Crown Jewels: NRI Impressing, Royals Options and a Tough Schedule

Spring training is in full swing for the Royals, meaning there are more roster questions than ever!

There is something so comforting in the final days of winter of knowing that just about every day, there’ll be a baseball game at 2pm CST (and 3pm CDT starting on Sunday). Hearing the sounds of spring is seriously the best. It’ll get old here fairly soon. Everyone loves spring training until they’re just ready for the regular season. For me, I’ll be in Arizona next week so it won’t get old at least until after I get back home, but it’s coming and we’re all just going to be ready for Opening Day on March 27. Until then, and I think this is probably just good life advice, let’s try to enjoy what we have in front of us right now. Because once that bell rings, it’s a lot more stressful to be a fan than when the results are meaningless.

I am looking forward, though, to the results meaning something. I’m as guilty of this as anyone, but we look so hard into one at bat or 12 pitches or whatever that we’re trying to find anything to evaluate that I think we lose the fact that spring on the whole is too short to make too many real evaluations. We can look at Stuff+ numbers for this pitch or that pitch, but there are so many variables in play that they only tell a small portion of the story. We all want so badly for there to be meaning in one Noah Cameron cutter or two innings before the calendar even turns to March that I think we may lose the plot just a little bit. And that’s okay; it’s what this time of year brings, but I just think it’s important to remember how small the sample really is on top of the fact that various things are happening that can impact the end results. Just my early spring plea to keep those things in mind. Carry on now as I overreact to a small sample in the notes below.

This week’s newsletters:

One Weekend of Royals Spring Training Baseball

The Other Guys

Cavan Biggio Impressing

One player who I’ve heard nothing but rave reviews about over the first couple weeks of spring is Cavan Biggio. I had him on my initial roster projection back before spring started and kind of expected he wouldn’t be on my next one (out Monday!). But I have spoken to four different people who have seen him this spring both on the back fields and during games who say that he looks much more like the player they saw when he first came up with the Blue Jays. It’s easy to forget that he came up in 2019 with the Blue Jays and hit .234/.364/.429 in 100 games. That’s good for a 115 wRC+. He followed that up in the shortened 2020 and hit .250/.375/.432, which was a 124 wRC+.

He obviously has never been a high-average hitter, but his calling card is patience. In hitting just .216/.325/.349 over the last four seasons, he’s walked less because pitchers have no reason not to challenge him, but he’s still elite at not chasing. His chase rate of 18.1 percent in 2024 was outstanding and one of the worst of his career. If he can just get back to doing a little damage to the baseball, he might be able to resuscitate his career. Enter the Royals signing him to a minor league deal. When I say that I’ve heard great things about him, it’s not from Royals people and it’s mostly unsolicited. Apparently he looks solid in the field and at the plate.

The results have been there, albeit in only nine plate appearances. He hasn’t struck out, which is huge for him. He’s only swung and missed once. The sample, of course, is tiny, but that’s a big thing for him. Anne Rogers wrote yesterday about the bench options for the Royals and in discussing Biggio, she mentioned that he spent the offseason trying to use all fields more. I’m not sure if that’s a great plan for him given that his highest pull percentages were in his first two years, but she mentioned that he and the Royals had hoped that the hitting crew could get him back to where he was.

Everything I’ve heard about him defensively around the infield has been positive, which is another good thing though there’s still plenty of time. He hasn’t really been a butcher in his career defensively, but he also hasn’t been good. If he can be passable, he can play the role that I think the Royals had Adam Frazier in last season. My issue with a guy like him off the bench is that you’re often looking for a hit, not a walk, from a pinch hitter. It’s not that you get upset about avoiding an out, but sometimes it’s about getting a big hit. If he’s able to make more contact, he can be that guy. And if you can trust him at second, third and maybe some first and corner outfield, you’ve got a valuable final piece of a roster. I think the positive reviews are interesting enough that I may not be kicking him off the projected roster just yet.

Out of Options

One story that starts to matter more and more as the spring progresses is who has options remaining and who doesn’t. For those who don’t know, a player gets three years of options (some get four, but that’s another story), meaning they can be sent down to the minors without exposing them to waivers at any time during those three years. There is a limit of five ups and downs, so that’s a caveat, but the easy way to put it is a player can be sent to AAA without any issues for three seasons. If a player isn’t sent down during a season, the options carry over until they have five years of service time when they can refuse to be sent down.

So every year, you have a handful of players who can’t be sent down and are on the fringe of the roster. Sometimes these players are extremely talented but haven’t had the results. Sometimes these players are getting the absolute most out of their talent and don’t hold the upside that another player might have. And sometimes they’re just not that good. But one thing that every team does is they prioritize depth, meaning that if a player is out of options and another player isn’t, the threshold to make the roster for the player who isn’t is probably a little bit higher. While every centimeter or percent or whatever metric you want to use counts, teams know they need to utilize their 40-man roster throughout the season.

Here is the list of Royals players on the 40-man roster who either are out of options or can’t be sent down due to service time:

Carlos Estevez
Hunter Harvey
Carlos Hernandez
Sam Long
Michael Lorenzen
Seth Lugo
Salvador Perez
Nick Pratto
Hunter Renfroe
Chris Stratton
Nelson Velazquez
Michael Wacha

Estevez, Harvey, Lorenzen, Lugo, Perez and Wacha are obviously not a concern here. I don’t think there’s a lot of concern for Renfroe to not be on the roster if he’s healthy or not traded. So really it’s Hernandez, Long, Pratto, Stratton and Velazquez who make a difference. I’ve said this before and I could be wrong, but I get the impression that Stratton is either going to be traded or simply released at the end of spring, though I suppose he could pitch his way into the plans for this team and he did have a good first outing the other day. I also think Long is probably more likely than not to be on the roster given his effectiveness last season. But he’s still not guaranteed a spot.

But I think it’l be very interesting to see how the Royals handle Hernandez, Pratto and Velazquez. The latter two are both outfielders now. Pratto is working exclusively in the corners and is having another solid spring after having a great spring last year. I maintain the Royals showed their hand with him in September when they went out and acquired Yuli Gurriel to play first base instead of promoting Pratto. I guess things could be different after an offseason and not having a team in the final month of a mad dash to the postseason, but I think we know how they feel about Pratto. I wrote about Velazquez last week and think they’ve shown their thoughts on him as well, but if they want to add some right-handed power, they may have that from within.

The big question to me is how they handle Hernandez. I’m giving a bit of a preview of the roster projection, but assuming health for everyone, the bullpen is largely set in five spots with Lucas Erceg, Estevez, Harvey, John Schreiber and Angel Zerpa while I mentioned Long has the inside track, regardless of options. The final two spots, if you include Long as a lock, are down to Hernandez, Stratton I suppose, Daniel Lynch IV (who only goes to AAA if they want him stretched out to start), Jonathan Bowlan, Steven Cruz, Taylor Clarke and Eric Cerantola. Hernandez had a brutal first outing but much better in the second, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets the first nod (if he’s not traded as part of a spring trade for an outfielder) while guys with options stay as depth. The roster is a living, breathing organism, so any Opening Day roster only means so much, but let’s keep an eye on these guys with no options.

Brutal Schedule to Start

Looking at a baseball schedule can be a bit of a fool’s errand. That doesn’t mean I didn’t look ahead. Maybe that means I’m a bit of a fool. But I remember doing that last year and things actually went about as expected with a tough opening schedule, a little reprieve after the first few weeks and then a few incredibly difficult stretches that included one with four straight series against first place teams. Obviously last year’s teams don’t necessarily equate with this year’s, but the schedule is kind of crazy again to start the year for the Royals.

They open against three straight playoff teams in the Guardians, Brewers and Orioles. Then they get four against a Twins team that had their way with the Royals last year and was on their way to the postseason before a September collapse. Then it’s a 10-game road trip to Cleveland, New York (to face the Yankees) and Detroit. All in all, they play a playoff team from last year in six of their first seven series and they play a team that finished over .500 in all seven, spanning their first 23 games. That’s before they come home to face the Rockies and then the Astros come to town. They don’t play consecutive series against teams that missed the playoffs until May 5 and then May 9 when they host the two Sox teams. And one of them is much better on paper now.

None of this is to say the Royals season is over before it starts. With the schedule featuring every team once again, the Royals would play all these teams at some point, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a tough first seven or eight weeks, which can define the season. I actually think that benefits them as a team that remains a bit top heavy. Could Cole Ragans and Seth Lugo wear down? Absolutely. Will they be worn down during this tough stretch? I’d be pretty surprised if that was the case. The same is true of someone like Salvador Perez. If he’s going to struggle, it feels like it’s more likely that it would be at the end of the year and not the beginning.

We can look to the end of the season a little closer to that time, but one thing I look at during spring training is how many opponents might be worse after trading off some veterans because they’re out of the race. After the deadline, the Royals face the Nationals three times, the White Sox six times, the Angels six times and the Athletics three times. Sometimes those teams can actually get better as they get younger, but it wouldn’t be the most surprising thing if those 18 games are a little bit easier in the last two months than they would have been in the first four. Okay, maybe the White Sox will actually be better if they get some of their young talent up, but you get the idea.

The start of the season is what I’m focused on for now, and I think if they can get through those first 23 games with 11 or 12 wins that it might feel like they’re spinning their wheels, but it would be a solid start. If they win 14 or 15, we’re going to feel great about them. If they win fewer than 10, well, better hope they have a couple streaks in them like we saw last year. It’s a tough stretch to start, but remember they had a tough stretch to start last year with 31 of their first 38 games against teams that either went to the playoffs in 2023 or would go on to the playoffs in 2024 (or both) and they started 22-16. So it’s certainly possible to get through a difficult set of games to start. They’ll just have to do it again in 2025.