The Royals are counting on their pitching development

The pitchers the Royals acquired at the trade deadline all have potential that they haven’t quite tapped into yet. Can the Royals pitching coaches help them take the next step?

The Kansas City Royals this season have received great performances from most of their starting pitchers. Cole Ragans may have struggled, but Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha picked up where they left off last season. Kris Bubic and Noah Cameron have been excellent, while Michael Lorenzen has been cromulent in his role as the fifth starter.

With Ragans, Bubic, and Lorenzen all hurt, and Bubic done for the year, the strength of the Royals team for the first half of the year quickly became an issue. Kansas City came into the year expecting Alec Marsh and Kyle Wright to be available by now, but neither has been able to get healthy. What had once been an area of real depth for the Royals needed to be addressed at the trade deadline.

The Royals brought in three guys Thursday who can all start; Ryan Bergert and Stephen Kolek from the San Diego Padres, and Bailey Falter from the Pittsburgh Pirates. All three pitchers have reasons to be skeptical about their ability to get outs, but all three also have an elite skill that makes them an intriguing pitcher. All three are under team control at least until 2029, giving the Royals pitching coaches time to work with these guys and see if any can take a leap.

Falter has been someone who can take the ball every five days. He started 28 games last season, and has made 22 starts this year. He hasn’t been great as a starter; his 3.73 ERA this year is good, but a 4.53 xERA and 4.86 FIP suggest that the Royals can’t expect him to keep up that level of run prevention. The southpaw does have an elite skill; he gets incredible extension on his pitches, 96 percentile among all pitchers according to Baseball Savant. That gives his fastball great shape and allows it to be a weapon despite his fastball velocity only averaging 92.1 mph.

Here’s are Falter’s Baseball Savant numbers and a graph of his pitch movement, which will give us a clue on what he needs to work on:

Falter gets great rise out of his four-seam fastball, but his delivery effects his other pitches as well. All of his pitches have more rise than you would expect out of them, but that isn’t actually a good thing for his sinker or curveball, which are way off compared to the MLB average. If the Royals can help Falter really master a third pitch that has more drop compared to his fastball and slider, he could take a step forward as a pitcher.

Bergert also has excellent four-seam fastball shape, and his slider is a better offering than Falter’s slider, but he too could use some more drop in his other offerings:

Like Falter, the sinker or the change need more drop to allow Bergert to give hitters a different look.

Bergert sports a sparkling 2.78 ERA, but a 4.44 xERA and 4.24 FIP suggest regression is coming at his current level. The rookie, however, has a better scouting pedigree than Falter or Kolek. Fangraphs had Bergert listed as the third best prospect in the Padres system, and specifically mentioned that he could move up a Future Value tier if he improved his changeup. Cameron’s peripherals this year have improved and started to match his ERA, so hopefully Bergert can travel a similar path.

I think its interesting that Bergert and Falter have so many similarities as pitchers. They both have below average fastball velocity, but their shape allows them to play up. Both need to work on a pitch that has more drop to unlock their next level as a pitcher. Both have had better run prevention this season than their peripherals would suggest. Finally, both are flyball pitchers, which should play well in Kauffman Stadium.

I think you can see in Falter and Bergert the type of starters that the Royals want to target and think they can help improve. While it’s certainly possible the Brian Sweeney and his team make quick adjustments with these guys, I’m also curious to see where they fit in 2026 and beyond. Bergert is a rookie, and Falter is not a free agent until 2029, so the Royals pitching regime will have a chance to work with all of them, and given their track record so far, I’m excited to see how it turns out.

Kolek as a pitcher fits more into the Lugo/Cameron archetype, although they aren’t a perfect comparison. He’s thrown six pitches this year, and mixes them up; his sinker is his most common pitch, and he’s only shown batters that pitch 26.4% of the time. Kolek, gives up a lot of hard contact, but most of it comes on the ground. His 50.6 GB% is in the 84th percentile of pitchers this season. To my amateur eye, there is less to dream on with Kolek. He looks like a groundball pitcher who might appreciate moving to a team with Bobby Witt Jr. and Maikel Garcia fielding grounders behind him. Not a bad piece, but I also don’t know what his next step as a pitcher to take would be.

As of right now, none of these guys looks like someone you would want to start in the playoffs, but the team needed guys who could at least throw passable major league innings to survive the rest of the season, and they acquired three of those guys. The Royals are still on the outside looking in for the playoffs this season, but it certainly feels a little more realistic after the deadline.

Still, I’m still getting used to the idea that the Royals can take pitchers who show flashes of potential, but also some warnings signs, and help them reach the best version of themselves. I doubt all three of these guys are in the Royals rotation next year, but if one can take a step up to be a potential playoffs level starter, it would give the Royals more depth in the rotation and in my mind count as a win for the front office and pitching coaches. There is work to be done with all three pitchers, but the Royals pitching development under Sweeney has shown that they should be up for the challenge.