Young Royals

While watching the Boys in Blue play in Baltimore tonight, the crew at FS Kansas City put up a graphic about the Royals leading the majors in innings pitched by rookies. They had something like 110.2 innings pitched by rookies while the next team, Tampa Bay I believe, or Texas, had 98 innings. This comes as no surprise to me because it seems like every bullpen arm we have is a rookie.


Personally, I find this number to be remarkable and yet somewhat alarming. Four rookies began the year in the bullpen; Aaron Crow, Jeremy Jeffress, Nate Adcock, and Tim Collins. Crow has been unhittable all year, Adcock is in the starting rotation, Jeffress is back at Omaha to work on control, and Tim Collins, the 5'5 lefty has pitched all of 25 relief innings this year. That sounds like a ridiculous number for a relief pitcher this early in a season, especially for a rookie. It seems like Collins is always coming in to pitch no matter what and lately he has been struggling with his control and has been walking a lot of batters. It seems that the stress and usage is finally getting to him and he is becoming fatigued. Ned Yost needs to start using his relievers more wisely, or they will be gone by the end of this season.

This Royals team is very, very young and one can only believe that they will only get better. Considering their smorgasbord of young talent in the minor leagues right now. and combining that with the young guys we have currently in Kansas City, there is an abundance of hope for Royals fans in the next few years.