Heading into 2019 the Royals have depth in their farm system despite a lack of Top 100 quality prospects. Unfortunately for them, the depth appears at a spot where, historically, the franchise has failed and where most major league teams in baseball fail, pitching. So how does this group of pitchers compare to that group ten years ago?

The Top 100 Prospect – Both groups likely have one Top 100 prospect in the Royals 2018 1st round pick Brady Singer compared to the 2009 right-hander Dan Cortes. The Royals had acquired Cortes for reliever Mike MacDougal and within a year he was inside Baseball America’s Top 100, appearing at 57 following a strong 2007 campaign in Wilmington. Within two years Cortes would prove to be a headache for the Royals, get dealt for Yuni Betancourt and go on to make 14 major league appearances before struggling to make it back. While Singer hasn’t pitched yet in a minor league game just yet, it’s hard to compare the two, but given Singer’s pedigree and feel for pitching, it would be hard to imagine him not at least equaling the Cortes career.

The Burgeoning Lefty – Heading into the 2009 season the Royals probably knew they had a talented lefty on their hands in Mike Montgomery yet the rest of the baseball world was still waiting. Within a year Montgomery would be ranked inside Baseball America and BP’s Top 40 prospects. This year’s group has a similar lefty, though he is a bit further along in his development as a college draftee, in Daniel Lynch. Currently, he’s sitting outside of the top 100 but I wouldn’t be shocked based on the stuff he was showing in Lexington if he found himself inside the Top 100 prior to the season. Don’t be shocked if he’s rated as the Royals best overall prospect to start the season or as their best pitching prospect though it’s not likely he will pitch himself inside the overall Top 40 the way Montgomery did.

The Top 10 – Other pitchers who were included in the Royals Top 10 included Danny Duffy who would go onto a major league career and an appearance into the Top 100 while the rest of the group largely struggled. That glut of pitching in that Top 10 was largely due to the farm system being weak outside the Top 6 prospects though Danny Gutierrez at the time was coming off a strong season in Burlington and was thought to be a good pitching prospect prior to off-field problems looming large over his career. The grouping the Royals currently have though is stronger with Kowar, another fringe Top 100 pitcher, likely heading to Wilmington after helping Lexington to a championship. Reliever Richard Lovelady is likely to contribute to the major league bullpen while Carlos Hernandez and Yefri Del Rosario are much bigger talents than both Rosa and Wood.

Best of the Rest – This group is quite a bit deeper than that 2009 group was though Kelvin Herrera would go onto make 1/3 of HDH. The Royals currently have a deep group of talented pitchers with their first-round picks Kris Bubic featured lower on my list than he will likely slot elsewhere. One scout gave me a Tanner Roark comp on Jon Heasley; Zach Haake was tossing 98 mph at instructs while Morel and Luciano present a pair of latin pitchers who could be near the top of this list next year should they harness their secondary stuff start to start in Lexington this season. It’s not even close though in terms of that grouping compared to this one in terms of talent as this group is much deeper.

The main difference between this group and the last is the data and open mind that the front office has towards pitching development compared to what they did ten years ago.Things change quickly in a year in terms of these lists and franchises though. Little did BA or the Royals know that the best pitcher they would develop was already in the organization and not on this BA list or even the next season’s group. The next Yordano Ventura could be the #2 player chosen this year’s draft or someone I left off. That’s the fun that comes with the process.

@ClintScoles

Featured Photo – Daniel Lynch by @TheGrandOldGame – Instagram

Cubs Vitals

Royals vs. Cubs

Offense

Pitching

Cubs Projected Lineup

Projected Pitching Matchups

Monday – 7:15 pm

The Royals have already seen Hamels twice this year and will now see him in his second start for the Cubs after being acquired for the stretch drive at the deadline. In those two previous starts, the Royals handled him just fine the first time before getting shut down by him over seven innings the second time. In the five American League starts following his excellent start against the Royals, Hamels really struggled, posting a 10.23 ERA over 22 innings. He was excellent in his Cubs debut, though, so what I’m saying is it’s hard to say what he’ll do. A lot of inconsistency has plagued the veteran lefty this season. He had a big issue in Texas this season, which seems like a pretty good explanation for his struggles. Away from there, he’s struck out more than a batter per inning and posted a 2.69 ERA. This game is not going to be played in Texas if you were wondering.

Junis is still trying to find that magic from early in the season. He got his first win in more than two months in his last outing, but there was still plenty to be desired. Even with a 10-1 lead, he couldn’t get out of the sixth inning and ended up giving up four runs on six hits with three walks. His slider looked better to the naked eye, but there is just something not clicking with him. I’m not sure if maybe this is just who he is and he’s not someone the Royals can count on long-term or if he’s still dealing with coming back from his back injury, but something needs to give soon. This Cubs lineup seems like a really bad matchup on paper as they have so much power up and down the lineup, but if he has that slider working, he can handle anyone, so I guess we’ll see.

Tuesday – 7:15 pm

Once the Royals top pitching prospect in a loaded farm system, Montgomery has bounced around a bit, but he seems to have found a home with the Cubs. Aside from recording the last out of the 2016 World Series, he’s been very valuable to the Cubs as a swingman, though he’s made it clear that he’d like to start, which he’s been doing since the end of May. And as a starter, he’s gone 67 innings with a 3.36 ERA. He hasn’t allowed many home runs, but he also hasn’t been missing many bats, so there’s an opportunity to BABIP him like crazy. Montgomery throws a two-seamer at about 92-93 MPH to go along with a curve, changeup and a four-seam fastball. He also throws the occasional cutter, but it’s mostly a show pitch. The curve and the changeup are his money pitches with those two accounting for the vast majority of his strikeouts. The Cubs are pretty careful with him, as he doesn’t face a lineup a third time very often. He’s only topped 90 pitches in four of his 12 starts and threw 100 just once, so he might be out sooner than later, even if he’s pitching well.

Keller recovered from a not so wonderful start against the Yankees to strike out nine over 6.1 against the White Sox with 13 swings and misses. Some of that can be attributed to the White Sox, but Keller was lit up by that same team just a couple weeks earlier, so it was nice to see him do that. Until he can do it consistently, there will always be a question in the back of my mind if Keller can be good enough to start for a good team. He either needs to cool it with the walks or consistently get strikeouts. To this point, it’s very hit or miss and this Cubs team walks a lot and actually doesn’t strike out all that much outside of a couple guys. But if he can have his sinker working and get ground balls, he can work around the lack of swings and misses. It’d just be helpful if he could get the swings and misses.

Wednesday – 7:15 pm

After seeing Quintana three to five times a year for a long time, the Royals get their first look of the season at Quintana in this one. After five years of being really, really good for the White Sox, he struggled a bit last year before being traded to the Cubs and he’s kind of kept up the slight struggles this year. He’s still striking out his usual solid but not spectacular number of batters, but his control has eluded him a bit this year, walking 52 in 113.2 innings. In his last three full seasons with the White Sox, he threw 200 or more innings each year and walked 52 or fewer in all of those, so that’s a full season of work. Every pitcher is worse when they’re behind in the count, but Quintana is especially bad, allowing a .317/.514/.611 line in those situations. He throws a lot of first pitch strikes, so you can’t really go up there with the idea of taking, but it might be worth a shot early at least. He’s faced the Royals more than any team in his career, going 3-9 with a 4.05 ERA in 24 starts and 157.2 innings. Among current Royals, nobody has hit him exceptionally well, but Salvador Perez and Alex Gordon have both been pretty good against him.

Fillmyer didn’t have it in his start against the Twins on Friday. He threw 70 pitches in three innings and while the rain delay coincided with his exit, I’m not convinced he wouldn’t have been done either way. I just don’t think Fillmyer is good enough to be a big league starter, and this will be quite a test for him against that good lineup. The one pitch that I think has been better for him than I anticipated it would be is his slider, so we might have an idea of how Fillmyer’s outing might go after we see how Junis fares in the first game. If the slider is working, I think it’s a good enough pitch to get every hitter out, but it’s all going to play off his fastball. Looking back at his great start against the Tigers a few weeks ago, the four-seamer is what made the slider possible. If he’s getting the kind of movement on it that he did in that one, he does have a chance to be successful.

The Cubs are really good. The Royals are really bad. Weird things happen in baseball, but I don’t think they will in this series. I think the Royals take the middle game but end up losing the series.

Strahmenating

The tall, lanky lefty had one of the most successful first starts at Double-A in the Dayton Moore era. As most know, the jump from spacious Wilmington Frawley field to the much more explosive Texas League can be a big leap for Royals pitchers. Comparing recent Double-A debuts, only a healthy and dominant Kyle Zimmer (oh, what could’ve been) had a better start than Strahm.

Mike Montgomery 2010 5.2 IP 2 H 1 ER 4 BB 8 K
Danny Duffy 2010 5 IP 10 H 4 ER 1 BB 6 K
John Lamb 2010 5 IP 6 H 3 ER 1 BB 4 K
Jake Odorizzi 2011 5 IP 6 H 2 ER 2 BB 4 K
Yordano Ventura 2012 – 4.2 IP 9 H 7 ER 2 BB 4 K
Kyle Zimmer 2013 6 IP 3 H 0 ER 1 BB 7 K
Brandon Finnegan 2015 3 IP 5 H 7 R 3 ER 2 BB 3 K
Matt Strahm 5 IP 2 H 0 R 0 BB 4 K

Pitchers Offended

The offenses are quite a bit ahead of the pitchers to start the season at the minor league levels, with three of the four affiliates averaging five runs or more per game. Only Wilmington is lacking behind (7 runs in 3 games), but that hasn’t stopped their opponents from averaging nearly seven runs per game in their three games. At the Low-A level the young Legends are off to a tremendous start, scoring 32 runs in four games with 12 doubles in those games. If you want to check out an exciting group of hitters, Lexington definitely looks like a great place to start this minor league season.

Wild Thang

Omaha manager Brian Goldberg mentioned that Miguel Almonte’s erratic start to his season could be due to the fact that he was in Kansas City the day prior instead of doing his usual side work. That is something to look for Tuesday in his second start of the season when the Chasers take on Round Rock with an extremely talented lineup.

Starting 9

Chase Vallot .500/.579/1.293 3-2b, 4 BB
Yunior Marte 4.2 IP 3 H 1 ER 2 BB 7 K
Ryan O’Hearn .385/.429/.462 – hit against the shift well in his first series
Pedro Ferndandez 4.1 IP 4 H 1 ER 1 BB 5 K
Hunter Dozier .308/.438/.846 2b, 2 HR
Alec Mills 5 IP 4 H 1 ER 0 BB 7 K
Cheslor Cuthbert .500/.526/.700 2b, HR
Jon Dziedzic 5 IP 2 H 2 R 0 ER 1 BB 8 K

Biggest Week
Cody Decker .375/.500/1.250 2 HR, 2b, 2 BB

Fun Match-ups of the Week

Current Giants pitcher Phil Bickford, a pitcher the Royals were coveting according to most sources, could matchup with Lexington. The Naturals over the weekend will take on the Texas Rangers squad and Baseball Prospectus #15 overall prospect Lewis Brinson, while the Storm Chasers face Joey Gallo Monday through Thursday at Werner Park. With the strong winds the Heartland has seen the past few weeks, downtown Papillion might need to be on high alert for a Gallo bomb.

Antihero Baseball

Here’s some fun stuff. Check out Cody Decker’s latest Youtube Video:

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Feature Photo Credit – Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports