Why time is on side of KC Royals’ rookie pitchers ... even through their struggles

So one night I’m in the press box watching Tim Collins pitch for the Royals, and he throws a breaking pitch in the dirt. The batter doesn’t swing and Collins gets a funny look on his face.

Sitting right next to me is former Royals pitcher Paul Splittorff, who starts laughing and then says: “They swing at that in the minors.”

So a pitch that Collins used to get batters out in the minor leagues, a pitch that helped get him to the big leagues, didn’t work once Collins got there.

Now what?

Wade Davis

One day Royals reliever Wade Davis starts talking about rookie hitters and explains why some of them look like Babe Ruth’s long lost cousin for a month or two, and just about the time people are ready to buy the player a ticket to Cooperstown, he stops hitting.

Here’s how Davis explained that: “The zone fills up.”

Pitchers get diagrams that show what part of the zone a hitter hits well and what part of the zone he doesn’t hit well, and once he gets enough at-bats the patterns become clear.

Early on, the hitter was doing well because pitchers were still finding out he hits the heck out of down-and-in pitches, but scuffles against fastballs up and in.

Jason Kendall

Ask former Royals catcher Jason Kendall the toughest pitcher he ever faced and he’ll say, “Anyone I haven’t seen before.”

Turns out you can watch video until your eyes bleed and read scouting reports until your head aches, but until you stand in the box and see for yourself how a pitcher’s slider moves you don’t know for sure. And that might give a rookie pitcher a temporary advantage while hitters are still figuring him out.

As Royals fans might recall, in 2014 Brandon Finnegan had a 1.29 ERA after seven regular-season games. After seven post-season games, his ERA was 10.50.

That’s how fast teams were adjusting.

Eric Hosmer

In former Royals star Eric Hosmer’s rookie season, he hit .293. But slumped in his second season and some thought maybe he would benefit from a trip back to the minors (it’s pretty much what we always suggest to “fix” somebody, because we don’t know enough about hitting mechanics to suggest anything else).

KC general manager Dayton Moore thought otherwise. After all, the Royals already knew what Hosmer could do in the minor leagues.

Hosmer hit .439 in Omaha in 2011, and the Royals figured he needed to be in the big leagues to learn how to hit in the big leagues: the level of competition in the minors wasn’t good enough to expose the flaws in Hosmer’s approach.

Jeff Montgomery

One day former Royals pitcher-turned-broadcaster Jeff Montgomery told me he could throw a first-pitch “get-me-over” breaking pitch (a pitch thrown with less movement, which makes it easier to control and throw for a strike) to veteran Kirk Gibson.

He knew Gibson had a plan at the plate and was probably looking for a first-pitch fastball and would take that breaking pitch for a strike. He also knew that if he threw the same “get-me-over” breaking pitch to a rookie hitter who had no plan, he might hit it out of the park.

When someone hits a homer, we discuss the merits of the pitch. But sometimes it’s not the pitch, it’s who you throw it to.

Confidence

All this comes up because some of the Royals’ rookie pitchers have scuffled, and one of the fixes might be to send them to the bullpen because then they can quit worrying about throwing six innings and saving pitches for later at-bats. The thinking goes that they could therefore start worrying about throwing one inning, drop their third-best pitch and empty the tank on their fastball.

Going to the bullpen turned the aforementioned Davis into a beast.

But you also hear coaches talk about the importance of “confidence,” which sounds kind of mystical, like if I was just confident enough I could pitch in the big leagues, which isn’t what they mean (although I’m sure it would give everybody a good laugh).

A rookie pitcher comes up to the big leagues and a pitch that got a swing-and-a-miss in the minors gets hammered. So the rookie pitcher gets timid and starts nibbling at the edges of the zone and ends up falling behind in the count or walking somebody.

Pay attention and you’ll see a whole bunch of pitchers walk the next batter after somebody hits a home run because they lost confidence in their stuff. It stinks when your pitch gets hit out of the park, but losing confidence in your stuff makes everything worse.

When Seattle Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto was still pitching, a pitching coach asked him what pitch he’d throw in a 2-0 count. When Dipoto said fastball, the coach said: So somewhere in the first three pitches you’re probably going to throw a fastball ... how about throwing it before everybody in the park knows you’re going to?

Sometimes it’s not the pitch, it’s when you throw it.

A pitcher can get away with a first-pitch fastball strike because the hitter isn’t sure he’s going to throw one, but that same fastball will get hit lopsided if it’s thrown 2-0 because the hitter expects one.

After former KC pitcher Jason Vargas gave up a spring training home run, he told me he wasn’t upset about the home run pitch, he was upset about the pitches that came earlier in the at-bat — pitches that all but forced him to throw a fastball strike when the hitter knew Vargas was about to throw a fastball strike.

We tend to focus on the pitch that was put in play — it was a good or bad pitch — but sometimes it’s the pitch before that pitch that decided the at-bat.

So sometimes it’s not the pitch, it’s the pitch sequence.

Back to Tim Collins

In Collins’ rookie season, his ERA after six games was 0.00. Early on, the advantage went to the new guy.

In his next seven games, however, Collins’ ERA was 12.00. The league was figuring him out and refusing to swing at chase pitches, like the one that made the late Splittorff laugh out loud.

But Collins adjusted back and by the end of the season his ERA was 3.63.

As you might have already guessed, this is why baseball is called a “game of adjustments” ... and the players that can’t adjust don’t last long.

Right now, all those rookie pitchers are trying to figure out what adjustment they need to make, whether that adjustment is physical or mental. And they won’t know what works in the bigs until they try out those adjustments big-league hitters.

One more thought before I go.

Three years

I once asked everybody on the Royals who’d played at least 10 years in the majors how long it took to figure things out.

How long until they understood what worked and what didn’t work, what routine was best for them, what video to study, what scouting report to ignore — basically, how long to become a legitimate big-league ballplayer.

The most common answer I got was three years.

For instance, Salvador Perez, Mike Moustakas, Hosmer, Kelvin Herrera and Danny Duffy all made it to the big leagues in 2011, and by 2014 they were ready for prime time.

We all want to rush to judgment — this guy’s good, that guy’s bad — but it takes a while to figure out who’s a legitimate big-leaguer and who isn’t, and who’s going to be around a while and who’s going to have a short stay. And until these guys get enough exposure to big-league competition, even the Royals themselves won’t know for sure.

So neither will we.

In these days of instant opinions and snap-judgments delivered in a split-second on social media platforms, patience it still a virtue.

Especially if you’re a baseball fan.