In a sense, we’ve all been able to see this coming. For the Royals, it’s long been a race against time, trying to win as much as possible before the simultaneous free agencies of Eric Hosmer, Lorenzo Cain, and Mike Moustakas. This past season was pretty clearly going to be a last ride, and now the organization will have some tough decisions to make. They’ve already denied the Braves permission to interview Dayton Moore for a job in baseball ops. It might even stay that way. Moore might remain in Kansas City to try and see this through.

But let me share with you a fun fact. Maybe it’s more a collection of three related fun facts. You already knew that next year’s Royals were going to feel pretty different. You already knew they were likely to take a step back. It’s a good thing the core managed to win a World Series. Obviously, it’s always good to win a World Series. But the recent championship might take some of the edge off. What the Royals have left, as of today — theirs isn’t the best roster picture.

Read the rest of this entry »

Alex Bregman slashed .337/.409/.514 in three seasons at Louisiana State University, twice earning All-American honors. Displaying outstanding bat-to-ball skills, he fanned just 68 times in 786 collegiate at bats. The Houston Astros rewarded his efforts by selecting him second overall in the 2015 draft.

And then they asked him to change.

“A ton,” answered Bregman, when asked how much he’s evolved as a hitter since signing. “In college, I tried to hit the ball on the ground and low line drives. Up here, there aren’t a lot of hits on the ground with guys like Carlos Correa and Andrelton Simmons playing shortstop. Now I try to not hit ground balls.”

The ink had barely dried on his contract when he was told to alter his approach. Organizations typically let first-year players finish the season before suggesting changes, but Bregman was told “right away” that something else was expected. Before he could get his feet wet at the professional level, he had to “learn on the fly how to drive a baseball.”

He proved to be a quick study. Two short years later, in his first full big-league season, the 23-year-old infielder put up a .284/.352/.475 slash line, and his 63 extra-base hits included 19 home runs. He strikes out more often than he used to — “I never used to swing and miss, and now I do occasionally” — but it’s not as though he’s become all or nothing. His K-rate was a wholly acceptable 15.5%.

The adjustments he made were both mental and mechanical in nature. Read the rest of this entry »

Even though they’re only five games removed from a playoff spot in the American League, you could be forgiven for not having dedicated much thought recently to the Kansas City Royals. Prior to the trade deadline, they were playing a little over their heads, exiting July in possession of a 55-49 record and the second Wild Card spot — this, despite having recorded roughly equal runs scored and allowed totals. They became moderate buyers, picking up Melky Cabrera and holding on to soon-to-be free agents Lorenzo Cain, Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, and Jason Vargas.

In the meantime, however, they’ve struggled, going 18-27 since August 1st. With a .490 winning percentage, the club now possesses just a 1.8% chance of making the playoffs.

Because the Royals have likely flown under your baseball radar, it’s quite possible that this bit of news did, too:

The Minor to whom Flanagan refers here is Mike Minor, a name that, prior to this April, hadn’t graced a major-league box score since 2014. The last any of us had probably heard, Minor was signing a two-year deal with Kansas City last spring. At the time, the left-hander was coming off a torn labrum that led to shoulder surgery and, ultimately, his release from the Atlanta Braves.

The thought of Minor returning to form after such a serious injury was, while not ridiculous, still optimistic. However, despite some false starts and a rough stint in Triple-A Omaha last year, Mike Minor has reemerged as an effective relief option out of the Kansas City bullpen, exhibiting both increased velocity and a greater reliance on a reinvigorated pitch.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Royals last scored in the bottom of the second inning of their game against the Rockies last Thursday. Brandon Moss hit a home run, and the Royals went ahead 2-0. Since then, the Royals have played the better part of five games, and after the Moss dinger, the Royals as a team have been outscored 35-0. They lost the Rockies game, and of course they lost the subsequent four. The Royals offense has managed 43 straight scoreless innings. Is that bad? Jeffrey Flanagan and Bill Chastain have the facts.

The Royals, who lost their fifth straight, now have been shut out in 43 straight innings, the longest such streak in Major League Baseball since the mound was lowered after 1968. The previous mark was 42 by both the 1983 Phillies and the 1985 Astros. The ’79 Phillies were blanked in 39 innings. The all-time mark is 48 by the 1968 Cubs and the 1906 A’s.

We’re dealing with an active, modern-day baseball record. This is a developing era of offensive rejuvenation, powered by the league-wide resurgence of the home run. Within that context, the Royals haven’t scored in a long-ass time. It’s not even that the record is now 43. It’s that the record will be at least 43. The Royals play again tonight. You wouldn’t think they’d be blanked in a game started by Alex Cobb, but they’ve just been blanked in games started by Ryan Merritt and Austin Pruitt. Sometimes it’s not up to the pitcher.

Read the rest of this entry »

Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

8/23

Mike O’Reilly, RHP, St. Louis (Profile)
Level: Hi-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: NR  Top 100: NR
Line: 6 IP, 9 H, 0 BB, 2 R, 7 K

Notes
A 27th rounder out of Flagler College last year, O’Reilly was promoted to High-A Palm Beach in late July after a dominant four-game stretch of Midwest League starts that included a complete game, one-hit, 12-strikeout performance. O’Reilly doesn’t throw all that hard, sitting 88-91, but he’s deceptive, he can locate his breaking ball for strikes, and he flashes a plus changeup. There’s some risk that O’Reilly’s fastball won’t be effective against upper-level hitters, but he has quality secondary stuff, throws strikes, and overall has a profile in line with valuable upper-level pitching depth.

Read the rest of this entry »

When Danny Duffy first arrived in the big leagues, he was electric. As a guy, he’s naturally laid back — perhaps a product of having grown up in southern California — but he used to throw really hard. Unfortunately, the velocity didn’t necessarily translate to success. Duffy lacked real command of his repertoire. As the left-hander put it to me recently, he “had no idea where the ball was going.” He threw mostly just four-seam fastballs and a curve.

Duffy has evolved pretty considerably since his rookie season in 2011. It’s not that he’s just a command guy now — he still throws hard — but a lot has changed over the last few years. With more than a month left in the season, Duffy has already recorded the highest WAR figure (2.9) of his career.

What happened? What allowed him to refine his command, to establish a more ideal pitch mix? Duffy recently helped answer those questions, relating all the “aha” moments that led to a completely different, and much more successful, arsenal — an arsenal I address pitch by pitch in what follows.

The Fastball
This year is the closest Duffy has ever come to throwing more sinkers than four-seamers. There’s always a ground-ball benefit — “I started getting more ground balls, more weak contact,” said Duffy, who is currently enjoying the highest ground-ball rate of his career — but this change was more about command than outcomes on balls in play.

When Duffy first came up, the refrain was that he’d go as far as his command would take him. “I thought I had to be so fine when I was younger, because I struggled with the strike zone so much,” Duffy remembered. “Then I figured out that it was all about repetition. You can’t expedite it; experience will give it to you.”

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a difference between watching the game at home and watching at the park, that much is obvious. Personally, I’m more analytical at home, where I have the tools to identify pitch type and location with some precision, for example. At the field, I can only tell velocity and maybe spot the curveballs, so I get an adult soda, a good companion, and I talk and wait.

What am I waiting for? “People go to the game to see us put the ball in play, throw the ball away, and fall down,” Giants starter Jeff Samardzija told me the other day. “They want to see people doing things,” said Indians slugger Jay Bruce. I couldn’t disagree. The problem, if this is true, is that baseball is trending in the opposite direction. There are fewer balls in play now than at any other point in the history of the sport. There’s less of people doing things, to use Bruce’s words.

Read the rest of this entry »

Below are the updated summer top-10 prospect lists for the orgs in the American League Central. I have notes beneath the top 10s explaining why some of these prospects have moved up or down. For detailed scouting information on individual players, check out the player’s profile page which may include tool grades and/or links to Daily Prospect Notes posts in which they’ve appeared this season. For detailed info on players drafted or signed this year, check out our sortable boards.

Chicago White Sox (Preseason List)

1. Yoan Moncada, 2B
2. Eloy Jimenez, OF
3. Michael Kopech, RHP
4. Lucas Giolito, RHP
5. Luis Robert, OF
6. Reynaldo Lopez, RHP
7. Blake Rutherford, OF
8. Alec Hansen, RHP
9. Dylan Cease, RHP
10. Zack Collins, C

Read the rest of this entry »

The surging Kansas City Royals bolstered their Major League club on Sunday by adding veteran OF Melky Cabrera. They sent RHP A.J. Puckett and LHP Andre Davis to Chicago in the exchange.

Royals get

• OF Melky Cabrera

White Sox get

• RHP A.J. Puckett
• LHP Andre Davis

Puckett, Kansas City’s second round pick out of Pepperdine in 2016, is an above average athlete with a potential plus changeup. He was a promising two-sport athlete in high school before a car accident left him in a medically-induced coma for two weeks to slow his blood loss, and essentially ended his football career. His rashes of wildness in pro ball have been surprising to those who saw Puckett attack the strike zone in college, but scouts are still optimistic that his athleticism will yield at least average command at maturity.

His fastball sits in the low-90s and his curveball is fringey. The curveball and command both need to improve, and if they do Puckett could pitch at the back of a rotation. He had a 3.90 ERA at High-A Wilmington before the trade and was owner of a 20% K% and 9% walk rate. He turned 22 in May.

Davis, an eighth-round pick in 2015 out of Arkansas-Pine Bluff, is a big-bodied lefty with a bat-missing changeup of his own. He isn’t as athletic as Puckett and there’s dissent about his ability to start (scouts don’t love his delivery), but Davis has thrown strikes this year, will flash command of all his pitches, and his funky delivery helps his otherwise fringe slider play up against left-handed hitters. He sits 92-94 with some movement, and while he’s already 23 and only in Low-A, we are talking about a small-school, 6-foot-6 lefty here, and these types of pitching prospects are often a bit behind. He projects into a relief role, but I think there might be more than that here.

Read the rest of this entry »