2:58pm: FanRag Sports’ Jon Heyman tweets that Lohse stands to make $800K if he makes the club’s MLB roster, with $700K in incentives also available.
9:04am: The Royals have announced the signing of right-hander Kyle Lohse to a minors deal. Lohse hasn’t pitched at the big-league level since 2016.
Signing the 39-year-old Lohse even to a minors pact represents something of a desperation move for the pitching-thin Royals, who currently have Eric Skoglund penciled in as their fifth starter and watched Danny Duffy struggle mightily on opening day. While Lohse did make two starts for the Rangers in 2016, he struck out just three batters in 9 1/3 innings and allowed 13 earned runs en route to being designated for assignment in late July. Prior to that, Lohse’s last full season in the majors came with the Brewers in 2015, when he pitched 152 1/3 innings of 5.85 ERA baseball.
Still, Lohse will seemingly the the club’s second-best reserve option at Triple-A behind Clay Buchholz; those two are the only other starters in the Royals organization beyond the team’s starting five who have any significant MLB experience to speak of. Other starters on the club’s 40-man roster include Heath Fillmyer (acquired in an offseason trade with the Athletics), along with Scott Barlow, Miguel Almonte and Trevor Oaks. Bearing this in mind, there’s a very real chance that Lohse could crack the roster at some point this season.
Lol why?
I thought he retired from baseball
Me 2! WoW!
I thought he retired, always enjoyed watching him with the Brewers, best of luck to Kyle!
He stinks why the signing?
Reds aren’t contending this year, so someone has to eat up innings.
Hey buddy, wrong thread. The Reds/Gallardo article is up there ^^^
Could have just been a typo and he meant Royals – rest of sentence fits KCs situation as well
His best seasons came with the Cardinals. He hasn’t been the same since the forearm injury
“something of a desperation move”
That’s not true at all. There’s no “something” about this move. If one could look up “desperation move” in a dictionary, within the entry it would say “See also: signing Kyle Lohse”. Even for a minor-league deal, this is a desperation move.
This is not a desperation sign. It’s purely for depth. I would think most posters would understand that.
Boy are they hard up, or is this a part of their tank mode?
I loved it when Bob Nightengale (in multiple MLBN appearances, while carrying Boras’ water) said it was no big deal if a pitcher misses a lot of spring training time and used Kyle Lohse as an example of a guy missing a time and it not being any big deal.
Except for the part where he’s been awful ever since, I guess.