Rostering Gets Weird

The Royals, as widely reported, put 40% of their starting rotation on the disabled list Wednesday night, calling up Pete Moylan and Scott Alexander to fill out spots 12 and 13 on their pitching staff.  There is nothing ideal about that, even if the two starters who went down were on the verge of or had already lost their spots in the rotation.

Oh, the starting rotation:  a concern all spring that, despite a hot start to the season, has proven to warrant just about every ounce of worry expended upon it in the pre-season.  Until Ian Kennedy and Yordano Ventura each threw six innings on Wednesday and Thursday the Royals’ rotation had provided outings of 2, 2.2, 4.1, 7, 4, 2, 4.2, 7.2, 5, 4, 5.1 and 5.1 innings over the previous dozen games.

Worried about how the Royals will handle Danny Duffy’s start on Sunday where he is limited to somewhere around 50 pitches? Pretty much the same way they have handled two-thirds of their starts the past two weeks.  Business as usual….just not good business.

Let’s say Danny Duffy returns to the rotation with a vengeance, pitching to the level that had so many of us with such high hopes for his potential.  Even under the best of circumstances, he would likely need three ‘short’ starts to get stretched out to the point that Ned Yost could think about getting six or seven innings from him.  Danny might well give his team a more effective four innings than his predecessors, but it is still just four innings.

Right in front of him will be Dillon Gee, who has fashioned 21 innings of more than competent work this season, but is a pitcher who spent much of last year in AAA, pitching poorly.  How many innings are you looking for out of him on a routine basis? Or, for that matter, Yordano Ventura on a consistent basis.

The Royals need pitching and lot of it.  How about fourteen of them?

Now, the preceding statement comes from the same guy who just a little over a month ago was advocating just a 10 man staff to start the season in order to carry more position players. Times change, my friends, times do change.

But fourteen pitchers?!!

I know it sounds over the top (hell, it IS over the top), but we already know a short start is coming up with Danny Duffy and, let’s face it, you know there is at least another short start coming up from someone or even more than one someone. The Royals are going to need a LOT of pitchers over the next couple of weeks.

But fourteen?

Well, would you rather have the arms to get a good three innings from Danny Duffy as opposed to a ragged five? Would it be better to have the arms to go get a struggling Ventura early instead of having him wear a bad five or six innings just because you know a shorter start is likely in the horizon. How about four solid innings from Gee as opposed to a tired five plus?  If the Royals are going to have crappy starting pitching, maybe instead of trying to squeeze out a few more crappy innings of the starters opt to get even more (better? less crappy?) innings out of the bullpen.

Fourteen pitchers?  Fourteen pitchers.

The Royals already are carrying thirteen and have Brian Duensing – effective thus far in Omaha – coming up on a May 15th opt out. There is your obvious pitcher number fourteen.  A guy that you could pair with Scott Alexander and Peter Moylan to piggy back one short start and still have Brian Flynn and Chien-Ming Wang to piggyback on the next short start and STILL have Hochevar-Soria-Herrera-Davis for the end of games.

Ideal? No, it certainly is not, but it is an option, albeit a far-fetched one.

Of course, fourteen pitchers means just two bench players.  One of those has to be a catcher, so Drew Butera stays put.  The other? The only way fourteen pitchers even begins to work is if player number twenty-five is Whit Merrifield.

Already this season, Whit has played second base, third base, all three outfield spots and, as of Thursday, first base for Omaha.  Along the way he has hit decently, fielded well and he can also really run. Merrifield played a handful of games at shortstop in his previous two seasons and even pitched an inning back in his early minor league career.

To make room for Merrifield, the Royals would likely have to cut bait with Omar Infante, which would open up a 40 man roster spot for Duensing.  At this point, Infante has sat out five of the last seven games and certainly seems to be fading not so gracefully into the sunset of his career. Performance aside, he has less positional versatility than Cuthbert and Colon and with just two bench players, the Royals can use all the multi-positional players they can carry.

This plan does not work for a season or even for several months, but it might work for a couple of weeks or maybe even a month.  It might work for just long enough for the Royals’ rotation to solidify, be it by a reemergence of Danny Duffy, a rebirth of Dillon Gee, a healthy return of Young and/or Medlen and even a Mike Minor or – gasp! – a Kyle Zimmer major league inning!

Uncoventional?  Certainly.  Unworkable?  Maybe. Worth a try? Possibly.

Fourteen pitchers and Whit Merrifield is not what anyone would have expected for the Kansas City Royals in May of 2016, but it might be what the team needs.  If even for just a few weeks.