BASEBALL Star UF alum Caglianone’s call-up to the Royals looms

BASEBALL
Star UF alum Caglianone’s call-up to the Royals looms
By Sam McDowell
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Hours before his major-league debut Monday afternoon, Royals rookie outfielder John Rave stood at his locker and recapped a whirlwind 24 hours. He made the drive from Omaha to Kansas City a day earlier, leaving a minor-league game midstream and catching the rest on the radio.
“We ended up winning,” Rave pointed out. “Cags hit another homer.
“Shocker.”
The day was about Rave, one for which he’d long been waiting, yet he still couldn’t help but mention a weeklong teammate in Omaha.
Funny, because it’s as if no one in Kansas City can help but mention him right now, either.
Tampa native Jac Caglianone, all of 22 years old and just 11 months removed from being drafted sixth overall, hit five home runs in his first week after a promotion to Triple-A Omaha. A blast Sunday traveled 459 feet at 108.6 mph off the bat.
His track to the major leagues might be moving at an even faster pace.
How fast? Well, that’s what we’re here to discuss because the wrong question — or perhaps ever-so-slightly misguided question — is prompting the conclusions about where Caglianone, a former University of Florida Gator, should be taking his left-handed swings.
A call-up to Kansas City should not be driven by wondering whether the Royals could use a bat like his in the lineup right now. They undoubtedly need help, or better yet they need their top hitters to perform at their top levels.
The Caglianone timeline instead should be — and has been — driven by analyzing a different part of the equation: When is the player ready?
Truly, that is simple.
Those two questions will at some point sync up identical answers, and it appears they will sync up sooner than anyone in the organization initially anticipated. A trip to KC is coming.
I get the urgency to expedite it. The Royals have struggled offensively, historically so for a team above .500, but that actually makes sticking with a proper Caglianone timeline harder, not easier.
For a team dead last in the majors in home runs, the impulse has to be to call up the guy hitting them in bunches in the minors. That would be the easy thing to do, but the concern is whether it would be a shortcut.
It’s OK to want a player to develop enough experience, good and bad, that he’s likely to stick, not just earn a shot at it. A month too late does far less damage to the team than a month too early could do to the player. Caglianone is under team control for six seasons, and those six seasons just have to take precedence over an immediate fix.
Look, I’m not disputing that Caglianone appears this close to major-league-ready. Those home run clips pop, even if the Royals aren’t exactly learning that Caglianone can hit a baseball a long way.
But that judgment alone is all that matters — whether he is major-league ready, not whether the major-league team is ready for him.
“It’s not fair to any player, whether it’s Jac Caglianone or whoever, when a team may be scuffling offensively, to try to put it on him and hope he’s going to come save the day,” Royals general manager J.J. Picollo said Monday. “The best way to break any player into the major leagues is to try to bring him up when the team’s hot offensively (and) scoring some runs.
“That’s not why he’s not coming up right now.”
OK, so why isn’t he?
I discussed that in a column earlier this month, and the fact we’re already revisiting it just a few weeks later is a testament to the player. The fact we’re having this conversation at all, just 350 plate appearances into his professional career, is too. It’s ridiculously early, and it takes a ridiculous player to force the issue.
The Royals are studying a combination of things. Those home runs matter, absolutely. So does hit hard-hit rate, chase rate, swing-and-miss rate and in-zone swing-and-miss rate. Those rated well enough to make a move from Double-A Northwest Arkansas to Triple-A Omaha.
The team will also analyze whether minor league pitchers — and now they’re more capable in Triple-A — will find a hole in his swing, how they’ll exploit it and how he’ll adjust to it.
Let me give you a couple of examples, but I’ll have to preface them by emphasizing these aren’t meant to be critical but rather points of analysis. Caglianone saw 78 pitches in his 28 plate appearances last week in Triple-A, an average of 2.79 per trip.
There are 168 qualified hitters in MLB, and the fewest pitches per appearance is the A’s Jacob Wilson. He’s at 3.18.
Caglianone swung at 62.8% of the pitches he saw last week, which ranks as the second-highest in Triple-A among hitters who have seen at least 50 pitches.
He’s swinging. A lot. That was the scouting report on him coming out of college.
To be clear, it would be laughable to suggest he shouldn’t have swung at a first pitch Sunday, as the ball is sailing over the fence in right. You don’t exactly want to change much with his approach on a five-HR week.
But the opposition will be changing, and that’s the point.
The Omaha Storm Chasers opened a week series at home against St. Paul, and you can bet St. Paul is aware of all of those statistics I just shared.
Caglianone will likely be pitched differently this week than he was his first. It’s not a bad idea to see how that happens and how he reacts.
That’s not expecting failure.
It’s better to prepare a player for success.
It’s fine to patiently take the step, even as the major-league team’s offense is struggling to take its next step.

 

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