The rising star of Jac Caglianone — and why the Kansas City Royals won’t rush it
On the Double-A Northwest Arkansas Naturals 10-hour bus ride back from San Antonio on Sunday, Jac Caglianone slept some and watched “Spider-Man Homecoming” and the animated action-comedy “Surf’s Up.”
He returned to the “great” new apartment he shares with another prominent Royals prospect, catcher Carter Jensen. And he got to spend a few hours with his fiancee, Elli McKissock, a pro volleyball player who was just called up by the Orlando Valkyries.
Fans are clamoring for a similar activation of Caglianone, the anticipated Next Big Thing for a parent club that needs it: As of Thursday morning entering their doubleheader sweep of struggling Colorado (4-20), the Royals (12-14) had the most feeble offense in Major League Baseball (2.96 runs a game).
Caglianone can’t help but be keenly aware of the eyes on him. Perhaps especially since he had registered 10 hits, including a grand slam, in his previous 16 at-bats as this was typed Thursday afternoon.
Even as one who avoids social media because “I don’t really care to look at that kind of stuff,” no wonder he can sense the hopes being stockpiled on his considerable 6-foot-5, 250-pound shoulders.
But the earnest 21-year-old also is fully embracing the seasoning that includes such minor-league rites of passage as the eternal bus rides he bypassed while playing at the University of Florida and flying to the Gators’ most distant game sites.
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It’s not hard for him, he said in an interview with The Star on Tuesday, to be right where his feet are, and even to relish the one-moment-at-a-time approach that will suit him best toward getting called up to Kansas City … and staying there.
“That day’s going to come,” he said, “hopefully sooner rather than later.”
Hitting off Clayton Kershaw
As it happened, Tuesday was at least a symbolically momentous day toward that future for Caglianone — whose size and rare thunder of bat impact evokes echoes of Babe Ruth and Josh Gibson and, heck, even mythical images of Paul Bunyan and Roy Hobbs, aka “The Natural.”
Sometimes when you’re where your feet are, it turns out, stuff might just come to you.
For one thing, there was the matter of facing 10-time All-Star Clayton Kershaw, who was on an injury rehabilitation assignment for the Tulsa Drillers. When Caglianone learned he’d be facing a childhood idol he tried to emulate as a pitcher, he thought, “What? That can’t be right.”
As he spoke about the opportunity a couple of hours before the game, he seemed both awe-struck and utterly unfazed. His plate appearances reflected that.
When he had to whirl away from a curveball over his head on the second pitch from Kershaw, you could see Caglianone smiling. That’s because, he later said, he was thinking how bad and funny he would have looked if that ball had broken back for a strike.
Then he got back in the box and ultimately thwacked an RBI double to left on a 2-2 fastball outside off a superstar with 212 big-league wins and a career ERA of 2.50.
As he stood on second base, Caglianone looked toward Tulsa shortstop Sean McClain and couldn’t help but grin and share the moment.
“‘That was pretty cool,’” said Caglianone, who in his other appearance against Kershaw singled up the middle on a 3-2 fastball after whiffing on a 3-1 slider.
Learning to play outfield
Beyond the fact Caglianone reached base five times that day, including with another hit, a walk and a hit-by-pitch, something else cool happened.
An intriguing and specific new phase of his development: in-depth outfield work that led to him starting in right field Thursday night.
Caglianone, the sixth overall pick in the 2024 MLB Draft, was selected as both a hitting and pitching prospect. At least for the foreseeable future, the Royals have sought to simplify things by having him work just on hitting and fielding primarily as a first baseman.
At least since spring training, though, they’ve spoken of soon seeking to add to his versatility — and, in fact, their own options — by having him learn to play the outfield.
While he’s been power shagging in the outfield all along, as of Tuesday afternoon he had his first true training session with Royals roving instructor and outfield and base-running guru Rusty Kuntz.
It’s literally not unfamiliar ground for Caglianone, who played outfield in high school and said he “loves it out there” where “I can finally kind of let it eat” — cut loose — by throwing people out.
There’s plenty more to process than that, of course.
And not just in the sense that Caglianone and his teammates weren’t immediately sure what Kuntz was conveying with hand signals as he machine-launched balls to the outfield.
“That was funny,” said Caglianone, who frequently laughs or smiles when he speaks.
While Royals director of player development Mitch Maier observed that Caglianone has been reading spins and trajectories well off the bat, he knows there’s ample work ahead in everything from communication to footwork to playing walls and corners. And all the other nuances of the outfield.
As for the matter of his speed, well, Caglianone’s Baseball Savant profile rated him a 40 — 50 is average on that scale that goes up to 80.
But for what it’s worth from the eye test, he hardly looks lumbering when he runs and is proud of having an infield hit this season and how his speed is otherwise measured.
Plus …
“If you go by ‘MLB The Show,’ I’m (a) 59,” he said. “Not great, but not bad.”
We’ll see more of what that looks like — on the Naturals’ circuit, anyway — in the near future: Northwest Arkansas manager Brooks Conrad reckons Caglianone soon will be playing several games a week in the outfield.
As for when we might see any of this in Kansas City?
Why the Royals won’t rush Caglianone
For all his enthralling feats of strength and evident progress, for all the Royals’ offensive issues, the club won’t rush Caglianone here.
Not because they don’t covet what they hope he will soon-ish provide.
But because they view this, his first full season in professional baseball, as a crucial and fundamental baseline step.
Perhaps it’s not unlike what they recently prescribed for another gem-in-the-making, Bobby Witt Jr., who in 2021 spent several months with the Naturals before being promoted to Triple-A Omaha and making his major-league debut in 2022.
And, no, their judgment apparently won’t be skewed by the aching needs at Kauffman Stadium.
“That’s the worst time to bring a guy up … especially one that’s a high-profile player,” general manager J.J. Picollo said in a recent interview with The Star.
While he knows adding pressure on Caglianone will be hard to avoid whenever he arrives because “people are going to think he’s the savior,” the optimal approach would be to blend him in as a complementary part when the team is playing well.
Besides, the Royals want Caglianone first to just keep racking up plate appearances with the Naturals — he hasn’t yet had 100 through Wednesday — and at least to see opposing pitchers more than once to learn to deal with adjustments.
Speaking shortly into the season, Picollo alluded to several mileposts he was looking for Caglianone to achieve and that he largely appears to be reaching: how he’s faring against quality pitching; pitch selection; hitting all over the field; working walks, etc.
Through 17 games, Caglianone was hitting .263 with four home runs, four doubles and 20 RBIs with nine walks — and 19 strikeouts — in 83 plate appearances.
Significantly, he also seems so far to be able to ride out a slump, a trait Picollo believes will be crucial in his advancement. and staying power.
Why facing adversity matters
How he processed a recent 0-for-16 spell might be as reassuring to the Royals as his recent hot streak.
That funk was in the wind-whipping Nelson Wolff Municipal Stadium in San Antonio, where Caglianone by multiple accounts thumped several balls either right at fielders or that got snarled in the vortex.
Churn and chafe as he might have inside, Conrad said Caglianone did “an outstanding job” of not letting that carry over to the field or basepaths. He worked a few walks and kept the right plate approach, extensions of the sort of progress and character Conrad also witnessed managing Caglianone in Single-A Quad Cities last year.
It helped that Caglianone is a voracious learner. He turned to a notebook full of advice and wisdom from teammates such as Witt and others that he began cultivating in spring training.
It also helped that this hardly is the first time Caglianone has had to deal with something going awry.
Most notable in his makeup, he suffered an arm injury shortly before the MLB Draft his senior year of high school and required Tommy John surgery — a development that led to more of an emphasis on hitting a few years ago.
He now sees that as a “blessing in disguise, weird as it is to say,” because it helps explain why he’s here now.
Still, the relatively brief slump was a fresh test of his resolve and perspective.
And even knowing he was hitting the ball well but without the results to show, Caglianone had a flickering thought that he should maybe “soft-serve” a swing just to get an equally soft hit.
But he also came to recognize that this isn’t the time to settle.
“‘Dude, just stay exactly where you are,’” he remembered telling himself. “‘You’re good, you’re fine.’”
Thus steadied, he figured “everything will take care of itself; just like it did the last couple days.”
The signature of that was breaking out of it Saturday in San Antonio with a three-hit day — highlighted by his grand slam, yet another legendary blast already, off the right-field scoreboard through wind he said was still howling.
Part of what will have fans further howling to see him here before long.
What’s Caglianone’s timeline?
Certainly if he keeps up this pace, it’s hard to imagine him being in Northwest Arkansas more than another several weeks.
“How many at-bats? I don’t know how many at-bats it’ll be,” Picollo said when we spoke days into Northwest Arkansas’ season, later adding, “We’ll have guys evaluating him every night. That’s going to be part of the decision-making.”
The pivot point essentially will be when he’s no longer challenged at Double-A, both Picollo and Meier said.
Neither specified any sort of timeline.
Speaking generally in Springdale on Tuesday, Meier said, “If you’re better than the league and you’re ready for the next challenge, we’re not going to hold you back.”
Whenever they choose to move him up, though, Caglianone almost certainly will be bound first for Triple-A Omaha.
An assignment he’ll embrace as this one, embracing the process and biding his time through every essential step toward making the true call-up sooner than later and lasting.