ItC Mailbag: Royals Rotation, Potential Moves, Lots of Cags and More
Everyone loves getting questions answered, so I asked for Royals questions and, in this newsletter, I answer them.
We are now officially one week from Opening Day. I believe it was the philosopher George Harrison who said that it’s been a long, cold, lonely winter without baseball. I might be paraphrasing there, but if you look into the horizon, here comes the sun. And in one week, it’ll be Cole Ragans against Tanner Bibee at 3:10 CDT. But before then, there are questions to ask and answers to give. And that’s why it’s time for the March Inside the Crown Mailbag. I don’t know if I mentioned this last month, but I’d really like to do at least one of these a month and not wait forever like I did before.
I’m offering 25% off a year of an annual paid subscription, but this offer is only good through the first weekend of the season, so take advantage now if you’re not already a paid subscriber!
You all asked some fantastic questions. I hope that I will, in turn, give excessively adequate answers. Let’s just jump right to it.
I think to answer this question, we need to take a step back because I don’t think it’s going to be as simple to say “the fifth spot” as the season progresses. Last year, Cole Ragans took the ball every fifth day. Seth Lugo took the ball every fifth day. Michael Wacha took the ball every fifth day with the exception of like three starts after he broke his foot (and still pitched that day). Brady Singer took the ball every fifth day. And, honestly, Alec Marsh took the ball every fifth day. The only reason they had another pitcher even make more than five starts is because they went out and got a replacement for Marsh at the deadline. That seems unlikely to happen again.
So someone like Kris Bubic could make 25 starts, but that doesn’t mean there are only seven or eight more starts for pitchers like Daniel Lynch IV, Noah Cameron, Marsh, Kyle Wright, etc. Last season, 177 pitchers made 10 or more starts, an average of roughly six per team, which is actually fewer than I expected across the 30 teams. But 241 pitchers made five or more starts, which is an average of eight per team. The Royals had five pitchers make 10+ starts and six pitchers go five or more. Between likely worse health, just by the odds, and the fact that I don’t think Michael Lorenzen was signed to make 33 starts, there will be plenty of starts to go around.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Ragans made 26 starts instead of 32. Maybe Lugo does the same. He made 26 starts in 2023 for the Padres. Suddenly, you now have 13 more starts. Maybe Wacha is more at 23 or 24 like he was from 2021-2023 than the 29 he made last year. Let’s call that another six starts available. If Lorenzen makes maybe 20, you’ve still got 66 starts to be made by Bubic and the gang. So I think to answer your question, only three paragraphs into it, I’m not going to actually answer it in the way you asked. But if I had to guess, this is how I see the total starts breakdown for the entire staff: