Royals’ Jakob Junis happy with results of his first spring outing
Whether you want to call Jakob Junis’ curveball a new weapon or an old friend, he’s encouraged by the way it’s been looking at the very early stages of spring training.
Junis led the Kansas City Royals pitching staff with nine wins last season, his third consecutive nine-win campaign, but the 27-year-old right-hander with a swing-and-miss slider went back to a pitch he’d thrown throughout his career in the minors.
“I think it might have been my rookie year when I stopped throwing it because it started morphing into that slider and took away from my slider a little bit,” Junis said. “But I feel like I’m in a good spot now where there’s two different shapes, and I like where it’s at.”
Junis pitched a scoreless 1-2-3 inning in a 4-2 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday at American Family Fields. He got former Royals center fielder Lorenzo Cain to ground out to third to start the game. He froze two batters on called third strikes, one on the curveball and one on the slider.
“I got to throw all my pitches,” Junis said. “I got a strikeout with my curveball, which is something I’ve worked on this winter. I got a swing and miss on my changeup, that was great. I commanded my fastball decent, and threw my slider well too.”
Worth the wait
Left-hander Kris Bubic, one of the Royals top young pitching prospects, traveled but did not get into Wednesday’s game against the Chicago Cubs. He pitched the fourth and fifth innings on Thursday.
He threw in a “B” game on the back field on Sunday, but he hadn’t pitched in an official Cactus League game. In that B game, he never had a runner on base. This time around, he had men on base each inning. He allowed the first two runners of the fourth to reach before stranding a runner on third to end the inning.
He got Cain to ground into a double play before he struck out Omar Narvaez.
“Obviously, not the situation I wanted to be in right off the bat, but I feel like it says a lot about myself to be able to bare down in that situation — be able to be behind in the count to a perennial all-star hitter — and make a quality pitch to get outs.”
Competitive fire
Royals pitching prospect and former first-round draft pick Brady Singer pitched into and out of trouble in his road outing Wednesday against the Chicago Cubs. He started the split squad game.
In his second inning, he allowed the first three batters to reach, loading the bases, before he recorded three straight outs, including strikeouts of Albert Almora Jr. and Jason Kipnis.
“I love just putting him in that situation,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “I thought he did great. That was incredible because he actually got through the second inning without fastball command. He got through that second inning with that slider.
“He had [fastball command] in the first inning. It wasn’t there in the second, got into a bind and figured out how to use his second pitch. I was fun to watch. He tried not to show any emotion, but I did it. I was excited for him. That was pretty good stuff.”
Still waiting
Royals star catcher Salvador Perez still hasn’t caught in a Cactus League game since 2018. Perez batted third and served as the designated hitter on Thursday. Perez, who didn’t catch last spring before having season-ending surgery, was originally slated to catch earlier this week.
Matheny said they’d wanted to give Perez another day before getting behind the plate. Perez had a dental procedure this week which left his jaw sore, and the coaching staff is being cautious with the possibility of a foul ball coming back at him if he’s catching.
Perez had two hits before he came out for a pinch runner in the fifth inning, is expected to be in the lineup at catcher on Friday.
Pitching probables
With left-hander Mike Montgomery set to make his first appearance in a Cactus League game on Friday, Matheny said that Rule 5 draft pick Stephen Woods Jr. will start Saturday’s game and Danny Duffy will start on Sunday. Duffy hasn’t appeared in a spring training game yet this year.
Also slated to pitch on Friday are: Ian Kennedy, Gabe Speier, Chance Adams, Andres Machado, Jake Kalish, Yunior Marte, Arnaldo Hernandez and Conner Greene.
Kennedy, who recorded 30 saves last season, has not appeared in a spring training game this year.
This story was originally published February 27, 2020 at 5:05 PM.
