Kansas City Royals may lean on Danny Duffy to fill multiple roles on pitching staff
Friday night, Kansas City Royals vetern left-hander Danny Duffy made just his second relief appearance since the end of the 2016 season. However, Duffy pitching out of the bullpen may be a more regular occurrence for the remainder of this summer.
Duffy, who started and pitched two innings on Wednesday night in New York against the Yankees, pitched one inning of no-hit relief, struck out one and threw 15 pitches in Friday night’s loss to the Texas Rangers.
Asked what that means for Duffy’s usage going forward, Royals manager Mike Matheny said, “What that means is probably less of a ramp up in a traditional sense of what you’d normally look for and more of kind of what we saw before, keeping him to a modest pitch count. We’re trying to figure out how we can keep him on the mound as often as possible and keep him healthy. That’s really what it comes down to. We’ve had some talks with Danny, the medical team, sports science, obviously the front office as well.
“We’ll continue to give him starts, but limit how long that’s going to go. That’s where he’s running into trouble, when we push him. So if we can keep those shorter and then use him in between, kind of a hybrid, you’re still kind of pushing those pitch counts and limits, but you’re spreading them out a little bit instead of bundling them all to one particular outing. So it’s something that we’re going to give a try and see how Danny’s body responds.”
Through seven starts this season, Duffy has a 4-3 record with a 1.94 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, a .222 opponent’s batting average, 48 strikeouts and 12 walks in 41 2/3 innings. At the time, he had the seventh-best ERA among qualifying pitchers in the majors.
He went on the injured list on May 17 (retroactive to May 14) with a left-forearm flexor strain. He went six weeks between starts.
Matheny’s comments appeared to indicate lingering questions about Duffy’s potential durability and/or ability to consistently pitch extended outings coming off the flexor strain without having to be shut down again.
“How can we keep him healthy,” Matheny said. “How can we keep him being an effective part of our staff? What can we do to help him get there? I think there’s concern that if we run him out there every fifth day and stretch him as a starter deep into pitch counts, that we’re going to have to have more of the same.
“That’s something we’d like to stay away from, so is there a way we can still get him significant innings but do it in a different way? Today would have been his bullpen day, so instead of using a bullpen up, we used him on the mound and he threw the ball really well.”
Matheny said Duffy was still “lined up” to make a start in the next series against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park.
This story was originally published June 26, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
