Spring training dress rehearsals of Kansas City Royals pitching prospects Brady Singer, Jackson Kowar, Daniel Lynch and Kris Bubich were significant in that they indicated the group has collectively moved closer to the majors.
Only Singer hadn’t been sent to minor-league camp when MLB suspended spring training. While all four were expected to start the season in the minors, they’ve each shown enticing potential.
The quartet’s time as part of KC’s big-league camp served as a continuation of their development and a means of paving their way toward joining the major-league roster in the not-to-distant future.
Their collective progression will have an impact on the organization for years to come. The Royals didn’t have a fifth starter headed into spring training, and two of their certain starters, Danny Duffy and Mike Montgomery, could be free agents after the 2021 season.
The Royals have struggled in recent years to produce homegrown starting pitchers, and considerable draft capital went into acquiring their latest young foursome. All four were first-round draft picks in 2018 and have quickly grown to symbolize a new hope for the future.
“Some guys are just built for this game in the big leagues, and it shouldn’t take them long to get on that stage and figure it out on that stage,” Royals director of pitching performance Paul Gibson told The Star last month in Arizona. “For others, it takes longer. But I think this group of four, they’re all wired right. So I don’t think you worry as much as a coach as to whether they’re going to cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’ and take care of business.”
Gibson, 34 years into professional baseball, spent 19 seasons as a pitcher in the minors and majors, including stints with the Detroit Tigers, New York Mets and New York Yankees.
Gibson joined the Royals as a national supervisor in the fall of 2010, and he remained in that role through 2018, when the club drafted right-handers Singer and Kowar out of the University of Florida, left-hander Lynch from the University of Virginia and left-hander Bubic out of Stanford.
Baseball America ranked all four pitchers, along with left-hander Austin Cox, among the top-10 prospects in the Royals’ farm system.
“It’s somewhat of an anomaly for all four of them to be in the same place at the same time today,” Gibson said while all four were still in the Royals’ big-league camp. “Where they’re at is a little different than even what we expected maybe a year ago.”
The Royals had five pitchers among their top-10 prospects in 2011, the year Baseball America ranked theirs the top farm system in the game.
At the time, the group included John Lamb, Chris Dwyer, Aaron Crow, Montgomery and Duffy. Lamb, Montgomery and Duffy were all drafted out of California high schools.
Singer and Kowar were part of teams at Florida that won two SEC championships, appeared in the College World Series three times, went to the CWS as the top seed in the nation twice and won a national championship.
Lynch’s Virginia teams and Bubic’s Stanford teams were in NCAA Regionals two times apiece.
“There’s a level of maturity, a level of experience, that’s a little bit different when you’re talking about a collective group of these four guys, and it shows,” Royals assistant general manager J.J. Picollo said. “It shows in their knowledge of the game. It shows in their preparation, both on the field and off the field.”
