Headlines

Go To Pro Hockey Rumors
Go To Hoops Rumors

Steven Cruz

Royals Place Lucas Erceg On IL With Shoulder Impingement

By | at

The Royals announced today that right-hander Steven Cruz has been reinstated from the 15-day injured list. He will take the roster spot of fellow righty Lucas Erceg, who has been placed on the 15-day IL due to right shoulder impingement syndrome.

There aren’t a lot of details around Erceg’s injury just yet. He recorded the win in Wednesday’s game, pitching the eighth inning against the Mariners. He entered a 3-3 game and allowed a run, but then the Royals scored four in the eighth. Closer Carlos Estévez allowed another run in the ninth but the Royals hung on to win 7-5. Presumably, Erceg felt some shoulder pain after the game or at some point yesterday and got checked out.

The impingement will end his regular season, which hurts the Royals’ already-slim chances at making the postseason. They hung around the playoff race for most of the summer and acted as deadline buyers, extending Seth Lugo while acquiring rentals Mike Yastrzemski, Adam Frazier and Randal Grichuk. They also added controllable pieces Ryan Bergert and Stephen Kolek in the Freddy Fermin trade.

But they have fallen back in the standings since then, with pitching injuries playing a notable role. Berget, Lugo, Cole Ragans, Michael Wacha, Kris Bubic, Bailey Falter and Alec Marsh have all been on the IL in the second half, with many of them still there. Those injury absences have naturally hampered the club’s performance in recent weeks.

The Royals are now seven games back of the Red Sox, with the Guardians and Rangers in between, with most teams having just nine games left to play. Their odds of a miracle run are now pretty close to zero and losing Erceg doesn’t help any.

His strikeout rate has backed up this year but his grounder rate is up and he’s still been effective on the whole. Last year, he tossed 61 2/3 innings with a 3.36 earned run average, 28.5% strikeout rate, 6.3% walk rate and 46.5% ground ball rate. This year, the punchouts dropped to just a 19.3% clip but he got grounders on 52.8% of balls in play as he produced a 2.64 ERA.

He is still under club control for another four seasons after this one. He has a decent chance at qualifying for arbitration as a Super Two player. Assuming he can get healthy and have a normal offseason, he should playing a key role in the Kansas City bullpen again next year.

Photo courtesy of Peter Aiken, Imagn Images

Royals’ James McArthur Placed On Injured List

By | at

2:45pm: The Royals have placed McArthur on the 15-day IL with a right elbow sprain, recalling right-hander Steven Cruz in a corresponding move.

11:43am: Royals reliever James McArthur exited last night’s game due to elbow tightness, the team announced. He’s undergoing testing today to determine the source of the discomfort and the severity of any potential injury, per Anne Rogers of MLB.com.

McArthur initially looked to have suffered a hand injury when covering first base on an infield single off the bat of Zach McKinstry, but manager Matt Quatraro tells Rogers that wasn’t the issue. McArthur stayed in to face the next batter after McKinstry reached but shook his arm after missing badly off the plate on a fastball to Jake Rogers (video link). He began to set for his next pitch, but catcher Salvador Perez called for the training staff after seeing his right-hander shake that arm. Per Quatraro, McArthur acknowledged that “something felt off” in his arm, and he quickly departed with trainer Chris DeLucia.

The 27-year-old McArthur opened the 2024 season as the Royals’ closer and still leads the club with 18 saves, though he’s since ceded ninth-inning duties to deadline acquisition Lucas Erceg. That switch was borne both out of both Erceg’s excellence and a midseason rough patch for the hard-throwing McArthur. After a couple of rocky appearances to begin the season, McArthur found his groove and rattled off 36 2/3 innings of 3.22 ERA ball from April 5 through July 23. Those are arbitrary endpoints, of course, but it’s roughly half a season’s worth of quality bullpen work from a pitcher who’d been trusted with the highest-leverage role in Quatraro’s bullpen.

McArthur, however, was shelled for eight runs over his next two appearances on July 24 and 28. The Royals acquired Erceg from the Athletics two days later. McArthur has pitched primarily in a middle relief role since and has a 3.77 ERA in 14 1/3 innings in that span, with the bulk of the damage against him coming in one brutal day at Yankee Stadium. Overall, McArthur has a 4.92 ERA on the season, although that number is skewed heavily by his past six weeks or so of tumultuous performance.

There hasn’t been a pronounced drop in McArthur’s velocity, although his sinker is down a bit in recent outings. He averaged 95.1 mph on the pitch through the sixth of September but has seen the pitch clock in at an average of 94.3 mph across his past three appearances. McArthur has had similar dips in velocity throughout the year, so it’s not necessarily alarming in isolation, but any change in stuff/velocity when coupled with arm discomfort is a red flag.

The Royals are already without deadline pickup Hunter Harvey (back strain) and veteran free-agent signees Will Smith (back spasms) and Chris Stratton (flexor strain). Erceg, John Schreiber and former starters Kric Bubic and Daniel Lynch IV are among the top options left in an increasingly injury-marred Kansas City bullpen.

Royals Place Michael Lorenzen On Injured List

By | at

The Royals have placed right-hander Michael Lorenzen on the 15-day injured list due to a strained left hamstring, per a team announcement. Righty Steven Cruz has been recalled from Triple-A Omaha in his place. Lorenzen sustained the injury yesterday when covering first base on a grounder.

Acquired in a deadline swap that sent lefty reliever Walter Pennington to the Rangers, Lorenzen has been a boon to the Kansas City rotation. In five starts, he’s pitched 24 1/3 innings of 1.85 ERA ball, striking out 17% of his opponents against a 10% walk rate. Metrics like FIP (4.20) and SIERA (5.11) aren’t nearly as bullish, given the righty’s pedestrian strikeout, walk and ground-ball rates.

Even if Lorenzen can’t be reasonably expected to continue producing a sub-2.00 ERA, the results thus far have been an unequivocal jolt for a team that had been struggling to get production from fifth starter Alec Marsh. Kansas City has won each of Lorenzen’s last three starts, and there’s little blame to be placed on him for the team’s loss in his Royals debut; he tossed 5 2/3 innings of one-run ball in a game the Royals eventually lost by a score of 6-5.

The Royals didn’t provide a timetable for Lorenzen’s return, but he’ll be down for at least two weeks. The aforementioned Marsh is the likeliest candidate to step back into the rotation in his stead. In 20 starts this season (plus one relief appearance), the 26-year-old Marsh has tossed 106 innings with a 4.67 earned run average.

Marsh’s 21.3% strikeout rate and 7.4% walk rate are both better than Lorenzen’s season-long marks between Texas and Kansas City, but he also faded significantly following a strong start to the season. Over his past eight trips to the mound, he’s been rocked for a 6.46 ERA and surrendered seven homers in 39 innings (1.62 HR/9). Marsh was sharp in four Triple-A starts this month after being optioned (1.80 ERA, 19-to-5 K/BB ratio in 15 innings), and the Royals will now need to hope for more of that type of output while Lorenzen mends.

As for the 25-year-old Cruz, this’ll be his first look with the Royals in 2024. He made his big league debut last year, pitching 12 2/3 innings with a 4.97 ERA and a 15-to-11 K/BB ratio in that short time. Kansas City acquired the hard-throwing righty in the 2022-23 offseason trade that sent Michael A. Taylor to the division-rival Twins. He’s pitched exclusively out of the Omaha bullpen this season and recorded a 3.35 ERA with a 26.6% strikeout rate and 11.1% walk rate in 48 1/3 innings. Cruz’s four-seamer has averaged 96.9 mph in Triple-A this season, and he’s primarily paired that pitch with a slider that sits at 89.4 mph.

Royals Select Steven Cruz

By | at

The Royals have selected the contract of right-handed pitcher Steven Cruz, the team announced. Left-handed pitcher Taylor Hearn has been optioned to Triple-A to make room on the 26-man roster. Kansas City already had a free spot on the 40-man roster, which has now been filled.

Kansas City acquired Cruz in January as part of the trade that sent Michael A. Taylor to Minnesota. Earlier this summer, FanGraphs ranked him as the no. 39 prospect in the Royals organization, praising his elite fastball that touches triple digits. However, both FanGraphs and Baseball America have pointed out his shaky command, which has remained a problem in 2023; Cruz has walked 30 batters in 49 2/3 innings between Double- and Triple-A. The tall right-hander has also had trouble keeping runs off the board since his midseason promotion to Triple-A, pitching to a 6.88 ERA in 14 games. Nevertheless, now is as good a time as any for the Royals to see what they have in the young fireballer. They sit in the basement of the AL Central, but they still have plenty of innings to fill before the year is up.

Hearn has struggled since joining the Royals at the trade deadline. In eight games, the southpaw has given up seven earned runs on twelve hits and two home runs. He made 31 appearances (13 starts) for the Rangers last season, posting a high 5.13 ERA but a more palatable 4.18 SIERA and 0.9 FanGraphs WAR. However, he failed to make the big league club out of spring training this year, and despite his 3.66 ERA at Triple-A, the Rangers designated him for assignment in mid-July. The Braves swooped in and acquired Hearn for cash considerations before flipping him to the Royals for Nicky Lopez a few days later. He made three appearances for Triple-A Omaha before he was recalled to replace an injured Zack Greinke. Kansas City can retain Hearn through arbitration next season, but he will be out of minor league options.

Show all

MLB Trade Rumors is not affiliated with Major League Baseball, MLB or MLB.com

Do not Sell or Share My Personal Information

hide arrows scroll to top