The Royals will never lose again!
The Royals have played three Spring Training games as I write this – and at least four by the time you read it. Some people would say that Spring Training is a terrible environment for evaluating players based on results. Others will say that even if it was an excellent environment, three games at the very beginning are a terribly small sample for evaluating talent.
Those people are cowards.
The Royals’ outfield is solved
The source of the most moaning from Royals fans and media members – including myself – about the team’s offseason was that the Royals only addressed their outfield by adding former top-prospect and currently-trending-toward-absolute-bust Joey Wiemer. Their outfield was among the worst in all of MLB last season and easily the worst that made the playoffs.
The Royals allegedly made offers to trade for Taylor Ward or to sign Jurickson Profar or Anthony Santander but were unable to meet the demands of any of the other parties. Such is how it goes when you aren’t the Dodgers or Mets. But, good news, the Royals outfield problem appears to be solved.
Sadly, MJ Melendez’s swing change has made absolutely no difference for him but farmhands Tyler Gentry, Gavin Cross, and John Rave are all on an absolute tear in Arizona. Rave can play centerfield, so the Royals should be able to completely swap out the underperforming MJ Melendez and Hunter Renfroe as well as relegating Kyle Isbel to a defensive replacement. The Royals’ lineup should be beastly with these changes as well as adding Jonathan India to the mix at designated hitter after he proved he can’t play the outfield!
India isn’t going to be a full-time designated hitter even after one lost flyball. And I’d be absolutely shocked if any of the three true outfielders makes the team out of Spring Training. Rave hasn’t been added to the 40-man or picked up in Rule 5 drafts which signals pretty much no one thinks he can hack it. Gentry looked completely overmatched during his MLB debut last season and its anyone’s guess what Cross has left after he looked like a total dud in 2023 and better but still not great last year.
Still, it would be unreasonable to complain about the excellent swings they’re taking right now. Who knows? Maybe at least one of them will emerge from the minors to become helpful yet! FanGraphs Outcome Probability Calculator doesn’t go as low as Gentry’s 40 FV or Rave’s 35+ AV, but there’s a 56% chance that one of them would become a regular if they were all 45 FV and a 90% chance if they were all 50 FV, so call it…20% chance? 15%? Not great odds, but also not nothing!
Noah Cameron will be the fifth starter
Noah Cameron pitched the Royals’ Cactus League opener and he was good. Very good! He earned a hold while striking out one and walking none in two scoreless innings. He needed only 13 pitches to get the job done, and secured five groundouts beyond the strikeout. Perhaps even more impressively, his fastball was sitting at a much higher velocity than usual – think 95+ as opposed to the 92 he averaged in AAA last year.
The velocity bump is even more impressive when you consider just how well his AAA debut went, even with the lower fastball variety and even though the International League is known to be a hitter’s environment. He had a 2.32 ERA and a 23.8% K-BB% because he was striking out more than a batter per innings and walking fewer than two per nine innings. Kris Bubic and Alec Marsh have both had plenty of success out of the bullpen, make way for the Royals’ #12 prospect, per MLB Pipeline!
In actuality, it’s entirely probable his velocity bump came from knowing it would be a shorter outing and the fact that it was his first appearance of the year. He almost certainly won’t continue to pitch at that velocity as he pitches more innings. And, really, the Royals are better off if he starts the year in the minors and Bubic starts the year in the rotation. Better to have a sixth starter stretched out and ready to go in case of injury than to yank Bubic back and forth between the bullpen and rotation since Bubic has shown he can have success in the rotation as well.
Jac is a beast
I was raving all weekend about John Rave’s (pun intended) swings in Saturday’s action. I mean, check out this sweet stroke!
Go-ahead, John Rave!
And then, after recording the Royals Rundown podcast with Jacob Sunday afternoon, I got a peek at Jac Caglianone’s home run from Sunday’s action. If you liked the above, you’re gonna love this.
Hello, Jac Caglianone.
I mean have you ever seen a freer, easier swing? He might as well be taking batting practice for all the tension he showed at the plate. And that ball flew. Sure, we can talk about the crazy exit velocity (115.4 MPH per MLB) and distance (435 feet, again per MLB.) But that swing. You can tell me that exit velo and home run distance are inflated at Spring Training parks but you can’t tell me that that swing would result in anything less than a home run in 30 out of 30 major league parks. Forget everything FanGraphs says about his future value, this kid is going to be a star and there’s no arguing with that.
I don’t have a rebuttal. One of my favorite stories of baseball fandom was when I was a bored kid visiting my grandma in 2001 and the closest thing I could find to entertainment was a Spring Training bout between St. Louis and Atlanta. Some kid no one had ever heard of named Albert Pujols launched a mammoth home run – over the centerfield scoreboard as I recall it – and I instantly knew he was going to be something special.
Despite the fact that the announcers insisted Pujols had almost no chance to make the big league club at the start of the year, I made sure to draft or immediately sign him in all of my fantasy leagues. Pujols did make the big league club out of Spring Training and he belted 37 home runs with a 1.013 OPS, winning the Rookie of the Year award handily and coming in fourth in MVP voting. I haven’t been as excited about a spring swing since then until now.
The only thing that’s come close was when I watched Bobby swing in the spring of 2023 after he had debuted in 2022. The swing, in general, reminded me so much of Mike Trout (and had since the previous year) that I thought he’d become something special, and he has! But no one swing impressed me as much as those single swings from Pujols and Caglianone.
Pujols and Caglianone have something else in common, too. Prior to the swings that put them fully on my radar, they’d only really played in high-A ball. Pujols spent the entire 2001 season in the minors, playing over 100 games in low-A, then 21 games in high-A, and three games in AAA to finish off the season. Jac, of course, played 29 games in high-A and added 21 more in the Fall League. Sure, Albert’s OPS in the minors was better – .920 vs .690 – but his high-A OPS of .822 did not seem to presage the incredible season he’d have at the major league level in 2001.
I am all aboard the Jac hype train (The Jacwagon?) now. I hope he debuts for KC this year as some have intimated he might, though it almost certainly won’t be immediately out of the gate. Whenever he debuts, I am excited to see him clobber MLB pitching the same way Pujols did for so many years.