Royals’ Danny Duffy ‘good to go’ after rehab start in minors
Danny Duffy’s next outing will come as a member of the Royals starting pitching rotation. Royals manager Ned Yost acknowledged as much prior to Monday night’s series opener against the Oakland Athletics at Kauffman Stadium.
While the Royals haven’t listed probable starters past Thursday’s series finale against the A’s, Duffy came through Sunday’s minor-league rehab assignment with flying colors and rejoined the club in Kansas City on Monday. He’d be on regular rest if the Royals chose to slot him into the rotation on Friday. Eric Skoglund will start Friday on regular rest instead.
“I was able to work a lot of things in that I wanted to see against hitters,” said Duffy, who threw two simulated outings before progressing to a rehab start. “It’s been three weeks, so it was very beneficial, and I was able to see a lot of things that I was doing wrong and a couple of things that I can do better.”
Duffy said last weekend in Cleveland that he still hadn’t tested his hamstring by having to get off the mound and make a fielding play or cover first base. He wanted that for his “peace of mind.”
He did have to make a play off the mound in his last inning of the rehab start, and had no issues.
The left-hander threw 72 pitches (48 strikes) in five innings for Double-A Northwest Arkansas on Sunday against the Frisco RoughRiders in Texas. Duffy, who has been in the injured list because of a hamstring strain since Aug. 6, struck out four and gave up one run on four hits (one home run).
“You never stop trying to get better, even when you’re not pitching,” Duffy said. “I think we found some things that we could implement. I was able to drive the ball downhill for the most part (Sunday) and focus on my delivery a lot more being that I had to cognizant how the belly of the hamstring felt. I was very attentive to my body and what it was doing, and the ball was going downhill as a result of that. When I needed to make pitches, I did. I think I’m good to go.”
Royals pitchers Brad Keller (Monday), Mike Montgomery (Tuesday), Jakob Junis (Wednesday) and Glenn Sparkman (Thursday) were scheduled to start the four games against the Athletics.
Skoglund made his first major-league start of the season Sunday in Duffy’s place. The Royals could move to a six-man rotation if they want to continue to give Skoglund and/or Jorge Lopez chances to start as the season winds down.
With rosters expanding on Monday, they could also bolster the bullpen without having to sacrifice starting rotation options.
Yost has also talked about wanting to limit the number of innings Keller throws in his first full season as a starter. Keller went into Monday night already having thrown 23 2/3 innings more than last season.
Skipping Keller’s turn in the rotation starts, giving him extra days between starts or even shutting Keller down completely are possibilities Yost has raised in recent weeks. Keller may only have another 17 innings left this season. That would bring him to 40 innings past last year’s total.
This story was originally published August 26, 2019 at 7:02 PM.
