The Royals announced the signing of sixth overall pick Jac Caglianone. Caglianone receives a $7.5MM bonus, reports Jim Callis of MLB Pipeline (X link). The selection comes with a slot value of roughly $7.21MM.
Caglianone is a two-way player from the University of Florida. His higher upside professionally is as a position player. Caglianone topped 30 home runs in each of his final two seasons in Gainesville. He hit 35 longballs — second among Division I hitters behind #3 pick Charlie Condon’s 37 — with a .419/.544/.875 slash line as a junior. Caglianone walked at an 18.4% clip while striking out only 8.2% of the time. He has top-of-the-scale raw power that gives him the chance to hit in the middle of a lineup.
Nevertheless, pre-draft scouting reports raised some questions about his pure hitting ability. Baseball America and The Athletic’s Keith Law each pointed to concerns about Caglianone’s chase rate as well as a tendency to get pull-oriented in his swing. Caglianone is likely limited to first base defensively, so he’ll need to hit a lot to provide value.
He’s not as highly regarded as a pitching prospect. While he can run his fastball into the upper 90s, his subpar control points to a bullpen future. It seems likely the Royals will prioritize his offensive development in the hope that he moves quickly and establishes himself as a 30+ home run hitter.
Kid is going to be a star.
He needs to decide to be a hitter and just a few starts 5/6 a year because I’m sorry folks there’s only one Ohtani.
He projects as a low leverage/ mop up middle reliever, which is fine. Mop up guys have value to all teams. His future is clearly as a hitter.
He’s limited defensively and his chase rate suggests he is likely going to strike out a fair share against MLB pitching. The upside is he also walks a lot and has big time power.
At the end of the day, his ceiling is Jim Thome. Who wouldn’t want that production?
No kidding but there’s only one Caglianone.
And there was only one Babe… unlikely, definitely but not impossible
His whiff-to-plate appearance ratio is pretty darn impressive.
Curious why teams insist on “super-subs” who can be godawful at every position and equally as terrible in every way at the plate (Whit Merrifield, Willie Bloomquist, Kike Hernandez, Romy Gonzalez) but have zero interest in their 3/4/5 hitter being a 6th-ish inning reliever. It is a better use of roster space than a guy hitting .190 who can make just as many errors at 2B/SS as he can in LF/CF. Michael Lorenzen could have been someone’s 4th OF but no one was interested in trying.
Lorenzen hit a few bombs with the Reds. It’s too bad we couldn’t see more of him as a two-way player after the Angels decided to make him a starter
So there was the new rule in place to limit position players pitching and the new two way player distinction. Position players can only pitch in blowouts (10 run difference either way) or anytime in extra innings.
I’m not sure how that would affect a rookie coming in, but it’s not as simple as it would have been a few years ago.
So a two way player has to pitch 20 MLB innings in the previous (or current) season, and appear in 20 games as a position player with 3PA per game.
But how does a player get those initial innings? Do they have to go into each game with a specific distinction? So one game he’s a pitcher and eats a few innings, and then the next he’s a position player to get some PA? That I’m not sure of.
I believe that call ups inherit their classification based on what they do in the minors. So if he’s both hitting and pitching at AAA the year before and comes up on Opening Day, I think he’d qualify as a two-way player. Then he’d need to throw 20 IP each season to keep the designation.
Well, one thing is when we need a position player to pitch when we are getting blown out we could just ask Jac .