Many of the Royals’ best pitching prospects are returning from injury-shortened seasons, yet as MLB.com’s Anne Rogers writes, most of these young arms are back at the club’s minor league camp in good health. The most prominent of these names is Asa Lacy, the fourth overall pick of the 2020 draft and a consensus top-40 prospect heading into the 2021 season, though Lacy’s stock has dropped a bit after a rough debut year.
The left-hander posted a 5.19 ERA over 52 innings in high-A ball, with a strong 33.3% strikeout rate but also a garish 17.3% walk rate. Discomfort in his throwing shoulder sidelined Lacy for a good chunk of the season, though he felt well enough to pitch 7 2/3 more frames during Arizona Fall League action, with mixed results. Lacy delivered a 2.35 ERA and 15 strikeouts over that smaller sample size, but still issued six walks. It isn’t uncommon for players (even those without injury concerns) to have some trouble adjusting to their first taste of minor league ball, and both Lacy and the Royals are hopeful this was just a bump in the road of Lacy’s development.
Some other items from around the American League…
- The Yankees and manager Aaron Boone are still looking at candidates to become the club’s third hitting coach, Joel Sherman of The New York Post writes. When last we heard of the Yankees’ search, the Bronx Bombers were hoping to land a former MLB player in the role — neither hitting coach Dillon Lawson and assistant hitting coach Casey Dykes played pro ball. (Eric Chavez was initially hired for the job but then headed crosstown to become the Mets’ new hitting coach.) How close the Yankees might be to finding that new coach is unknown, as Sherman indicated that a hire could come this week, or the team might just stick with two hitting coaches if they can’t find a good fit for that third position. The hitting coach search is just of several topics broached within a wide-ranging interview with Boone about the manager’s tenure in the Bronx, the challenges of the lockout, and keeping the staff prepared for what might be a rushed Spring Training.
- Wilkel Hernandez threw his first bullpen session at the Tigers’ minor league minicamp Sunday, Evan Petzold of The Detroit Fress Press writes. The right-handed prospect hasn’t pitched since 2019 due to the canceled 2020 minor league season and then Tommy John surgery in October 2020. Even despite this missed time, Hernandez (who turns 23 in April) still has four years of pro experience, after joining the Angels as an international signing in 2015. Hernandez came to Detroit’s organization in December 2017, as one of two minors pitchers acquired from the Angels in exchange for Ian Kinsler.
Why do they need 3 hitting coaches? They always got by with 1 in the past.
Probably because their hitting was anemic last year and they don’t want newer guys (Volpe, Peraza, Wells, & Dominguez) ruined when they come up.
Clip – Nahh, it’s because teams can’t think for themselves anymore. When one team does something new, everyone else follows. Three ML hitting coaches is now the trend, Sox have three along with a Senior Hitting Coordinator.
Rays have three along with a Manager of Hitting Development and 2 Minor League Hitting Coordinators. If I checked all 30 teams I bet most if not all of them have three or will have three by the start of the season.
I’m not an ARod fan, but one thing he said during last year’s Wild Card game resonated with me. He passionately said just because the Rays have had some success with analytics, it doesn’t mean all teams will have the same success with the same approach.
He’s right ya know. It’s like pointing at a guy who makes a living playing poker, and saying “I’m gonna make a living playing poker too”. Life doesn’t work that way, not everyone has the same knowledge and skills. What works for one team won’t necessarily work for another.
By the way, what better example of how the game has changed than looking at the rosters of both the Red Sox and Rays and seeing that each has between 4-5 mental coaches.
You read that right, lookit the Rays current staff:
Mental Performance Coordinator
Head of Mental Performance
3 Minor League Mental Performance Coaches
If Dr Phil ever decides to end his show, he’s got a well paying job waiting for him in MLB.
Or…teams are realizing the mental aspect of the game is very important, and it’s worth helping players in that regard.
FPG: Yes, your assertion makes a lot of sense. Especially the Rays aspect. Honestly, Hal wants to be so much like the Rays he would sell his children. Only Hal could own the NYY and feel like a failure because he’s not Stu.
But Yankees are very big in the analytical copycat area. The problem is they rarely develop a Yankees-specific model, so it doesn’t work as effectively.
gbs – Having someone to talk to or get advice from has always been part of the manager’s job, as well as the bench coach and others. If a hitter is having difficulty with their mental approach to at bats, they have literally 8 different hitting coaches/hitting managers/hitting coordinators within the organization they can talk with. Quite often getting different opinions from multiple people will make matters worse, not better.
I think it’s a valid question, why is it these days it takes three or more people to do the same job that one person used to do. Just doesn’t make sense, especially with today’s technological advances. I think there’s ulterior motives which I’m not going to get into.
There is an easy answer that makes more sense than what you just said. That answer would be progress. My guess is that the billion dollar business isn’t about to hire redundant or useless staff. They probably have all those position because they actually researched what those positions would bring to the ball club and having multiple batting coaches and mental coaches was simply better than what they had before. The reason clubs copy other successful clubs is because they were successful. A little bit of Occam’s razor could go a long way here.
Now we’re complaining that the owners ARE spending money on employees? Isn’t using the cash to hire more scouts, coaches, analysts, psychiatrists etc. what we want being done?
FPG- The list of mental health employees included three for my nor leaguers, so it seems they have one person at most levels.
And mental health isn’t just the approach to at-bats. It could be about a wide variety of life issues. Helping players in all aspects of life and performance seems like a positive thing. And managers aren’t trained to provide this kind of assistance.
I tend to be a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” kind of person, but I recognize different people deal with life differently, and I’ve never experienced the challenges of trying to become and remain a major league ballplayer.
He wants his payroll to be like the Rays. Bring back CBS they could better than Hal in 65 to 69…
Yeah unfortunately, Jim, he’s running right with CBS. I think even they wanted to win though, he just wants to save money.
I don’t think he is looking for money for his next meal.
Vlad – Excess staffing is PRECISELY what billion dollar businesses do. When the revenue is pouring in and the profit margin is sky high, it’s quite common for middle management to request an increase in staffing. Nobody questions it UNTIL money becomes tight, then it’s “what exactly does John do for 40 hours a week?” I’ve seen this show plenty of times, professional sports teams aren’t any different than corporate America.
And so the obvious question, how do you know all the extra positions help the players?
The DBacks have FOUR hitting coaches, and lost 110 games last year.
So are you saying if they had only one or two hitting coaches, they’d have lost 150 games?
You said teams copy other teams only if the team they are copying is successful.
Using that same logic, shouldn’t teams NOT copy the DBacks by having 4 hitting coaches, since they lost 110 games using the 4 hitting coaches?
Look I respect your opinion and I’ve already said there’s no way to prove all these additional hires are helping or hurting teams. All I’m saying is blindly copying others because of a false assumption that they are somehow smarter than you, that’s a really silly way to go through life. Truly brilliant and wildly successful people such as Elon Musk didn’t get that way by copying others, he thought for himself and went against the grain even though doing so was a harder path.
Cosmo – Nobody is complaining. It’s not our money, and all the extra hiring doesn’t affect us in any way.
But you do have to wonder with the huge expansion of front offices and coaching staffs, couldn’t all that extra payroll be used in a better way … like giving it to more talented players?
@Believeitornot: If you’ve watch how Hal skimps on the roster, yeah he attempts to save money, at all costs including winning. If you haven’t seen that you don’t pay close enough attention to the Yankees spending / roster decisions.
Clipper: It is hard to forget RobM’s analysis that showed that maybe dead baseballs were sent to Yankee Stadium last year. That was a significant find. Maybe the Yankees offense needs the correct baseball more than anything.
Yeah, that was a really interesting correlation. I’m curious to see if regulating baseballs league-wide does make a difference with other teams too.
I’m still baffled that MLB would do that if for no other reason than the implications.
Can you imagine how screwed up their hitters would be if all 3 had different approaches? It’s a pro sports team so you know the 3 will be competitive with each other. Maybe they should trash the 3 coach idea and bring back Kevin Long solo. He seemed to be the last decent hitting coach they had.
Eric Chavez was a perfect candidate and the Mets wisely took him. His hitting analysis is antithetical to the current Yankees M.O. & exactly the mentality they need to successfully develop their hitting.
Boone for 3 years- ugh.
Put these three teams in a division with the Mets and these are your standings…
Yankees
Tigers
Royals
Mets
Haha… man, I actually laughed out loud and my wife looked at me like I was an alien.
Not sure about the Royals. However Mets no better than third place. Think another AL Central team would be first if included. Not Minnesota or Cleveland.
Team cohesion is being on the same page. Hard to do that with three different people giving three different opinions…
Going to be like the three stooges. One giving a bunt signal, one signaling to hold, and one telling the batter to swing for the fences. Boone chewing bubblegum and looking at the stat guys’ code book for what to do…. what a looooong season this could be.
Dissolute power corrupts dissolutely.
Ducky, that’s some next-level U of M psychoanalytic organizational leadership stuff right there!
Ducky! I have been trying to reach you since November because you won an autographed Max Scherzer baseball card. Please check your inbox!
I’m pretty far behind on that particular inbox, Mr Dierkes. Not really a baseball card guy anymore. Can you just give it to Rangers29?
That’s hilarious! Especially the last part about Boone, cora does the same thing.
Yankees need players… Hal hates flexing yankee $ muscles
He wants his payroll to be like the Rays. Bring back CBS they could better than Hal in 65 to 69…