exit velocity) and it hit it hard often (49.1 percent hard-hit rate), barreled it often (21.4 percent barrel rate) and actually wasn’t a complete free-swinger with a 29.4 percent chase rate (still high, but not crazy).

Then last year, the exit velocity dipped to 88.2 MPH. The barrel rate was 8.8 percent. The hard-hit rate was just 38.1 percent. His chase rate actually went way down. I wonder a little if he got away from swinging just to crush the ball and tried to be a more complete hitter. I mentioned going the other way more. He was still pulling the ball a lot, but it was a lot less. Sometimes a grip it and rip it hitter is just that and trying to be something else can cause issues. Having finally remembered that Velazquez exists, he’s someone I’ll be watching a lot in spring training. The results will matter a little, but I want to see if he’s back to hitting the ball hard. The good news is that the Royals will have Statcast for most of their spring games, so we’ll have a lot of data.

But back to Canario, he’s an interesting candidate to pick up on the cheap if the Royals could claim him. You don’t often have a playoff team with a spot for an unproven player, but his batted ball data in the minors is pretty impressive. He doesn’t make enough contact and he’s not quite as athletic as he once was, so he’s a corner outfielder entirely now, but the guy did hit .243/.336/.514 in AAA. It’s an offensive league, so those numbers aren’t quite as impressive as they look, but I’d take a flyer on him this spring if I’m the Royals. He’s out of options, so it might only be a look for a few weeks, but if they’re not going to trust their current batch of high-minors depth, and they showed they wouldn’t, why not try out another team’s batch?

A Pitching Staff Makeover

I was talking with a friend about the Royals, as we do. It hit me how different the pitching staff is heading into Opening Day 2025 compared to where it was just two years ago. I don’t think the front office gets nearly the credit that it should for the turnaround to go from Jordan Lyles starting the second game of the season to having two top-four Cy Young finishers starting the first two games two years later. Here’s the staff that started the season in 2023:

Starters - Zack Greinke, Lyles, Brady Singer, Brad Keller, Kris Bubic

Relievers - Scott Barlow, Aroldis Chapman, Amir Garrett, Taylor Clarke, Dylan Coleman, Carlos Hernandez, Ryan Yarbrough, Jose Cuas

Hindsight is 20/20 and there was an argument that the bullpen would be fine heading into the season, but compare that to where I think the 2025 staff is headed:

Starters - Cole Ragans, Seth Lugo, Michael Wacha, Michael Lorenzen, Kris Bubic

Relievers - Carlos Estevez, Lucas Erceg, Hunter Harvey, John Schreiber, Angel Zerpa, Sam Long, Daniel Lynch IV, Carlos Hernandez/Chris Stratton/Alec Marsh/Steven Cruz/Evan Sisk/Jonathan Bowlan/Eric Cerantola

I guess there’s still Bubic in the fifth spot and Hernandez is a potential holdover, but to call that a drastic change in quality is probably underselling it. Pitching is such a fickle thing in baseball, so it wouldn’t be the most surprising thing in the world if this group ended up struggling. But to look at those rosters from one Opening Day to what seems at least somewhat likely in just two years is actually kind of crazy. I know I sang the praises of JJ Picollo earlier this week in discussing his extension, but to see it put out like that is such a stark reminder of what was and what now is.

This pitching staff is the reason why I at least believe a bit that they can wait on the bat until the season if they still aren’t able to figure out a trade during spring training. The division will be close and I really hope they don’t lose it by like two games because they didn’t hit enough, but the pitching should keep them in contention even if the bats slumber a bit more than they did in the first five months of the 2024 season. If the rotation and bullpen are pitching like they’re capable of and the stars in the lineup do their thing, it’s hard to imagine this team falling out of the race in the first 90-110 games.

Let the Games Begin

I touched on this a little bit before in what I’m looking for out of some spring training stories, but with the games starting today, I wanted to look a little deeper. The obvious battles lie in the rotation for the fifth starter spot and then in the bullpen for the last one or two spots there.

While I listed Long in the relievers above, I think he’s still unproven enough with the organization that he isn’t guaranteed a spot even though he was really good in 2024. One name I have barely heard mentioned is Chris Stratton. I think he’s a really interesting pitcher to watch. My gut here, and it’s been wrong before, is that the Royals are hopeful he has a big spring and some team will give them a teenager who hasn’t played in full-season ball yet for him. He has a $4.5 million contract for 2025, which isn’t crazy and he’s only one year removed from a four-year stretch where he was a competent middle reliever. At times, he was very competent. I’ll be watching that closely.

In the fifth starter battle, I didn’t hear much about Lynch getting run until recently. He’s starting today, but I don’t think he has a great chance to take that spot. The fact that Alec Marsh is a touch behind and Kyle Wright isn’t likely to be ready for Opening Day, particularly now with his hamstring injury we learned about yesterday, means Bubic needs a little competition. I don’t get the sense that Noah Cameron is a real candidate. As good as he was in AAA, it was just nine starts. That said, I didn’t get the sense at this time last year that Marsh was a real candidate for the fifth starter job and he won it out of spring, so Cameron is a really interesting pitcher to watch over the next few weeks. Can he weasel his way into that competition that seems pretty clearly Bubic’s to lose?

On the position player side, without much in the way of changes to the roster, the biggest thing is how guys fare at different positions. I mentioned this in the intro, but we’ll be seeing Massey, India and Maikel Garcia all playing outfield this spring. Garcia and India have both done it in previous springs, but Massey hasn’t. I don’t know if we’ll see Jac Caglianone in the outfield during games, but it’s something the Royals have discussed we’ll likely see throughout the season, so if you’re in Arizona and can get to the back fields, you might see that there. But those guys being able to handle the outfield could potentially change a lot for the Royals. There’s a scenario where one of Massey and India really takes to left and Caglianone hits and takes to right and they aren’t in the market for an outfielder at all. I don’t know how likely that is, but that’s something that could happen.

And aside from the players, I’m excited to see the ABS challenge system in place. I don’t know if anyone watched the first spring game of the year yesterday between the Cubs and the Dodgers but there were a couple of times the system was used. If you’ve watched minor league baseball, you’ve seen it already, but it’s pretty seamless. It isn’t something they’re considering using in 2025, but if it goes well this spring, we could see it in regular season games as soon as 2026, so that’s the big rule change to watch this spring that can have a big impact on games down the road.

But more than any of that, I’m ready for some real baseball. I’m ready to hear the sounds of the game on the radio and then see it when I get down there in about a week and a half or so. I’m ready to stop writing about what could be and write about what’s actually happening. It’s not as cool a day as Opening Day today, but it’s a good one nonetheless.