Anyone can appreciate talents of Royals’ top prospect. What’s behind them is the key
During a January spring training orientation for first-year Royals players, one particular dynamic struck general manager J.J. Picollo as guests addressed the audience:
The attentiveness of Jac Caglianone, the sixth overall selection in the 2024 MLB Draft who is ranked 22nd overall by MLB.com and has rapidly emerged as an exhilarating prospect.
“If his head wasn’t down taking notes, he was the one asking questions,” Picollo recalled. “That’s a little different, because he knows he’s the best guy in the room.”
That anecdote helps explain why Caglianone’s Bunyanesque exploits here figure to be more than some spring mirage.
And why his future with the parent club seems to be hovering just over a horizon of another season of experience ... with potential to be sooner .
It’s one thing to witness the jaw-dropping talent and sheer physical presence of the chiseled 6-foot-5, 250-pound 22-year-old — gifts illustrated this spring with three mesmerizing home runs and a double (in 12 at-bats through March 11) and batting practice sessions that evoke a religious experience.
The thwack of those three homers, including the first one that left Surprise Stadium at 115.4 mph as the third-hardest hit homer by a Royal in the last decade, and the blunt crack of his BP swats made me think of Buck O’Neil’s observation upon watching Bo Jackson hit on the 1986 day he signed with the Royals.
That day, the man who’d heard the impact of Babe Ruth and Josh Gibson at the plate thought, “Here is that sound again!”
Hyperbole?
No doubt.
Exhaling now.
But it’s hard to resist the wonder of the spectacle and the possibilities it suggests.
Especially when you get a sense of what informs it beyond the obvious — including the earnestness, humility and respect for the game and all that’s around him reflected in his approach to that meeting.
Then and ever since, Caglianone has been filling a notebook with the wisdom of those who came before him.
Like from Alex Gordon, whom Caglianone asked to elaborate on early struggles and what it was like to move from third base to the outfield.
And from, among others, current peers such as Bobby Witt Jr., Vinnie Pasquantino and Jonathan India.
From inquiring about what it was like for them at this point in their own careers to, say, pointers from Pasquantino about playing first base, Caglianone picks their brains, simmers things down to one key aspect of the advice and jots it down.
Then he goes back through it.
“Especially,” he said, “if I feel like I go through one day where I feel like I wasn’t where I wanted to be.”
In interviews with The Star, Witt and Pasquantino raved about Caglianone’s work ethic and tools and said they are just doing what they can to help him keep it all simple.
“He might need to slow down a little bit in the (batting) cage,” Pasquantino said, smiling. “We don’t need to be taking 200 swings. But that’s something I get. Been there. Something you learn from experience.”
To Caglianone, that sort of input is part of what he considers a vast “baseball dictionary” all around him.
“I’ll be the first one to ask anybody questions,” he said, later adding, “I pull bits and pieces from everybody and see what works for me.”
Just the same, it starts with a tremendous foundation — both literally in his stature and figuratively in his mindset.
That’s why the Royals felt it was appropriate to invite him to major-league camp — the first time they’ve done so with a first-year player since 2009 draftee Aaron Crow.
You can feel that sincerity in the handshake that might envelop your end of it and may buckle your knees. And you can find it in the steady eye contact and mannerly answers when he speaks.
And you can get a sense of it from how at ease he seems to feel engaging around the clubhouse a mere year from when he would be spending these mornings in an 8 a.m. class at the University of Florida — where he also was such a promising pitcher that he considered it “basically half of who I was as a ballplayer.”
So much so that he still tends to use some of his pitching arsenal when he has a routine catch with a teammate, he said, “just so I don’t ever lose feeling” and “if the day ever comes where they’re like, hey, get back on the mound. I’m not going to be starting from ground zero.”
For the foreseeable future, though, he is being cultivated as a hitter playing first base who also seems likely to get some advanced outfield tutelage in the months to come.
On a recent trip to Surprise, he could be seen in right field shagging balls during batting practice.
And letting go of pitching, at least for the time being, doesn’t seem to have presented any sort of identity crisis.
When I recently asked him how the overall acclimation is going, he smiled and might as well have shrugged when he said it “feels like home.”
When I asked him what the biggest challenge has been, he paused for several seconds.
Then without a trace of cockiness, he smiled and said, “Hasn’t really been one. The biggest thing has been just to not get too ahead of myself. Don’t go out there and try to do too much (or) force stuff to happen.
“Let the game come to me, and everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.”
How that will translate in the next few years — or perhaps next few months? — is a matter of conjecture.
The Royals wouldn’t have invited him to major-league camp if they weren’t further enticed by his 2024 progress in High-A Quad Cities and the Arizona Fall League and seeking to accelerate his development.
But at this stage he seems most likely to start the season at Double-A Northwest Arkansas.
Because no doubt plenty of challenges have yet to surface. And there’s zero point in rushing him before he’s experienced the ebb and flow of the gradual climb — and demonstrated he can handle the looming hurdles with which all young prospects ultimately have to contend.
At least into the first days of March, Royals manager Matt Quatraro said he’s been “intentionally kind of hands-off” with Caglianone because of all the attention being lavished on him and the fact that he’s been “well-communicated with” by Picollo and the front office.
While noting all his interactions have been “phenomenal,” Quatraro added that what he wants right now is for Caglianone to “just enjoy this” phase.
From his perch, Picollo also is inclined to be patient.
He knows Caglianone has yet to consistently see the sort of pitching he might encounter even in Double-A ball, and he reckons he’s going to be striking out some before he becomes who the Royals figure he’ll be.
Just the same …
“When he stands in the box,” he said, “you feel good.”
All the more so because of his attitude.