The Royals’ opener approaches: Here’s what we don’t know and why we shouldn’t know it

It’s become an annual rite of spring for reporters to ask Royals manager Ned Yost questions about the team and for Ned Yost to say it’s far too early to answer those questions.

Which is true, but there’s more to it.

A baseball coach far smarter than me — which does absolutely nothing to narrow down the suspects — once pointed out that from the first day of spring training, teams have a very good idea which pitcher is starting on opening day because starting pitchers throw every five days and you have to get that guy on track for that start.

Count backwards in five-day increments from the opening day date and you can make a decent guess about which pitcher is getting the opening day start. When I asked a pitching coach about this, he confessed that his team had known who the opening day pitcher was since January.

If every team knows who’s pitching on opening day that early, why don’t more teams announce it?

The best answer to that question is another question: why should they?

It’s not a lock; the pitcher could get hurt or pitch poorly or get in some kind of off-field trouble and that could change things. If the Royals make an announcement about their opening day pitcher or bullpen roles or who made the roster, and then have to make a change, it makes them look disorganized.

Better to wait as long as possible.

Ned can sometimes sound irritable when asked a question by a reporter, but the questions have to be asked anyway. Fans want to hear what Ned thinks and maybe Ned will lose his mind and answer.

Injuries

I once wrote something negative about Jarrod Dyson because he didn’t run out a ground ball. With his speed, I thought he could make almost any play close. It turned out that Dyson had a slight leg problem and was told not to go full speed unless he had to.

So why not make that public?

Because Dyson standing on first base is a threat to steal and gets the batter at the plate more fastballs to hit — unless the other team knows Dyson isn’t running.

I once heard a manager answer questions about a left-handed reliever with the quote: “He’s day-to-day.” Which wasn’t a lie — we’re all day-to-day — but wasn’t the full truth either.

After the news conference was over and the cameras were turned off, the manager told me that the pitcher was nursing a sore arm and couldn’t pitch.

So why not say so?

Because as long as the other team thought the left-handed reliever could pitch, he kept the other team’s left-handed pinch hitters on the bench. All the pitcher had to do was get up and stretch and act like he was available if needed.

Inside information

I once saw a base runner thrown out while trying to steal a base off a pitcher that was very good at holding runners; that pitcher hadn’t allowed a stolen base that season.

The people who like to get on the internet and criticize people got on the internet and criticized that team: didn’t they know nobody had stolen a base off that pitcher all year?

Sure they knew.

But a coach watching video had spotted a “key” on the pitcher that made stealing a base possible. Here’s how that works:

Let’s say a runner on first base is watching a right-handed pitcher’s front foot and when it goes up, the runner will take off for second base. Now let’s say the pitcher has a great slide step and can get the ball to home plate in 1.2 seconds.

Most runners can’t beat that.

If the runner takes 3.4 seconds to steal second base and the catcher gets the ball down to second in 2.0 seconds and the pitcher takes 1.2 seconds to deliver the pitch, the runner will be out by two-tenths of a second.

Now let’s say a coach watching video realizes the pitcher takes a deep breath right before delivering a pitch home and doesn’t take that deep breath when attempting a pickoff. Now the runner can watch for the breath and take off when he sees it; that pitcher might go from being a 1.2 to being a 1.5.

It’s now possible to steal a base off that pitcher.

But in this case the runner got so excited about being the first guy to swipe a base off this particular pitcher he took off too soon. The team had to take the criticism that they didn’t know what they were doing because they didn’t want that pitcher to know they had a new key on him and intended to use it in the future.

Always assume there’s something you don’t know

I’ve been hanging around professional baseball teams for over two decades both as a fan and a journalist and never once in all that time have I asked why a team didn’t bunt or steal a base and had the manager smack himself in the forehead and say he wished he’d thought of it.

Pretty much 100 percent of the time the people involved thought of everything I was thinking and a whole lot more. They also had information I didn’t have and quite often it was information they didn’t want made public because it could still be of use in future games.

A Royals runner once got picked off first base, but he got picked off because the catcher’s knees were too wide, he could see the signs and was in the process of stealing them when the pitcher made his move to first base. It looked awful, but the runner couldn’t defend himself because he wanted to steal signs again the next night.

This stuff happens all the time.

There’s almost always something we don’t know and good reasons we shouldn’t know it.