The Sunday Ramble

Falling for Jac, Gordo gets the call we all expected, Bobby Witt Jr. is fine and Frank Mozzicato is turning up the heat.

As we get closer to the regular season, I find myself, like the players I cover, trying to get into some form of a rhythm. As I’ve said before, I’d like to use this space on Sunday to write about what caught my eye in baseball as a whole, so it’s not intended to be Royals-centric. That’s for the other days of the week.

Alas, the time to write was difficult to find last week. That means this edition of the Ramble will focus (mostly) on the Royals and what’s happened over the last few days in camp.

I’ve seen Spring Training described as being comprised of three stages. The opening stage is when players report and we get our first taste after the extended winter. That’s exciting. The second stage is when the routine of spring becomes…well, routine. A handful of at-bats for the regulars. A couple of innings for the pitchers. Some wildly inflated stats to ponder. It’s good because it’s baseball, but it’s really just kind of a drag. A tease. The third and final stage is the ramp-up to the regular season. The roster thins as position battles come into focus. Players are pushing to get ready. There’s a bit more urgency in the camp.

We’re getting set for the final third. Finally. There’s just one more week left in Arizona before the team heads to Texas for their final two exhibition games. The regular season starts in 12 days. It’s time.

This is all getting a bit ridiculous.

Jac Caglianone went 2-3 on Saturday in the Royals split-squad game against Hunter Greene and the Cincinnati Reds. Caglianone singled in the second at 101.9 mph off the bat and followed that up with an opposite-field double. That one came off an elevated 0-1 four-seamer that clocked 99 mph. I don’t know, man…That’s just kind of impressive that he would flip that one the other way. For the spring, Caglianone is now hitting a handsome .529/.619/1.235. I keep telling myself not to get bamboozled by sexy Cactus League numbers. At this point, though, I have no idea what’s happening.

While the batting average and the on-base percentage and the slugging percentage—especially the slugging percentage—are all enough to make us collectively swoon, I’m more impressed by the fact he’s struck out just three times in exhibition play. Or maybe I’m more impressed by the fact he’s routinely obliterating the baseball. Maybe he’s just an impressive dude.

Probably the most useful metric that I use from spring training is found at Baseball Reference: Quality of opposing pitchers faced. Caglianone is currently at 7.1 on a scale that goes up to 10. That means the pitchers he’s been facing, on average, are closer to Double-A than to the Triple-A level. For those of us (meaning everyone) who figured he would open the year at Double-A, this may result in a recalibration of our expectations. If he’s destroying what amounts to the pitching he will see in the Texas League, why bother sending him there at all? While I’m not going to advocate Caglianone to break camp with the big league team (boo this writer!), he’s certainly giving the front office something to consider. Does he stick to the plan and start at Northwest Arkansas? Or does he go straight to Omaha?

When Spring Training started and the buzz around Caglianone started building, I dismissed the idea that the Royals could have a bit of a crunch at first base and designated hitter. The idea was that Vinnie Pasquantino and Salvador Perez would man first and catcher for the majority of the time, but on days when Freddy Fermin would start behind the plate, Perez and Pasquantino would play at either first or DH, just like we saw in the first five months of last season. There isn’t much room for Caglianone in that scenario and besides, I figured he would take at least another year of seasoning in the minors before he was ready. In other words, that playing time crunch was going to be a next year problem. Trouble is, next year’s problem could arrive within a couple of months, if not sooner. That’s a good problem for the Royals to have. I hope Caglianone forces the issue.

If Caglianone wants to see the upside for a Royals first-rounder, he only needs to look to Alex Gordon. This week, the 2005 top selection of the Royals was unveiled as the team’s newest member of its Hall of Fame. I love the way they made the announcement.

I think my favorite bit is Willie Wilson hustling Amos Otis at pool, just because those guys are among my all-time favorites. Or maybe it’s just Mike Sweeney playing poker. First the beer keg on Saturday Night Live and now this. He always plays against type. Bo Jackson, from his star turns in Nike commercials, seemed a natural. Bo knows the Royals Hall of Fame. Kudos to the creative department of the Royals for putting that video together. Really well done.

And congratulations to Gordon on a well-deserved honor. A no-brainer if there ever was one.

Now, this is the part where I have to write that I’m a bit surprised that there wasn’t at least one other inductee in the class of 2025. When they announced the ballot back in December, I wrote that while Gordon was the obvious choice, there were five or six other candidates who had strong cases. In the next couple of years, this ballot is going to get crowded, with Eric Hosmer, Lorenzo Cain and Mike Moustakas all becoming eligible.

It would be kind of funny if Carlos Beltrán was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and couldn’t get into the Royals Hall of Fame.

A couple of days after getting drilled in the forearm, Bobby Witt Jr. was back in the lineup, hitting second and playing shortstop. Manager Matt Quatraro gave an update on Witt prior to the game against the Guardians.

He said he didn't feel it at all yesterday during his BP and his defensive work. So that's the best-case scenario for us, clearly.

It's time to get going. I mean, as long as he feels fine, you know, these are the games that we had earmarked to start to go, you know, not nine, but get him three, maybe four at-bats.

While most of the starters finished their afternoon with the aforementioned three plate appearances, Witt ended up maxing out with four. According to Quatraro after the game, Witt wanted to get those extra hacks. He obviously felt fine during the game.

He went 1-4 on the day. The key will be how he feels on Sunday, but by all accounts, it sure looks like for Witt and the Royals this is, as Quatraro said, the best-case outcome to what could’ve been a very costly hit-by-pitch.

One of the better developments of the exhibition season of the last several years has been the inclusion of the “Spring Breakout” contests where prospects take center stage. This year, the Royals squared off against the Arizona Diamondbacks and ultimately lost by a score of 5-2.

Noah Cameron started and went three, allowing two runs. Caglianone went 1-4 with an RBI single. The real star of the show was former first-round pick, Frank Mozzicato. The lefty, who has never really had velocity as part of his toolkit, was hovering around 93 mph. That’s an extremely pleasant development.

Mozzicato has been in the organization since 2021 and has yet to reach Double-A. He’s struggled with command and, as noted, hasn’t found any kind of velocity on his four-seamer. It would be an understatement to declare this upcoming season as pivotal. There’s a lot he has to get right, but if he can maintain the velocity he flashed on Friday night in Arizona, that’s an important step.

Kevin O’Brien has a breakdown of the prospects who caught his eye at The Royals Reporter.

How about a couple more links to articles I enjoyed this last week?

• Like a number of baseball fans, I grieved the loss of Bob Uecker and will feel that acutely once the regular season gets underway and he’s not in his usual spot, calling Brewers games. In the aftermath of his passing, I consumed a large number of tributes and enjoyed most of them. The best one I’ve read landed this week at Fangraphs. In a wonderful distillation of Uecker’s impact, Matt Martell talks to former Brewers who had Uecker record their voicemail messages.

• Carlos Estévez made his long-awaited 2025 Cactus League debut. According to Anne Rogers, he’s still on track to be ready for Opening Day.

• Royals Dugout Data has four pitchers we could see in Kansas City this summer. One of the pitchers he notes, Evan Sisk, was optioned to Omaha on Saturday.

• Matthew Trueblood at Baseball Prospectus doubts the Royals can match last season’s performance and predicts them for 74 wins and fourth place in the AL Central. I found someone at BP who hates the Royals more than PECOTA.