Exhibition Season week two: What we know
The prospects are continuing to shine. That means a Bobby Witt Jr. update within.
The Kings of the Cactus League just keep on rolling. Another week of games in the books and the Royals won five of six, plating nine runs in one win and ten runs in two others. The Arizona offense is once again unstoppable.
The Royals lead all leagues—Cactus and Grapefruit—in batting average, slugging and OPS. Their 28 home runs as a team paces all teams as well by a wide margin. Second is the Red Sox with 22. And they’re tied for the exhibition season lead in team whiffs by the offense with 135.
The starting pitching has looked sharp as well for the most part. Brad Keller and Mike Minor both made strong second starts, each going at least three frames. Brady Singer completed four on Sunday, looking sharp with his secondary pitches following a bumpy first inning.
This is the week the starting rotation should start to take shape. Danny Duffy takes the mound on Monday after scuffling in his last outing against Seattle. The Royals haven’t named their starter for Tuesday as of this writing, but if they are staying on schedule it will be Keller followed by Minor. That would put Keller on track to make the Opening Day start on April 1 against the Rangers.
Let’s dive in to some individual performances of note thus far.
Daniel Lynch is my favorite to be the next in the progression of the Royals’ pitching prospects to make the majors. This isn’t exactly groundbreaking stuff as Lynch is generally regarded as the club’s best or second-best pitching prospect, next to Asa Lacy. And Lynch is certainly ahead of Lacy as it comes to overall progress in the system. This is just a way of patting myself on the back as Lynch made his first start of the spring on Saturday and looked sharp, going three innings with five strikeouts and no walks. His only blemish on the day came in the second when he allowed a dinger after a leadoff single.
The good news: It was Lynch’s best performance of the spring
The even better news: The slider looked nasty.
The slider is a plus pitch for Lynch, with some nasty movement. The start was a massive improvement on his first two outings of the spring where he wasn’t as sharp. Overall, Lynch was happy with his performance. “As a whole, I thought that I commanded the ball the best that I had this outing. So I feel like I’ve been getting better.”
With the Royals’ rotation set and with days off baked into the early April schedule, Lynch isn’t in the conversation for the Opening Day roster, but he should see action in the big leagues at some point this summer. Saturday’s outing only reinforced what he could bring.
I really like these swings from Nick Pratto.
With almost perfectly aligned camera angles, it’s interesting to see how Pratto finishes both swings. The release of the upper hand on the home run lower in the zone versus keeping both hands on the handle on the pitch up. The bat plane through the zone is a thing of beauty as well. A nice, quiet, smooth swing.
Pratto was among those reassigned to the minor league camp on Friday but has performed extremely well this spring, hitting .462/.533/1.308 in 15 plate appearances. Impressive to be sure, but maybe not as much as you would think. Baseball Reference has a metric measuring the quality of opposing pitchers a hitter has faced in spring training. According to BRef, Pratto has a 5.7 OppQual this spring, which means the pitchers he’s been facing, for the most part, are slightly above High-A caliber. Still, results are results and you’d rather have a productive spring like Pratto’s than the alternative.
I’ve watched this clip several times. Now you can, too.
While the buzz in camp has been all about Bobby Witt Jr. (and more on that in a moment, I promise), don’t sleep on Kyle Isbel. The left-handed-hitting outfielder has reached base nine times in 19 plate appearances through Saturday with a double and a dinger on his exhibition game resume. Like the rotation, the Royals’ outfield situation is pretty well set, so it would take something catastrophic to get Isbel on the Opening Day roster, but his strong showing in camp underscores his prospect ranking.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the Royals were to develop some young hitting to go along with all these pitchers?
Speaking of Witt, yes it’s spring, yes the hype is becoming massive…But let’s take a moment to savor what we saw on Sunday night. In the first inning, Witt fell behind Julio Urías 0-2 and worked a 12 pitch walk. He scored from second on a broken-bat single from Jorge Soler that went to shortstop, making the turn around third like he was playing in October. And the slide was exquisite. The next inning, Witt went down and pulled a pitch over the left field wall for his third dinger of the spring. Seriously. Check the location of this pitch. Right-handed hitters don’t do this on the regular.
Fine…Guilty as charged when it comes to conducting the hype train for Witt. I will continue to stick to my assessment that there’s no way he makes the Opening Day roster. But damn, if he isn’t putting beaucoup pressure on the organization. I’m not exactly sure it’s a good thing as prospect hype trains tend to jump the tracks rather quickly, but maybe, just maybe this is legit. Maybe what we’re seeing is real and not some desert mirage. Maybe this is who Witt is as a player.
But because we can’t be certain, it remains imperative that he show similar skill in the minors. Each player is unique and development is far from linear. There isn’t a cookie-cutter method to move players through an organization. If Witt is ready, he’s ready. But with the stakes high, the Royals need to be certain this is the case. The best way to do that is to start him at the alternate site and then in the minors once they open with an eye to moving him quickly if warranted.
But damn if he’s not intent on making it difficult.
How long would the Royals have to keep Witt in the minors before calling him up if they didn't want it to count as a year of service time? Assuming that Witt shows he can do this in the minors and looks ready.