Progress report on Royals’ top pitching prospects: Lynch, Kowar and Lacy
The absence of any hedging or equivocation was striking. Kansas City Royals general manager Dayton Moore’s words rang with an unwavering level of certainty.
“We are in the process of building a championship rotation and a championship-caliber pitching staff,” Moore said definitively and with a matter-of-fact tone during a video conference with reporters before he doubled down with, “That’s undeniable.”
This season, four Royals pitchers made their debuts as starters, including reliever Kyle Zimmer’s start as an “opener,” and Brady Singer, Kris Bubic and Carlos Hernandez skipped an entire level or more of the minors. The depth of starting pitching prospects extends well past that group.
Left-hander Daniel Lynch has been rated one of the top 100 prospects regardless of position by Baseball America and MLBPipeline.com as has this year’s top draft pick left-hander Asa Lacy. Right-hander Jackson Kowar joined them on the Baseball American list.
Lynch and Kowar, part of the same 2018 draft class as Singer and Bubic, were in big-league camp this past year for spring training. They were already knocking on the door to the majors before a year without minor-league games.
“I believe that both of those guys have accomplished things this year where we feel like it’s a pretty clear indication that they’ve taken a step forward,” Royals assistant general manager/player performance J.J. Picollo said of Lynch and Kowar. “The thing we don’t have is a gauge on competition, playing other teams, playing a 140-game schedule. But that’s something we’re not really going to be able to answer anyway because every team is in that boat.
“Based on some of the things they were working on throughout the summer into the fall and the progress they’ve made, we certainly feel like they are closer to the major leagues. We don’t feel like they’ve stalled their careers at all.”
Royals director of pitching performance Paul Gibson also spoke with The Star about the improvements made by the organization’s top prospects.
Daniel Lynch
During spring training, Lynch said his experience in the 2019 Arizona Fall League taught him the value of pitching up in the strike zone. The 6-foot-6 lefty features a fastball that reaches the upper 90s and a nasty, late-breaking slider.
“The fastball and slider are both so hard that I wanted him to develop his change-up,” Gibson said. “One of the luxuries we had at the alternate site was to put him in situations to throw change-ups. That change-up ended up being a better than average and near plus pitch, and it makes his fastball better.”
Having the third pitch will also help him navigate a lineup a third time through in a start. His performance at the alternate training site and in fall camp reinforced that belief.
“He’s one of those guys that will stand out that way,” Gibson said. “He’ll throw a fastball down and in, a breaking ball down, and then he can go up to change the eye level. His effectiveness is based on him being able to command the lower part of the zone first.”
Lynch, who would’ve been headed for Double-A to start 2020, also improved his ability to hold base runners. Controlling the running game is a laser focus of Royals manager Mike Matheny.
Jackson Kowar
Kowar’s change-up has been a devastating complement to a fastball in the mid to upper 90s, but during spring training he battled inconsistent feel for his change-up as he worked to develop his curveball.
“That’s something that he went through in the summer, early,” Gibson said. “There was a point in time where his change-up suffered when he was working on his curveball. You never want to lose a pitch to gain another pitch. At the same time, you know from history that it’s going to take three pitches on most nights to be effective.”
As they got into more full-squad games in fall camp, Kowar began putting things together. He impressed in his last two starts.
“Another silver lining in this thing is he didn’t have to work on his curveball in Double-A or Triple-A games,” Gibson said. “He got to work on it in situations where it doesn’t mean that much. I think he now has a foundation for all three (pitches). We’ll see the best of the return on that next year when he’s facing live competition.”
Had there been a minor-league season, Kowar would have been slated to begin the year at Triple-A.
Asa Lacy
The level and amount of exposure top pitching prospects get varies greatly in their first summer of professional baseball under normal circumstances. Lacy, the left-hander out of Texas A&M, hardly entered the Royals organization under typical conditions.
Lacy threw just 24 innings in college this year before the season’s cancellation. The Royals added him to their alternate-site training group the second week of August.
“I do think we got a really good look at him this year,” Picollo said. “Not only did we see outings and get to see it every fifth day, every sixth day throughout the fall, but we also go to see him pitch against better competition than he would have this summer. He was pitching against a lot of Double-A and Triple-A hitters. He wouldn’t have had that opportunity this summer.”
Just as he stretched out enough to make full starts, an eye condition and subsequent procedure sidelined him for 10 days as a precaution. Once he returned to the field, he continued to flash an advanced repertoire.
“The stuff is special,” Gibson said. “The curveball, the slider and the change-up, are all out pitches. All he really needs to do is see professional hitters so he can start game planning on how his stuff will play at this level and above.”
The next group
Baseball America and MLBPipeline also include left-hander Austin Cox, right-hander Jonathan Bowlan, right-hander Jon Heasley, right-hander Zach Haake and right-hander Alec Marsh among the top 30 Royals prospects.
Gibson said the next group of pitching prospects is “not so far behind in terms of stuff, in terms of pitchability, in terms of maturity and in terms of fielding their position and holding runners.”
The Royals included Cox in the initial 60-player pool for spring training 2.0, while Bowlan, Heasley and Marsh were all brought to the alternate site in September.
During the fall camps in Kansas City and Arizona, 120 minor-league players played under the direction of the Royals player-development coaches and staff.
Bowlan, a second-round draft pick in 2018, is an imposing figure at 6-foot-6, 260-pounds. He features an above average fastball with great command. He earned mid-season All-Star honors at Low-A Lexington in 2019, and he threw a no-hitter without a walk for High-A Wilmington in July 2019. He saw a velocity uptick this year.
Cox, drafted in the fifth round out of Mercer in 2018, features a strong fastball-curveball combination. He excels at commanding his pitches and is viewed as a “supreme competitor.” He also earned mid-season All-Star honors at Low-A Lexington in 2019. Cox is viewed as a high-upside prospect.
Marsh, a competitive-balance round pick in 2019, features a four-pitch mix that includes a fastball, curveball, slider and change-up. The change-up is the fourth of the pitches. Marsh finished his first professional season with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 38-to-4 in 2019.
Right-hander Noah Murdock, a seventh-round pick out of the University of Virginia in 2019 has come “out of nowhere” to put himself on the radar this year without minor-league games. His fastball velocity jumped to as high as 99 mph with heavy sink and a breaking ball to go with it.
While Murdock doesn’t have the profile of some of the other top-rate prospects, the 6-foot-8 right-hander has added weight and gotten stronger and showed up at fall camp throwing 97-99 mph in what Gibson called a “pleasant surprise.”
