The Royals are red-hot and benefiting from a luxury they haven’t had in years
A day after Noah Cameron conducted a no-hitter into the seventh inning in his MLB premiere last week in Tampa, the Royals … demoted him.
With staff standard-bearer Cole Ragans ready to return from a groin injury, Cameron promptly was headed back to Triple-A Omaha despite one of the most scintillating debuts in club history.
Sure, it’s tough to send someone down after that sort of performance, Royals general manager J.J. Picollo said the other day.
But it also illuminates something vital, and even transformative, that the Royals couldn’t relish more.
Because they have one of the best starting rotations in baseball (and one of the best in franchise history) for a second straight season, they’re benefiting from a luxury they’ve seldom, if ever, enjoyed in modern times.
A luxury that going forward seems a necessity for sustained success considering the small-market financial realities in baseball.
Instead of fast-forwarding and at times almost forcing their top pitching prospects to the major leagues sooner than ideally — as they’d resorted to at times over a generation-plus producing few home-grown starting pitchers — the Royals now can cultivate depth at a more natural pace.
So much so that they can allow prospects to simmer to critical mass, and maybe even beyond, before bringing them up.
That’s a preaching they’ve been practicing with the likes of much-trumpeted top prospect Jac Caglianone.
But the dynamics are similarly essential, if not more so, when it comes to nurturing the lifeblood of starting pitching — the component of the team that was resuscitated through shrewd trades and free-agent signings after ghastly 2022 and 2023 seasons punctuated years of games swiftly lost because of that glaring Achilles heel.
Now the rotation so instrumental in the Royals’ return to the postseason last year and winning start this season also is buoying the next wave — and, heck, likely even helping develop chess pieces for future trades.
“Giving guys more time in the minor leagues,” Picollo said, “is always the right thing for development.”
To a certain degree, Picollo acknowledged that’s a matter of logic and not easy to quantify. Certainly, it bears looking at more closely and specifically as the season goes on.
But in addition to obviously enabling more emotional maturity for anyone, there’s an entirely pragmatic dimension to it, as nicely exemplified by Cameron: In spring training this year, he added a slider that became a key part of his arsenal in Omaha and, thus, in Tampa.
The sort of development, in other words, he wouldn’t likely have been able to experiment with up here in the majors.
Being able to take “all the proper steps,” as Picollo put it, is a long way from the prevailing mindset just a few years ago.
With scant depth, the Royals were prone to over-extending young players because they’d shown a fleeting glimmer of promise. Or due to an all-too-real but nonetheless warped sense of need.
Or some combination thereof.
“We’ve all been there,” Picollo said, speaking to the ways it could go. “‘We have a hole here. That’s our best guy. He may not be ready. But we’ve got to bring him up, because we’re supposed to win here every night.’”
While Picollo stresses that starting pitching is always fragile and you can never have enough, it’s the polar opposite of the cycle the Royals were stranded in for a good while.
Exhibit A in that part of the conversation was Kris Bubic, who happily enough had a 1.98 ERA through seven starts entering Thursday to lead the way in a rotation featuring 2024 Cy Young finalists Seth Lugo (second) and Cole Ragans (fourth) and former All-Stars Michael Wacha and Michael Lorenzen.
Collectively through Wednesday, the group (including Cameron’s one start) ranked second in the majors with a 3.02 ERA and led all of baseball with 217.1 innings pitched and 18 quality starts.
Bubic has grown into this role through an arduous journey that included bounding from Single-A Lexington in 2019 to the parent club in 2020.
While part of that abrupt leap stemmed from the fallout of the pandemic, including the minor-league season being canceled, that’s not what would happen today.
“Looking back on it,” Picollo said, “if there were a minor-league season (in 2020), he probably would have been there.”
Or as Bubic put it Tuesday: “I think just the state of the organization at the time, the lack of depth, maybe forced the issue a little bit.”
Starting with a 1-6 record that first season, Bubic was 10-26 through his first three seasons primarily as a starter, with his ERA ballooning to 5.58 during his 3-13 season in 2022.
“Looking back at 2021,” Bubic said, “I was due for some regression.”
By which he meant “beneath the surface numbers,” such as home runs and walks allowed that were masked by average ERAs.
Bubic felt revived after that 2022 season by his chemistry with new pitching coach Brian Sweeney. And it showed in his first few starts in 2023 before he suffered a season-ending arm injury that required Tommy John surgery.
He came back better than ever in the bullpen a year ago and earned his starting role in the spring in the wake of Brady Singer being traded to Cincinnati for leadoff man Jonathan India.
Naturally, Bubic appreciates how his own path unfurled, believes he learned things at the major-league level that he just couldn’t have in the minors and wouldn’t change a thing.
Just the same, he looks back now and realizes the “stuff he was rolling with” in Single-A ball in 2019 “wasn’t necessarily going to translate all the way to this level.”
And he reckons there were some things he now sees as simple that he didn’t yet know about himself, or the game, that diminished his performances in those first years.
Meanwhile, he also perceives more organizational cohesion under the current regime, from the front office through manager Matt Quatraro to and through the entire system.
All of which, he senses, would make the transition much smoother now — especially since being overnighted is far less likely.
“The environment is so much more collaborative …” Bubic said. “I think there’s always a trickle-down effect. What you see at the big-league level is kind of essentially … (a) mirror image to the rest of the minor leagues.”
He meant in terms of sophistication and “crystal-clear” messaging throughout the system.
But he could just as easily have meant how it reflects the fundamental difference activated by excellence at the top, an advantage the Royals can embrace for the first time in forever.
This story was originally published May 8, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "The Royals are red-hot and benefiting from a luxury they haven’t had in years."