Lorenzo Cain Rebounding From A Slow Start

It’s worth noting Cain’s service time status—I believe that if Cain is kept down another month or so, he’ll fail to reach a full year’s MLB service time between this year and last. With a player like Cain who is already a bit older and will likely never be a star, gaming service time isn’t a huge deal, but it’s one more reason to ride out the Melky situation for another month or two before making a move.

Melky has also been good, as in better than acceptable. He won’t likely keep up a .470 slugging percentage, but he’s projects as a roughly average centerfielder the rest of the way. He’s also got another season of arbitration before he hits free agency, so he might have some small value in a trade. The FO has made it pretty clear that Cain is going to get every chance to be the centerfielder of the future, so I expect they’ll try to make room for him this season, and unlike Guillen, Melky should be movable. If Melky were waived right now, I expect he’d be snatched up quickly.

Cain had a 27% strike out percentage at Omaha and an 8% walk. His hitting is ramping up, but he needs to sustain it for a few more weeks and get more selectivity and contact at the plate before he forces anything. It’s timing out well enough, Melky getting traded and Cain promoted, or even Lough, who is producing. Not like Cain is dominating and Melky doing a Kila at the moment.

“This Melky signing is looking worse and worse with every passing day.”

In hindsight. At the time, Royals didn’t have Cain and needed some filler til Lough or Dyson were ready. Melky’s doing a decent enough job and Cain still has some issues.

Looking at the minor league stats, one could argue that Lough is every bit as ready for a shot at the big leagues as Cain.

What I’m unsure about:

1) Lough’s defense
2) does the fact that the Royals thunder offensively is already predominately LH batting factor in to this?
3) Is Lough on the 40 man?

Looking at the big picture, one could argue that answers for the corner and DH spots are either already here (Gordon, Hosmer, Butler), or on the way (Moustakas, Myers).

That leaves the “up the middle” spots of 2B, SS, C, and CF. Perhaps it is OK to live with Escobar at SS for his defense – but to win championships, the Royals really need better players at the other spots. Perhaps this is where Moore needs to spend some of the FA dollars – on a star for one of these spots. Of course, since these are harder to fill, they will likely be very costly.

Instant promotion right?

Scott, living in New York, you may not have heard all of DM’s comments about callups. I’ll paraphrase something he said on Petro’s show last week:

He said that it was a lot more obvious when a SP was ready for a call than a position player, because you can evaluate his first pitch strike percentage, his strike percentage by pitch-type, and whether the opponent was swinging at “good” pitches or “good pitches out of the zone”. He went on to say that yes, major leaguers also swung at off speed stuff out of the zone, but to a lesser extent than minor leaguers.

He concluded by saying he thought it was critical that once a pitcher prospect is called up (regardless of his role), that he be called up for good, and that it wasn’t as critical for a position player if he had to be sent down again (jives with what he has done with Gordon and Butler).

Don’t know if I agree with this – but FWIW it is his modus operandi. I assume this implies that confidence/fragility is more of a potential issue for pitching prospects than for positon prospects.

So, perhaps Moore may even agree that Duffy is better than several of our current SPs – but he is going to be closer to 100% sure that he can come up and stick for good before he pulls the trigger?

Now rather or no DM does that we will have to see. Maybe I’m alone but I’m pretty happy with the free agent moves. Now if we don’t trade Melky before the deadline I could understand why people would be upset.

Duffy promotion incoming?