Splash Hits: Singer throws a sweeper

Brady Singer is expanding his repitoire. Brian Sweeney sees progress. Carlos Hernández is shut down. And the Royals claim a victory in the uniform wars.

Not writing for a couple of days during spring training means falling behind on all the info coming out of camp. There are a few things I’d like to discuss and some of it may be old news. Just pretend you’re reading a print edition of The Kansas City Star.

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Let’s start with the buzz from camp the last couple of days: Brady Singer

The last time we convened, I wrote about Seth Lugo and how he added two new pitches in the middle of last season and then how he’s working yet another new offering he developed this offseason. Lugo is throwing seven different pitches. Seven! I didn’t mention it because I figured everyone was thinking about it, but that’s quite the contrast from someone like Brady Singer who has two pitches with everyone begging him to add a third with consistency. Well, about that…From Anne Rogers:

Around the middle of last season, the Royals’ pitching department sat down with Brady Singer and showed him a PowerPoint presentation.

The topic was Singer’s repertoire, and the slides focused on how he could improve it with two additions: a four-seam fastball and a sweeper. Singer had been hard-headed on additions before for a variety of reasons, like the comfort with the grip or lack of success.

In Singer’s first outing of the spring, he threw that four-seamer and leaned hard into the sweeper.

“The sweeper was really good,” Singer said after his start. “It’s what all the strikeouts came on, was the sweeper. I was able to land the slider early…then kind of put away with that sweeper there.”

Singer threw a sweeper a handful of times last year. Fourteen if you look it up on Baseball Savant. The pitch averaged 81 MPH, which was a few ticks off the 84 MPH when he throws his slider. The true smallest of sample sizes, but Singer seemed unaware that the sweeper tracks with less velocity.

“I didn’t realize it either, but the sweeper was a lot slower…but you could kind of see (the hitters) out on front of it on the swing and miss. It’s a good weapon to have both of them,” Singer said. “Those swings (on the sweeper) were a little bit different than what I’m used to with the old slider so that was good to see.”

Yes…This is all very good. Singer is reading the swings from the opposing hitters. They’re tracking slider based on the shape but then the velocity difference plus the different movement keeps the hitter off balance.

We’ve been hearing about Singer adding another pitch for four years at this point. You know the drill. He’ll spend some time in the bullpen working on the changeup. Then, he’ll throw it around 10 times in a game. And from there he’ll use it less and less before moving away from it yet again.

So forgive me if I hear his comments with a bit of skepticism. Just replace “changeup” with “four-seamer” or “sweeper” and the story has been written several times over the years.

In his postgame comments, manager Matt Quatraro commended Singer for using the new pitches. “Yeah, he’s committed to it, you know. You put all that work in and you want to see how it goes. Every inning out here is something to work on, so it was good to see him commit to it.”

Pitching coach Brian Sweeney was stoked. “It was extremely exciting to think about his offseason when these ideas were presented to him about opening up his repertoire, talking about the four-seam, and making his slider a little bit bigger. But realizing what his strengths are as well with the sinker and his hard slider…how do these other things compliment what he’s trying to do to build outs. It’s been fun seeing that progression.”

Still, Sweeney saw things that Singer could work on. “I think every out he got except one was in a 2-2 count, so early and ahead wasn’t very good, first pitch strikes were down. But good results because he’s got a repertoire that he has multiple ways of building outs.”

In other words, Two-Pitch Singer doesn’t get those outs. Because, to borrow a term from Sweeney, he cannot successfully “build outs” with just two offerings. For a starting pitcher in 2024, the toolbox has to be large and diverse.

It was interesting that Singer didn’t know his sweeper came out a little slower than his slider. And it was good to see him interpret the swings the hitters were taking on the different pitches. I would think that if any third pitch is going to stick for Singer, it would be the sweeper. So there is a bit of promise there, even if the track record leaves us skeptical.

Still, it’s one thing to unveil new pitches in February in Arizona. I’ll buy into it if he’s still throwing them in the regular season.

Pitching Coach Brian Sweeney met with the media on Thursday and gave his assessment of the pitching through the first week or so of spring games.

“There’s been some really bright spots, but as far as reigning the zone, we haven’t quite done that for the things that we look at. From the first pitch strike standpoint, early and ahead…First pitch strikes, I think yesterday (Wednesday) we were 48 percent. That’s just not going to do it in the regular season. But it’s spring training and we’re working on things and these are things we reinforce every day.  Overall, we’re seeing good results as far as strikeouts. We could probably lower the walk percentage a little bit.”

Sweeney, as you would expect, isn’t wrong about his assessment. The Royals are walking 4.7 batters per game in the Cactus League, which is the 25th-worst walk rate among the teams. They’re going to have to clean that up.

The good news is, it’s a small sample size and it’s spring.

For the strikeouts, the Royals are whiffing just a little over nine batters per game. That ranks 17th. Not great, but again…If Sweeney is unhappy with the number of first pitch strikes and his pitchers generally not working ahead in the count, the strikeout rate is going to suffer. Reign the zone, as the Royals pitcher’s spring mantra goes, and the strikeout rate will elevate.

We have to discuss the injury situation. Reliever Carlos Hernández, who was dealing with minor shoulder soreness early in camp has been shut down from throwing and received a cortisone injection on Wednesday.

While Hernández is certainly a key pitcher in that bullpen; given the new arms the Royals assembled this winter, there’s now a bit of depth. So much depth that Hernández slid down the depth chart in my roster projections. I still had him in the bullpen to open the year for the Royals, but he was the sixth or seventh pitcher in that mix. I just figure him for some of the lower-leverage situations. Now? That’s up in the air.

The Royals remain hopeful that this won’t be a lingering issue for Hernández and given his status as a reliever, should be able to quickly make up ground lost early in camp, but the clock is ticking on his Opening Day availability. Every day he spends off the mound makes it less likely he’ll be on the roster when the club heads north.

Hernández going down would likely secure a spot for John McMillon. It could also open a spot for someone like Steven Cruz or Will Klein. Or the team could keep another pitcher who has primarily started as a swingman/long reliever type. Sweeney spoke very highly of Alec Marsh on Thursday.

The point remains…this team has plenty of options for bullpen cover.

Jake Brentz, who is recovering from Tommy John, made another appearance on Tuesday in the split-squad game against the Rockies. It went better than his spring debut in that he didn’t give up a run. However, he did allow two walks. So far he’s thrown 1.1 innings and walked six.

I believe the velocity is there, but obviously, the control is still missing. That’s usually the last thing that comes back for a pitcher, post-UCL reconstruction. The walks have always been an issue for the lefty as he issued a free pass to just over 13 percent of all hitters faced in 2021. As he recovers, we’re seeing that in the extreme.

Brentz has all three options, so he can be ticketed for Triple-A. It’s too early in the spring to draw a conclusion, but he’s going to need to tighten it up quickly if he’s to make the major league roster.

How about some happy news? You’ve certainly heard about the uniform kerfuffle with Nike and Fanatics and all that. (Small names! Inconsistent trim on the sleeves! See-through pants!) The only time I shop Fanatics is when I’m buying something for my nephews so I’m not up to speed on the overall lack of quality there appears to be with that particular manufacturer. Given the enshittification of just about everything these days, let’s just say I’m not surprised that a company would cut corners and allow the quality to suffer while jacking up prices to an obscene amount. Good for the stock price. Bad for the consumer.

I digress. Watching the first game in spring training last week and viewing highlights before that, I thought the names on the back of the Royals’ jerseys was looking…normal. As if the Fanatics and Nike crew hadn’t gotten their grubby hands all over the Kansas City threads. I didn’t say anything about it because I had heard rumors of not enough pants to go around (seriously), so maybe the lettering hadn’t shown up or something. The rollout has been a disaster.

Anyway! It turns out the Royals themselves were unhappy with the size of the lettering of the NOB (that’s name on back) and did something about it. From Paul Lukas at Uniwatch:

• The Royals like the new uniforms but felt strongly about maintaining the full-sized lettering as a way for fans to connect with the team’s players, so they worked with Nike and MLB to make that possible.

• This was not a case of teams being presented with a choice of lettering sizes. There was no choice at all — everyone was supposed to get the smaller letters. The Royals essentially got a waiver because they lobbied hard for it. (This is similar to what Cardinals prexy Bill DeWitt III told me about how he lobbied hard to keep the team’s chain-stitched chest script.)

Good for the Royals! More teams should do this. Like 29 more teams.

The lesson here is that we don’t have to accept poor quality just because some lord of the realm somewhere says we should. The red uniform patch was a loss for the team, but they’ve made a few amends with the NOB. The Royals stood up for good. They won. This time, they are on the right side of uniform history.