Crown Jewels: Managing Workloads, A Successful Season and Draft Talk

The regular season officially starts in less than a week. Get crazy, friends.

I’m surprised we haven’t seen more think pieces about how spring training is just too long. Maybe I’m projecting but I feel like we usually see those. It might be because last spring was interrupted by the WBC, so it kind of needed to be as long as it was for those guys to have time with the teams and with their countries. In 2022, it wasn’t long enough because of the lockout. In 2021, it was just weird after the Covid year. And 2020 was obviously cut short because of Covid. So I guess it could be that we’ve just forgotten how long spring is and it doesn’t feel like as big of a deal as it used to.

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Still, though, I mentioned this the other night on the social formerly known as Twitter that you’d be pretty surprised how many guys are just done by this point. These are very competitive individuals and spring training is known for the results not mattering. There are exceptions, of course, with guys who are fighting for jobs and sometimes even young teams in general who aren’t jaded enough to be done. But I was told a few years ago by a position player that their main goal of any plate appearance was to simply get through it by this time of spring. It’s why it’s just so hard to judge anything from anyone.

Take Brady Singer’s clunker on Wednesday night that was broadcast locally. Yeah, he stunk, but I’d be willing to bet that if you asked him his goal for the game, it was to throw 80 or so pitches and have five ups and downs. He sort of implied that when he was interviewed during the game after his outing was over. The results are important, but they aren’t the most important thing. The flip will switch soon, but it’s yet another reason why spring numbers can be so misleading.

Managing Workloads

This isn’t something I haven’t mentioned before, but the Royals are going to need more than five starters this season. Let’s take a look at the innings thrown by their presumptive five starters since the start of 2021:

Cole Ragans - 311.1 IP (~103 IP/year)

Seth Lugo - 262.0 IP (~87 IP/year)

Michael Wacha - 397.1 IP (~132 IP/year)

Brady Singer - 459.2 IP (~153 IP/year)

Alec Marsh - 287.2 IP (~96 IP/year)

There are reasons for some lower numbers. Ragans was a reliever to start last season with the Rangers and was bouncing around the minors before 2022. Lugo was a reliever full-time until last season, so he’s going to have some lower numbers. Marsh didn’t pitch much in 2021 and then has built up a decent amount since then. So it’s not to say that they’re going to throw their average this season. But it’s also pretty difficult to look at each of these five guys and think they’re all good for 180 innings in 2024.

Of these five starters, they’ve completed a combined 26 big league seasons and only three of those have resulted in even qualifying for the ERA title (one inning pitched per team game played) and one of those was Singer in 2020. Again, this isn’t to say that the Royals have five guys who are good for 15-20 starts each, but there is something to the idea that they need to be managed some. Maybe the Royals don’t care about the long-term with Wacha or even Singer, but if they have aspirations to do more than watch the playoffs on television, they’ll need to be smart.

That’s why the depth that they’ve built is so important. It’s why I really like that they sent Daniel Lynch IV to Omaha rather than put him in the bullpen. It’s why I actually kind of disagree with Angel Zerpa making the club as a reliever, though it’s not really that big of a deal. And it’s also why I don’t love the idea of them not keeping Matt Sauer, who I think has legitimate potential. They’re going to need Anthony Veneziano as well. The big hope is that Mason Barnett and Chandler Champlain are prepped and ready to go and that Kris Bubic comes back from Tommy John good to give 8-10 starts at the end of the year as well.

Unless they’re planning on just riding Ragans until there’s no tread left on the tires, I would hope they give him an extra day as often as possible while not diminishing chances to win games. I’d much rather see Ragans make 25 starts and only get to 155 innings than see him pushed to 32/190 innings and then we never get the same Ragans again.

Maybe that doesn’t happen, but the Royals would be smart to manage that workload as they would with Lugo, who is a veteran and has a fresh arm due to his time as a reliever but also only threw 146.1 innings last season. I guess this isn’t anything new to talk about, but as the season is approaching, I want to be prepared (and help prepare you) that there might be spots where guys are skipped and spots where, gasp, Jordan Lyles gets a spot start, and I actually think it’s not the worst idea in the world.

This is another reason why a good and deep bullpen is important. Sometimes managing a workload is getting a starting pitcher out a little earlier than you’d expect. Let’s say it’s 5-1 Royals heading into the sixth inning and Ragans has pitched well, but the bottom of the order is coming up in the sixth and there’s almost no way Ragans will be around to pitch the seventh regardless. Maybe Matt Quatraro pulls him an inning early, knowing he’s not going to burn out his bullpen with an inning here and an inning there like he may have last season. There are many ways to help with these workloads, and I think the Royals will be doing a lot of them throughout the year.

Defining Success in 2024

Every year, a team knows what its goals are. Every team wants to win a World Series, and that’s obviously a goal, but generally a team knows when that’s a realistic one or not. The Royals haven’t exactly been shy about talking about winning a division title. It seems like that’s their goal. They want to win more games than any other AL Central team. And that’s a great goal! But I think there’s more to it to determine what is success for them this upcoming season.

The reality is that they won 56 games a year ago. While they spent quite a bit of money in free agency, they did so with players who fill holes and not with stars. I support their approach, but it’s not one that screams division title as much as it’s one that screams big improvement. That said, if they in a division title, I don’t think it matters if they got there on the backs of great seasons from Wacha, Lugo, Hunter Renfroe and one of the other veterans they signed to a short-term deal or if they got there with great years from Bobby Witt Jr., MJ Melendez, Vinnie Pasquantino and Ragans.

But there are ways for this season to be successful without winning a division title too, even if that’s the goal. Let’s say we fast forward to the end of the year and we learn they went 74-88. That’s an 18-game improvement. I don’t think anyone would complain about that. But what if they got there with those veterans being great and the guys who the Royals believe to be the next core stinking? I would not call that a success.

Now let’s fast forward and see a 68-94 record. a 12-win improvement is nothing to sneeze at, but it would feel kind of hollow. But what if they got there with Wacha and Lugo combining for 11 starts, Renfroe hitting .194 and getting DFA’d in July and three of the veteran relievers blowing up in a bad way? To get those extra 12 wins, Witt was an MVP candidate, Pasquantino hit .312 with more walks than strikeouts, Melendez had a 131 wRC+, Ragans was a Cy Young candidate and James McArthur had a sub-2.00 ERA with a 5 percent walk rate out of the bullpen. I think you’d argue the season was a success.

I wrote about the bullpen a couple of weeks ago that the veteran signings raise the floor but the ceiling is still up to the young guys. That’s true of the whole team. Whatever this team is capable of, I think the upside lies with guys who were already on the roster. I’ll give my official prediction next week, but I think this is a mid-70s win team. But that’s thinking about the younger guys not upping their game as much as they can. Melendez becoming a beast, Pasquantino doing it for a full year, Maikel Garcia adding pop, Kyle Isbel being a league average bat, Michael Massey and Nick Loftin taking steps forward and young pitching becoming the best pitchers on the team is what can get them the extra 10-12 wins to actually win a division.

The number of wins and losses matter much more in 2024 than they did in 2023, but I think we’re still a year away from them being the only thing that matters. How they get to their record in 2024 is still what defines their success. It sucks as a fan to still be looking at the big picture. I would love to go into a season where it’s easy to say 87+ wins is good and anything less is bad. Hopefully that’s what 2025 will bring.

Some Quick Draft Thoughts

I’ll probably write a little more on this as the season goes on, but we’re starting to get deep enough into baseball seasons, at least in college, to have some ideas of how the top picks are shaking out. The Royals, as you know, are picking sixth because the draft lottery is annoying as hell. But there is a lot of college talent in this draft and the Royals will have their shot at finding someone who will likely be their number one prospect the second they sign their contract.

Having the sixth pick is kind of funny because there are certain players who could go in the top five that you may want. Travis Bazzana is a great example. He’s a second baseman at Oregon State and is hitting .481/.598/1.013 with 10 homers, six doubles and three triples in 102 plate appearances. I’d love for him to fall to the Royals. But to do that, he either needs to struggle just enough that the top five pass on him, but not so much that it would cause the Royals to pass. Or there could be five guys who really jump over him, in which case, we’d probably be disappointed the Royals couldn’t get those players.

Bazzana is one of my favorites, but I have a hunch he won’t be there. Some of the other options for the Royals are JJ Wetherholt, who has missed a bunch of time with a hamstring injury this season after having one last year too, Braden Montgomery, an outfielder at Texas A&M, Nick Kurtz, a first baseman at Wake Forest, Hagen Smith, a lefty at Arkansas who has struck out 62 batters in 29 innings and Chase Burns, a righty at Wake Forest who has struck out 56 batters in 30.1 innings. There are others to be sure. They could do what they’ve done in the past and save some money on the first pick to spread later. I’d hate that if they did it again and I haven’t heard an indication that’s the plan so I’ll wait to look at those options.

I’m becoming a big fan of Montgomery, though. There was a little swing and miss in his game when he was at Stanford. I think it still exists, so his conference numbers will be important, but he’s hitting .378/.510/.842 with 10 homers, six doubles and one triple in 104 plate appearances. He has a walk rate of 19.2 percent and a strikeout rate of 16.3 percent. He also has pitched some, but he’s a switch hitter and will be a position player in the pros. His arm profiles great in right field. I’d love that pick. I also went into the season thinking I’d hate a pitcher in the first round, but it’s hard not to be a little in awe of what Smith and Burns are doing.

One player I honestly can’t tell you how I feel about is Jac Caglianone. He’s a top draft prospect and I don’t think he makes it to six, but there’s something about him that just gives me quite a bit of pause. Maybe if he focuses on hitting, that could change things for me. He has MASSIVE power. But there’s something about 17 walks and 58 strikeouts last year in 319 plate appearances that just makes me think the game won’t translate well enough.

He’s struck out way less this year, but the walks are still low and that makes it tough for a guy. Plus, I mentioned the doubles and triples for Bazzana and Montgomery. Caglianone has the home runs, but only one double. It’s a bit of a weird little quirk, but something about him just makes me concerned that it’ll be a tough road to develop him. Maybe I’ll feel dumb about that thought in 10 years, but I’ll be okay with it.

More draft talk to come in the coming weeks!