Daniel Lynch gets the call
Thoughts on the Lynch promotion and the fallout, including Junis to the pen and the Keller conundrum, along with a brief recap of April highlights and a wrap of a successful road trip. Happy Monday!
Holy end of the road trip news drop.
The Royals announced on Sunday night that they will be purchasing the contract left-handed prospect Daniel Lynch on Monday. He will make the start when the Royals return to Kauffman Stadium for a four-game series against Cleveland.
Lynch will become the third member of the Royals’ heralded collegiate pitching draft class of 2018 to make the majors. First rounder—and top Royals selection—Brady Singer spent all of last summer in the big leagues, and he was joined a few weeks into the year by Kris Bubic.
To say I’m excited about Lynch would be an understatement. I’m no prospect hound, but he’s the guy I’ve keyed on since the 2018 draft as having the highest potential upside of the crop of arms plucked out of college. Brady Singer was always developmentally ahead and he showed that by arriving first in the majors. But Lynch, once the call came for him, figures to have the best stuff.
From Baseball America:
His fastball explodes on hitters at 94-97 mph and touches 99 with life and sinking action out of his long, lanky frame. Lynch’s best secondary pitch is his hard, mid-80s slider with late bite and depth at the bottom of the zone.
From Baseball Prospectus:
Lynch’s fastball jumped shortly after being drafted and it’s been all systems go for his prospect track since. It’s mid-90s heat from the left side with two potential above-average secondaries in his slider and change.
From Fangraphs in 2020:
He throws a cutter, slider, curveball, and changeup that all flash above-average, with the slider occasionally flashing plus. He was 93-95 last year, and while Lynch missed a month and a half with an arm injury last summer, all of that velo and more was back in the fall, so the velo uptick has held for nearly a year now.
In discussing the call-up of Lynch General Manager Dayton Moore noted that the Royals started grooming him for this moment in the spring. In other words, the plan from the jump was for him to be the first of the prospects who didn’t pitch in the big leagues to earn promotion in 2021.
“We looked at this spring training as an opportunity to really develop him, to put him in some high-leverage situations,” Moore said. “And that was by design.”
Lynch was reassigned to the minor league camp late in spring. He moved to the alternate site once the major leaguers broke north and was ticketed to open the year in the Triple-A rotation in Omaha. The reports on Lynch out of the alternate site have been impressive. Moore touched on this in his meeting with reporters Sunday night.
“At the alternate site, he has really been locked in and commanding the ball, repeating his delivery, his pitches and just doing a really spectacular job,” Moore said.
The Royals feel that Lynch is ready to get major league hitters out on a consistent basis. That’s why he’s getting the call. And after what was an exceptional April, the Royals are making moves they think position themselves to continue to make waves in the Central.
“Daniel right now is delivering his pitches at a very high level, and is the most capable right now to be in that rotation,” Moore said. “He’s ready for the next step.”
The word “dominant” was used by Moore on several occasions to describe how Lynch has performed at the alternate site. They’re making this move because they feel he has the best chance at filling that spot in the rotation right now. That says a lot given where they find themselves after 26 games of the 2021 season.
He will be joining a rotation that has been surprisingly solid since the season opened. Their collective 3.94 ERA ranks 12th among major league teams while their xFIP of 4.12 is 14th. You know how I’ve been writing about the Royals’ bats being close to league average when it comes to production? With an ERA- of 96, the same can be said about the rotation.
With the Lynch promotion, there is quite a bit of fallout…
Junis to the bullpen
To make room in the rotation for Lynch, the Royals announced that they would be moving Jakob Junis back to the bullpen.
That’s a bit of a surprise considering the success Junis has found in the rotation, and how he’s contributed to their overall effectiveness. Deploying his new cut fastball, Junis has made four starts, throwing 21.1 innings with 24 strikeouts and a 3.80 ERA. For a guy ticketed for a relief role long before the season started, that will absolutely play. Between Danny Duffy in the number four slot and Junis coming in as the fifth starter, the back of the Royals rotation has been exceptional. They’re the reason the overall numbers cited above are where they are.
But this is probably about managing workload as much as anything. Junis topped 80 pitches in each of his last three outings, so he was good to go as far as starter stamina. However, it’s probably important to remember he threw just 25 innings all of last year. He certainly didn’t pitch his way out of the rotation, his workload is being managed. When discussing the move, Dayton Moore mentioned the injuries to Kyle Zimmer and Jesse Hahn. Those two were expected to fill key roles in the back of the bullpen. They need someone else in that mix that can immediately enter Matheny’s Bullpen Circle of Trust. That’s going to be Junis. So this move is less about shoring up the rotation than about helping out the bullpen. He will be back to the rotation at some point.
“I certainly anticipate (Junis) making more starts for this team in the future. I could see Junis starting games, finishing games, pitching in the middle,” Moore said. “I just think he’s got a chance to be the MVP of this staff…He’s a very poised pitcher and he’s got out pitches. He’s going to be very effective in whatever role.”
Moore also talked a little about Kris Bubic, who was recalled over the weekend and made his 2021 debut in the fifth inning in relief of Brad Keller. Moore says the organization feels that deploying Bubic the way we saw on Sunday is the way to go for him currently. I suppose that means a potential long-relief role should a starter not be able to get deep into a game. Or maybe the middle innings should a starter rack up a large pitch count. Bubic got out of the fifth and was dinged for a single and triple in the sixth before he was pulled just ahead of the dangerous part of the Twins lineup.
The Keller question
This dovetails to another biggest current issue with the Royals rotation: What are they going to do about Keller? Granted, his defense let him down on Sunday—five of the seven runs he surrendered were unearned—but he has to figure out a way to get out of those jams. The Mitch Garver home run in the third was on a center-cut sinker at 91.9 mph. It was just begging to be destroyed. A poor pitch on a 1-0 count with two outs.
That plate appearance was just emblematic of how the season has gone for Keller to this point. He gets dinged around a little here or there, finds himself in the soup…and simply can’t get out with limited damage. That’s the key here. He just can’t work himself out of a jam. It’s maximum pain.
At this point, every pitch in the dirt, every duck snort, every ball not fielded cleanly behind him…it gives off that “there we go again” vibe. If you’re feeling it watching the games, Keller is most definitely feeling it. Minor obstacles just seem to have a way of exploding at this point into major issues.
Keller has minor league options. If he can’t find some success in his next couple of starts, it may not be the worst thing in the world to send him to Omaha or Northwest Arkansas to build some confidence. He needs a string of successes…I’m talking about something as simple as a series of scoreless innings. Or an inning where he gets out of a fix with just one run allowed. Where he’s locating his fastball up and his slider down and playing off the tunneling action to keep opposing hitters off-balance. He’s not fooling anyone at the moment. And he’s getting crushed in the process.
Last year, Keller surrendered two home runs in almost 55 innings of work. On Sunday, Keller surrendered two home runs in the third inning. Keller’s 2020 performance was kind of crazy, given the lack of strikeouts while limiting extra-base hits. It wasn’t something that would be repeatable going forward. But the complete struggles have been disconcerting. Something just isn’t right.
So while it’s Junis to the bullpen for now, it’s Keller on the hot seat. If Keller can’t find some success over his next couple of starts, we may see Junis back in the starting rotation soon.
The impact to the 40-man roster
Since the Royals will be purchasing Lynch’s contract and adding him to their 40-man roster, someone will have to be removed. The smart money is on Daniel Tillo, rehabbing from Tommy John surgery and not expected to be ready until late this summer, if at all in 2021. Of course, the smart money was on that move to be made a long time ago.
The Royals play their roster management in a cagey, if unconventional, style. It’s possible they’ve been holding the Tillo move for a time when it would be likely for another team to snag one of their players off waivers should they decide to DFA that player to get them off the 40-man. Maybe that time is now.
Otherwise, peruse the current 40-man roster. There are one or two names there who could be potential candidates for a move.
Let’s discuss some other Royals’ news from the weekend.
A successful road trip comes to a close
A week and a half ago if I had told you the Royals would to 6-3 on their nine-game road trip, would you have been pleased?
Damn straight. You would’ve been thrilled.
So despite a couple of drubbings at the hands of the resurgent Minnesota Twins over the weekend, the Royals have close another successful road trip. They return to Kauffman Stadium still atop the division and still with the best record in baseball
When the Royals opened their trip in Detroit, here’s how the standings looked:
And here’s where they are currently:
The Royals managed to put distance between themselves and three other teams in the division. Only the White Sox hung with them this week.
And with a .615 winning percentage, it should be noted the Royals own the best record in baseball. And they’ve done it with a run differential of -3. Amazing.
April recap
Player of the month
Salvador Perez had an incredible homestand in the middle of the month of April. He was central to five of the six wins, both with the bat and with his arm. It was a stretch of individual dominance we haven’t seen in Kansas City for quite some time in how he basically willed his team to win. In those 10 games, he hit .341/.357/.634 with three doubles and three dingers. Included were his 1,000 career knock in a 4-4 game, a few game-winning hits, including two walkoffs. Talk about drama. If he was still doing the Salvy Splash thing, we would be asking the question: how does one go about splashing oneself?
It was a glorious stretch for the Royals’ most beloved player.
But the heading says “Player of the month.” And outside of a game or two from that homestand, Perez’s bat just wasn’t all that impressive.
Check out what Carlos Santana did in the month of April. A team-high 363 OBP, fueled by 16 walks, also led the Royals. A .506 slugging percentage (again, the best on the team), built on the back of four doubles and a team-high six home runs. He also scored 14 runs and drove in a club-best 20.
Santana’s bat started to get warm when he was bumped to the cleanup spot in the order, but he’s been straight fire since moving up to number two in the lineup. He either scored or drove in a run in 11 of the last 14 games of April.
If you disagree with my assessment and argue that Perez is deserving of the honor, I really can’t argue. Baseball is the ultimate team sport where it’s often difficult to point to one player and identify an impact he had in winning a bulk of games, but with Perez’s performance in the middle of the month, you can point to a handful of pivotal moments where yes, he won the damn game. Ultimately, the team kept the Royals in the game, Salvador Perez brought home the win.
Maybe without Perez, the Royals don’t win those games. You can also make the argument that without Santana the Royals wouldn’t have as many April wins. His contributions were just as key, even if they flew a little further under the radar. Santana is looking like the hitter he was in 2019, and that’s a very good thing for this Royals team.
I’ll go ahead and leave this here for you to disagree…
Pitcher of the month
When you have a month as gnar as Danny Duffy, he was simply a shoe-in for the honor. He made four starts in April and…well, rather than write about how well he did, maybe it’s better to just see the stats just laid out.
23 IP, 18 H, 3 R, 1 ER, 6 BB, 27 SO
Duffy faced 91 batters in those starts and allowed just 24 to reach base. He posted a 4.5 SO:BB ratio, striking out almost a quarter of the batters bold enough to come to the plate.
It’s a different Duffy that what we’ve been accustomed to seeing in Kansas City. He’s in full attack mode, going after hitters with gusto. He’s not nibbling. He’s not letting events snowball into larger crises. Duffy is simply locked in and focused. He’s had some great success as a relief pitcher and even Duffy himself has lobbied for a return to that role from time to time. As a reliever, he can come in and let it eat in one or two inning bursts. The leash (and expectations) are a little shorter, so if he runs into trouble coming out of the bullpen, it could end up someone else’s issue. In the last year of his contract, I thought the Royals could actually try to shift him to the bullpen. Particularly if the stable of young starters proved ready.
Good thing Duffy was able to hold them at bay for just a little bit longer.
It seems to me that Duffy has taken that reliever energy and is using it as a starter. His velocity is up almost two full ticks on his fastball. He’s found a way to maintain that velocity, or at least keeping enough in the tank until he needs to tap into the reserves for a big pitch in the later innings. That’s a massive development for the lefty.
Duffy’s hard-hit rate is up, but he’s getting more ground balls. You want to crush one? Fine. How about putting it on the ground for the infielders? Thank you very much. Opponets had a .298 BABIP against him in April.
Most importantly, Duffy isn’t hurting himself. His walk rate is down by 1.5 percent and his strikeout rate is up 5.2 percent. He’s found himself in a couple of jackpots, but has attacked and escaped unharmed. In the game he started where the Royals lost, he was the victim of a two-out single, followed by a run-scoring error. The lone earned run he allowed was a fifth-inning two-out dinger to Shohei Ohtani.
It was the best start to a season for a starting pitcher we’ve seen in Kansas City since Zack Greinke in 2009. Chew on that for a moment.
Game of the month
Yep. This one. The game that brought you all those pleasant Wild Card flashbacks.
The Rays jumped Jakob Junis for four runs in the first. The Royals’ bats chipped away, tallying two on a Hunter Dozier home run in the second and a Jorge Soler in the fourth. Junis allowed one more run before exiting in the fifth with the Royals down 5-3.
After the bullpen surrendered a run to push it to a three-run deficit, the fireworks started popping in the seventh. Andrew Benintendi and Michael A. Taylor reached to open the frame and scored on Hanser Alberto’s triple. Carlos Santana gave the Royals the lead with a two-out, two-run blast to right.
But the Rays chipped back, plating a single run in the eighth to tie and another in the ninth for the lead. That set the stage for another crazy Royal comeback.
A single, a steal, a sac bunt and another bunt tied the game. An intentional walk put runners on first and second with that Perez guy up. They moved up on a wild pitch, setting the stage for some Royal Devil Magic.
Central issues
Detroit 0, New York Yankees 2
The Tigers were shut out for the second time in three games against the Yankees. José Ureña pitched well, allowing two runs in seven innings, but when the bats aren’t giving any support…
Detroit has dropped five in a row and won just once in their last 10.
Cleveland 5, Chicago 0
Zach Plesac pitches into the sixth before yielding to the bullpen to shut out the White Sox. Luis Robert left the game in the bottom of the first after suffering a hip flexor strain while running out a single.
Let’s just go ahead and rerun the standings.
Up next
Duh. It’s Daniel Lynch! He will make his major league debut against Cleveland and Aaron Civale. First pitch is scheduled for 7:10.