Splash Hits: Off day musings
It's a good time to see how much the Royals have spent on the draft—and how much they have left to spend. Colby Wilson drops by with some thoughts on Cal Eldred and the lack of pitching success.
It was a sleepy day in the Royals Universe on Monday.
Perhaps you passed the time dreaming of the day Brady Singer would commit to a third pitch. Or maybe you mapped out a road trip to Omaha to catch the Triple-A stylings of Bobby Witt Jr and Nick Pratto. Or there you were, scrolling Twitter and stumbling upon praise for one of the icons of the Royals franchise from one of the all-time greats at his position.
A slow news day to be sure.
So it seems like the perfect time to update the draft signings that have been coming in at a rapid pace the last several days. Also, it’s an opportunity to let Colby Wilson do his thing regarding Cal Eldred and the development (or lack of) and improvement (or lack of) the pitching staff. As always, thanks for reading.
Sign here
The Royals have been busy, bringing draft picks into the fold. The latest news coming courtesy of Jim Callis.
Rumors started circulating almost immediately after last week’s draft that Shane Panzini had been offered a cool million from the Royals. Callis’ announcement on Twitter confirms that. And with the Royals announcing earlier in the day the signing of second-round pick (and local kid) Ben Kudrna along with their eighth-rounder Ryan Cepero, the Royals have now brought six of their first 11 picks into the fold.
This calls for a spreadsheet! You will recall that as everyone speculated after the selection of Frank Mozzicato in the first round, the Royals would save some of that bonus money to scatter the wealth in the later rounds. (This wasn’t really speculation, more common sense.) With Kudrna and Panzini eschewing college for the professional ranks here’s how the Royals have spent their bonus money thus far in the first 10 rounds.
They’ve gone significantly over slot for Kudrna, basically rewarding him as if he was between the 22nd and 23rd overall selection in this draft. And, as you can see, they just about doubled the slotted amount for Panzini. As of this moment, the $1 million is the most a fourth-round selection has received in this draft.
As you can see from the above table, the Royals have about $3 million remaining on hand to ink their four remaining unsigned players drafted in the top 10 (along with Cepero, who has yet to have his bonus revealed). I would imagine the other local kid, Carter Jensen, will need to get over his slot value to sign with his hometown club and bypass his commitment to LSU.
We also shouldn’t ignore rounds 11 through 20.
The Royals have signed eight of their last 10 picks from the draft. The way this portion works is that everyone selected after the 10th round automatically is assigned a slot value of $125,000. If a team goes over that amount, the difference comes out of their bonus pool allotment for the first 10 rounds. They don’t realize savings for going under slot.
So the Royals are on the hook for an additional $10,000 in bonus money so far.
The two unsigned from this group will present some challenges for the Royals. Tresh was a guy who, for a brief moment, projected to go in the first round. He jumped out of the gate to open the season for the Wolfpack, but steadily declined, finishing at .236/.314/.472. That early-season helium? It vanished into the ether. Still, Baseball America had him rated at number 74 among their top 500 draft prospects. He has a year of eligibility remaining and after the disappointment of 2021, will almost assuredly return to school to see if he can recapture that helium and hold it for a full year. Or the Royals can make it worth his while to turn professional. It’s going to certainly take more than the automatic slot value for a 17th round selection.
High school shortstop McNair is a South Alabama commit who is…wait for it…a plus runner and an athlete. Scouts think he will be an average hitter with gap power and one who could potentially stick at short. He’s also an exceptional student. It seems like it would take quite a bit to get him to forego his time on campus.
The way this process generally works is teams will sign their below slot players first, which gives them that wiggle room for the players who will take a little more to sign. Looking at the remaining unsigned players from the first 10 rounds for the Royals, there are two collegiate players, one JUCO and then Jensen from local Park Hill HS. The deadline for players to sign is August 1.
The Royals and their lack of pitching success
Here’s a fun exercise: name the best Royals pitcher of the last three seasons. For fun, we’ll count the front half of 2021 and the entirety of 2020 as one season, so take this back to 2018.
[Craig, if you can somehow make some fancy elevator music play during this part of the newsletter, it would help the overall ambiance. If not, the music that was playing while the Titanic sank will do just fine.]
Brad Keller?
Danny Duffy?
Scott Barlow?
Jakob Junis?
Josh Staumont?
Half-seasons of Trevor Rosenthal or Kelvin Herrera before they were dealt to a contender?
I hope you found a choice because those are your options. It’s fun to blame Cal Eldred for everything, and I’m getting ready to engage in the sort of Eldred-bashing that is likely to only grow louder in chorus over the next weeks and months, but I do feel it only fair to point out, in his defense, that this is the clay he’s been consistently asked to mold since he took over in 2018—a Rule 5 pick, a guy who is injured as often as he isn’t, some relievers and Jakob Junis. This is not a recipe for success and anyone who tells you otherwise probably cashes checks from somewhere within the front office. Duffy is the high point and even though I’ve come a long way in regards to Barlow, he’s ideally a bridge guy from a good starter to a great closer and that is not what he’s being asked to do in Kansas City.
Turnover is a part of baseball and a part of life and a small-market club is going to experience even more of that than most teams, particularly during a down cycle before they become Good Again after year(s) of being Mostly Bad. And the Mostly Bad parts are, without good fortune, by design and for that, there’s no call or quarter to blame Cal Eldred for any of it. He took the job, but it’s unfathomable to think he expected to be handed this little to work with.
And those are the end of the Eldred niceties I’m afraid.
Everything written is true about the lack of established talent; there haven’t been many reasons to get excited about anyone pitching for Kansas City over the last few years. Fortunately, that was why the franchise was able to add Brady Singer and Kris Bubic and Jackson Kowar and Asa Lacy and Daniel Lynch and Frankie Mozzicato and and and and and… all these gentlemen of varying pedigrees and varying high draft slots, with varying amounts of money being dumped into their development and, if it may be said, quite a bit of the fortune and future of the franchise at stake. The reaping portion of the event is, at least in many cases, coming to bear fruit after many years of sowing.
Y’all feeling good about this so far? I don’t know Eldred and I don’t know his methods or how he interacts with his guys or anything about how he operates; I’m an idiot with an internet connection and MLB.tv. I have whatever the opposite of access is. I’m as plugged into the franchise as I am to the inner machinations of Google. All I know is what I see.
And nobody is getting better.
Seriously. Find one guy who is better now than he was before he became a Royal or before Eldred showed up. Hell, Mike Minor was a serviceable swingman who parlayed a good 2017 in Kansas City into a stint in Texas, an All-Star appearance and a nice little contract upon his return to Kansas City. Now he’s giving up homers at an incredible rate and his pitches have no movement.
And maybe he’s en route to being washed and that was inevitable and Eldred had nothing to do with it!
Brady Singer, though… young, highly-touted and highly thought-of Brady Singer. He was quite good in his truncated debut season of 2020, and yet every conceivable metric has gotten worse this year.
And maybe that’s a natural sophomore slump that has plagued every talented pitcher since time began!
Lynch and Kowar and Bubic though… those guys were all shoving in Omaha (or in Bubic’s case, Wilmington) and then they showed up as Section Eights once they debuted. Bubic has at least managed to stick around as a starter/swingman out of the bullpen, although I don’t think anyone could tell you his likelihood of future success any more than they could tell you tomorrow’s Powerball numbers. If Kowar and Lynch had decided to crawl in a hole for a decade and become monks after their first outings, most people would have been disappointed but they also might have been understanding too.
And maybe this is just a further indication that nothing about developing pitchers is a slam dunk or a sure thing!
But we’re entering a land of many maybes at this point. We have three (or four) years’ worth of Eldred development examples at this point, and the best we’re doing with the young talent is hoping that MAYBE it’s external forces that are fouling them up. If we’ve already danced down this road with high-pedigreed draftees, why in the world would we believe different results will come for the two top-10 picks (regardless of how you feel about Mozzicato, he’s a No. 7 overall pick) with the same guy in charge at the top?
—Colby Wilson
Central issues
Twins 3, White Sox 2 — 8 innings
Twins 3, White Sox 5 — 7 innings
In the first game, Nelson Cruz hit a solo home run to tie the game and broke the deadlock with a sac fly in the eighth. Gavin Sheets hit a three-run walkoff home run in the nightcap.
Rangers 0, Tigers 14
I don’t know whether to be more impressed with the Detroit pitching or the hitting. Hell, let’s go with the pitching. The Tigers are 4-0 since the break and in three of those wins, have held the opposition scoreless. On Monday it was Casey Mize for four innings and a cavalcade of relievers for the final five to secure the shutout.
Akil Baddoo drove in four while Miguel Cabrera had five RBI.
Cleveland 3, Astros 4
Cleveland had their leadoff batter reach in two of the last three innings, but could only plate one run in a comeback attempt that fell short. Yordan Alvarez snapped an 0-22 skid with a two-run bomb.
Up Next
Don’t forget, day baseball today (and tomorrow)! The Brewers opened their second-half schedule by sweeping the Reds and currently sit atop the NL Central by 7.5 games.
Tuesday - Mike Minor vs Eric Lauer — 3:10 CDT
Wednesday — Brad Keller vs Brett Anderson — 1:10 CDT