The Royals have been unable to find reliable starting pitchers this year. Kansas City’s rotation at the beginning of the season started out looking like this:
Danny Duffy
Brad Keller
Mike Minor
Brady Singer
Kris Bubic
Of those five pitchers, the Royals have been only able to get good starts from Mike Minor and Brady Singer. Unfortunately, Minor’s stats don’t show he’s been a good addition to the rotation thus far. Duffy at the beginning of the season looked very dominant before suffering an injury. Brad Keller on the other hand, has struggled mightily to this point of the season with a 6.39 ERA and hasn’t gone as deep into games as I had hoped. The fifth spot in the rotation tails off badly for the Royals with Kris Bubic. Bubic this season hasn’t been a dependable starter for the Royals this year. Bubic hasn’t been able to go very deep into games, sometimes not even five innings. I believe the Royals might want to option Bubic to Triple-A to let him develop more as a pitcher. If the Royals do decide to option Bubic, they have options on the active roster to fill his spot. Those options include Carlos Hernandez and Ervin Santana. The Royals have been using Kyle Zimmer as a starter too, but I don’t think that has worked out; and Ervin Santana, I believe he has settled into his new role in the Royals bullpen.As for Carlos Hernandez, he has a 6.60 ERA, and the Royals have been using him out of the bullpen as well. I believe at this point, the Royals might want to consider bringing in a veteran pitcher to round out the rotation for the remainder of the season. The Royals should look into bringing back Edison Volquez to fill the unstable fifth spot in the rotation. Now 37, Volquez has spent the last two seasons with the Texas Rangers organization. His time with the Rangers didn’t go great with his ERA above 6.00 in both seasons. The Royals would easily be able to sign him to a minor league contract. It’s important to point out, if the Royals did sign Volquez he would need time to stretch out in Omaha as a starter before joining the Royals rotation. My expectations for Volquez would be for him to go at least five innings per start for Kansas City the remainder of the season allowing the Royals young pitchers to continue to develop for the year 2022.
