KC Royals: Pitching and hitting prospect notes from Spring Training

Daniel Lynch, Starting Pitcher

Lynch threw looked good out of the wind-up and struggled with command out of the stretch. His fastball sat between 92 – 95 mph, working mostly inside on righties. He missed his location with a few fastballs intended for the inside out-over the plate (Javier Baez ripped a lead off line-drive single off Lynch in his first inning of work).

Lynch threw his curveball at 79 – 80 mph and it looked really sharp with good movement (1 to 7 o’clock movement) and command. None of the Chicago Cubs batters put a bat on the curveball.

Lynch didn’t have his command on his plus slider, which sat around 81 – 83 mph. He threw one of his sliders into the dirt resulting in a wild pitch. His slider has about good movement late on approach to the batter and is a plus offering if the command is there.

Didn’t see much of the change-up, but he threw it around 85 mph and the pitch is at least average. There isn’t much noticeable movement on the pitch and he missed his location to right hand hitters throwing the change-up inside instead of low and away.

Performance

• Got into a jam after lead-off single (Baez), threw ball away on pick-off attempt (runner advanced to second), then wild pitch with no outs (runner advanced to third).
• Proceeded to work more comfortably out of stretch to get Heyward to pop-out to infield, then got a weak line-out to infield, then a strikeout to end the inning.
• Lynch struggled with his command in his second inning of work, but worked out of a one out single and walk to get a double play.
• He had difficulty throwing consistently in strike zone out of the stretch in his second inning. Couldn’t get on-top of curveball, slider in the dirt, and fastball velocity was down to 89 mph to 91 mph more consistently.

Daniel Lynch has a lot of potential making life difficult for hitters with his length and movement on his breaking pitches. He needs to improve his consistency when working out of the stretch. Specifically, he needs to maintain his command and velocity.

Lynch’s stuff plays way up in short appearances, he needs to build up his endurance, so he can maintain his velocity later into his outings. I didn’t expect his breaking stuff to have this much movement, especially the curveball.

When his command is on, he could be a dominating starter.