Why the Kansas City Royals’ bullpen has most room for improvement — but with a caveat

In a single column on a lineup card, the Royals catalog their daily pitching plan, revealing not only who will pitch but exactly when his entrance will arrive.

The hope is to not need to deviate from it, a luxury of spring training, when the reps matter as much as the win-loss record.

But when the real games begin in a few days, replicating those blueprints would be idealistic. Impossible, actually.

Shouldn’t stop the effort, though, right?

If you’re digging into the 2023 Royals in hopes of contrasting them from the team that won 65 games in 2022, one of the first places you should land is in the bullpen. It is the spot that provides the most optimism for improvement, perhaps because it should look more different than any aspect of the team other than the coaching staff. And that’s relatively speaking, to be clear, because there is some familiarity here.

In names.

As for roles? Well, ideally some will be more clearly defined, because the last group sort of threw those out the window — but that’s in part because they had to throw those out the window. Heck, even Scott Barlow, the closer, made one-third of his appearances in a different role altogether.

The confused mixture worked about as well as any of us could have predicted it would. The Royals finished with the worst bullpen earned-run average in the American League at 4.66. So as you’d probably imagine, there has been conversation this spring about improving the production after a starting pitcher hands the ball to the manager.

But there lies the wrinkle in all of this.

That exchange — or the timing of it — is a significant piece of the kink.

We can’t let the bullpen off the hook for its production last season, same as those arms are the primary reason for at least some optimism. But the bullpen problem was very much a starter problem, too. The Royals’ relievers were too frequently thrown into fires they didn’t ignite. Overworked. And ultimately less effective.

To illustrate the toll of that, let’s first take a look around the league. Here’s a list of the best bullpen earned-run averages in baseball a year ago: Astros, Dodgers, Yankees, Braves, Guardians and Mariners, in that order.

You probably know the correlation that’s coming next. The first five teams on that list won their division, and the next finished as the top wild card team in the American League. So, yeah, the bullpen matters. A lot. No kidding, right?

But that’s not the correlation we’re here to make. Instead, take a look at the usage from each of those bullpens. The Astros were asked to record 108 fewer outs than any of their counterparts. The best was used the very least. In fact, every team on that aforementioned list falls into the bottom-8 in innings pitched from relievers, other than the Dodgers, who are still in the bottom half of the league.

While some pitchers will tell you they operate better when they work more frequently — Royals lefty Amir Garrett is among them — the data from 2022 shows that to be the exception. The rested pens operated as the most reliable. And that’s something out of the control of the guys who sit out in left field at Kauffman Stadium — and in control of those who begin the game on the mound.

A few days ago, Royals pitching coach Brian Sweeney reiterated an effort to more clearly define roles at the back end this season, or at least give players the best possible indication of when they might need to prepare to enter a game. Who wouldn’t want that? Those involved certainly do.

“We can’t script everything,” he said, though perhaps the Royals can inform a pitcher, “This is maybe the bucket of hitters that you’re going to join, or you’re going to pitch the eighth.”

The Royals have a group better prepared for that reality than a year ago. As it stands now, Barlow will open the season as the Royals’ closer, the role he prefers. That pushes Aroldis Chapman and Dylan Coleman to serve as primary setup men, with Garrett meshing into inherited runners situations, and that’s the role he prefers. Carlos Hernandez, Taylor Clarke and Ryan Yarbrough figure to factor into the mix, though with an ability to throw multiple innings. That too could alleviate some pressure on the back end.

But for all of the efforts the coaching staff makes to script this out, it cannot overcome the influence of the rotation — a group that still possesses some questions in that very area.

Brady Singer led the team with 153 1/3 innings a year ago. He will be a bit behind the usual track a week out from the opener, given his lack of innings at the World Baseball Classic. He threw just once for Team USA.

A year ago, the Royals’ rotation ranked in the bottom half of the league in instances in which they threw at least five innings, instances in which they threw at least six, at least seven or at least eight. The group basically never gave its bullpen a night off — Singer was the only starter to complete eight innings, and he did that once.

The effect isn’t overuse alone. It’s unexpected use, too.

There’s not a quicker way to turn the pen’s blueprints into chaos. When the relievers so consistently throw additional innings, it can limit the manager’s ability to play for specific matchups. For that night. And the next. And on it goes. On it went a year ago.

Perfect situation? The starters consistently complete at least six — which they did only 34.5% of the time in 2022 — and manager Matt Quatraro can follow the pre-game blueprint that they plan to over-communicate to the clubhouse. They want pitchers preparing for specific moments in the game, not prepare for every single inning of a game.

More simply: They’d prefer they’re able to return to something as organized as the spring-training column.

Idealistic. Mentioned that.

But strive for it. Map out the contingency plans ahead of time, just in case. That part isn’t complicated.

The effect of using Plan B night after night can be.

The Royals have a better group out there than they had in 2022, or at least a group whose pieces fit more neatly together, though we have to admit it can’t get much worse than, um, last place in ERA in the AL.

That’s the group at the Quatraro and Sweeney’s disposal.

Up to them how they use him.

Well, up to the starters too.