Drew Storen’s comeback bid took another step forward this week, as the Royals have assigned him to Double-A Northwest Arkansas, per Paul Boyd of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Twitter link). Storen, who signed a minor league contract back in February, opened the season building up arm strength in extended Spring Training with the Royals.
It’s been nearly 21 months since Storen set foot on a Major League mound. The longtime Nationals reliever spent the 2017 season with the Reds but made his final appearance on Sept. 1 that year, learning two weeks later that he would require Tommy John surgery. The timing of that procedure unsurprisingly wiped out his entire 2018 season and relegated interest in him to minor league offerings this past winter.
At his best, Storen sat near 95 mph with his fastball and demonstrated above-average swinging-strike, ground-ball and walk rates while serving as the Nationals’ closer. A former first-round draft pick, the now-31-year-old Storen owns a career 3.45 ERA with 99 saves, 8.5 K/9, 2.7 BB/9, 0.78 HR/9 and a 46.1 percent ground-ball rate. His results dropped off in 2016-17 in a pair of mediocre seasons split between the Blue Jays, Mariners and Reds, as his fastball experienced a precipitous decline (90.2 mph average in 2017).
It’ll be interesting to keep an eye on Storen’s progress and velocity as he begins to work at the minor league level. There’s ample space in the Kansas City bullpen should he either restore some of that lost life on his heater or simply demonstrate an ability to work with a diminished fastball. Despite strong showings from Scott Barlow, Jake Diekman and a revitalized Ian Kennedy, Royals relievers as a collective unit rank 25th in the Majors in ERA (4.98), 22nd in FIP (4.58) and 18th in xFIP (4.55).
Fun fact: the Nationals drafted Storen with their second pick of the year while MIKE TROUT was still on the board.
They used their first pick to take Harper No. 1 overall.
No, they used their first pick that year on Strasburg
Yeah, my bad: Strasburg.
There were 22 teams who picked a player before Mike Trout, including the Angels themselves. The D-backs, like the Nationals, also picked two players over him.
The whole “they could’ve drafted X but took Y instead” argument is wasted energy in the MLB draft. Mookie Betts was the 172nd overall pick in 2011. It happens every year.
Yeah Steve but everyone here lives in hindsight…damn those NFL teams that overlooked Tom Brady including the Patriots themselves a handful of times…
Great point Steve. Thanks.
Yeah man. It’s still a fun fact.
Would have been better if you got it right and someone didn’t have to correct you
It’s also just a fun thing to do though, is it not? Sure you can’t change the past but it’s cool. Like what if the Cubs had gotten Jeter in that trade? What would’ve happened to the teams involved?
At least the Royals are trying to put some semblance of a team on the field.
Just a heads up: your app notifications haven’t worked for 2 days. Please fix this? This is the time of year it helps to get heads up on prospect promotions (Naylor, Biggio, etc)
They haven’t worked for me for about a year. Settings says they’re on, but I never get anything. It absolutely could be my phone being weird, but then again it could be the app.
Check your settings. If you have any battery life saving functions on it will block notifications.
Strange — I haven’t noticed any issues myself, but I’ll look into it?
What categories/tags do you guys have notifications set for? And also, what type of phone are you using? iOS? Android? Is the OS up to date?
All of that will be helpful for our developer. You can either reply here or, if you see this later in the afternoon/evening (I won’t be on the computer), shoot a message to us through our contact form and we’ll get it passed along:
mlbtraderumors.com/contact
Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Trout went 22nd that year I think, or in that range, so a lot of teams missed the boat on him.
Another fun fact on that draft & Trout, is that the Angels used the Yankees pick that they got as compensation for signing Mark Textiera to draft Trout.
Water under the bridge…but new opportunity ahead on June 3rd! There are some great looking hitting prospects available this year
Looking at his baseball reference, what sticks out to me is he was a 10th overall pick who only got 2 starts in the minors (3 years after he was drafted). Seems weird that any team would take a pitcher that high and have no plans to use them as a starter.
Hope if he pitches decent he can replace wily peralta who can’t seem to strike out anyone this year!