{"id":846571,"date":"2026-08-07T08:28:38","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T08:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/846571\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T08:28:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T08:28:38","slug":"royals-to-give-daniel-lynch-rotation-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/846571\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals To Give Daniel Lynch Rotation Opportunity"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Royals list southpaw\u00a0Daniel Lynch IV<\/a> as their probable starter for tomorrow\u2019s series opener against the Cubs. He\u2019ll oppose\u00a0Kevin Gausman<\/a> in the veteran righty\u2019s team debut with Chicago.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the first start of the season for Lynch. Anne Rogers of MLB.com<\/a> reports that the Royals intend to give the 29-year-old lefty a legitimate rotation audition. Previous fifth starter Luinder Avila<\/a> went down with an elbow injury and underwent<\/a> Tommy John surgery.<\/p>\n

The Royals needed someone to step into his rotation spot and essentially exhausted their depth. They\u2019ve also lost Cole Ragans<\/a>,\u00a0Stephen Kolek<\/a>,\u00a0Ryan Bergert<\/a> and\u00a0Ben Kudrna<\/a> for the season. Mitch Spence<\/a>, who went on the Triple-A injured list on Monday, is their only depth starter on the 40-man roster.<\/p>\n

Kansas City could\u2019ve selected an organizational depth arm like Vince Velasquez<\/a> or\u00a0Ryan Ramsey<\/a> to take the ball a few times in a noncompetitive season. Prospect Lucas Braun<\/a>, acquired from Atlanta for Lane Thomas<\/a>, is also essentially an MLB-ready option who\u2019ll hopefully be a back-end starter.<\/p>\n

The Royals instead opted to stretch out their top reliever. Lynch has tossed 46 innings of 1.96 ERA ball. He has a middling 19.1% strikeout rate but is getting ground-balls half the time with a sub-7% walk percentage. Lynch\u2019s peripherals are closer to average than elite, but he has without a doubt been the best pitcher in a dismal bullpen.<\/p>\n

Lynch came up as a starter and threw a career-high 131 2\/3 MLB innings in 2022. He was still starting regularly in Triple-A as recently as two years ago, though his limited big league action that season came mostly in relief. He has been a full-time reliever for the past two seasons, mostly in a single-inning capacity. Lynch has only recorded more than four outs three times all season. His season-high pitch count is 37, which came in one miserable inning in bad weather during a game against the Twins on April 1.<\/p>\n

The Royals will need to build Lynch\u2019s workload gradually. He\u2019d have time to make nine or ten starts if he keeps a rotation spot the rest of the way. By his third or fourth appearance, he could be pretty close to stretched out. Lynch has good control and a five-pitch mix that gives some confidence he can be a capable starter. He struggled in that role early in his career, but this is his first season relying more heavily on a sinker than on a bad four-seam fastball that was his primary pitch until 2025.<\/p>\n

This should be an audition for Lynch to try to secure a spot in next year\u2019s rotation.\u00a0Seth Lugo<\/a>,\u00a0Michael Wacha<\/a> and\u00a0Noah Cameron<\/a> will all be back. Although they\u2019ve gotten good stopgap work from Randy Dobnak<\/a>, he\u2019s a depth arm who shouldn\u2019t enter a season penciled into a rotation. There\u2019s very little talent in the upper minors, so there\u2019s a clear path for Lynch to compete with whatever offseason acquisitions the Royals make for a fourth or fifth starting role. Kansas City will also need to overhaul most of the bullpen this winter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Royals list southpaw\u00a0Daniel Lynch IV as their probable starter for tomorrow\u2019s series opener against the Cubs. He\u2019ll…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,405693,591,85],"class_list":["post-846571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-lynch","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}