Jordan Lyles News Sparks More Questions Than Answers for Royals
The Kansas City Royals' offseason activity picked up a bit last week when the club signed former Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Ryan Yarbrough to a one-year deal. As 2022 winds down and 2023 is on the horizon, it appears that the club is on its way to inking another free agent arm to a contract.
Initially reported by Jon Heyman of the New York Post, the Royals were "moving close" to a deal with right-handed pitcher Jordan Lyles late on Monday night. Just a handful of minutes later, Mark Feinsand of MLB.com and MLB Network added that the contract would be a two-year agreement. Lyles, 32, had his $11M club option declined by the Baltimore Orioles back in November and was subsequently bought out for $1M. After just over a month on the open market, the veteran is now set to join his eighth team since making his big-league debut back in 2011.
While the imminent signing of Lyles may appear to make a good deal of sense on the surface, peeling back the layers of the move raises more questions than answers. What exactly does Lyles offer Kansas City now that he has over a decade of experience under his belt, and how will this addition impact other elements such as the current rotation and other free agent endeavors? Let's take a closer look.
What does Jordan Lyles bring to the Royals?
Set to enter his 13th season at the MLB level, Lyles has been around the proverbial block a few times now. He sports a career 5.10 ERA with over 1,326 innings of work to his name. The primary draw with him is that he's an innings-eater, as he's made at least 30 starts in each of the past two seasons and hurled 180 innings in 2021 before going for 179 this past year. The second-biggest positive with Lyles is that he doesn't walk a ton of hitters. He posted a 2.61 BB/9 in 2022 and finished in the 65th percentile among all pitchers in walk rate.
In terms of offerings, Lyles has a five-pitch mix of a four-seam fastball, slider, sinker, changeup and curveball. The fastball is nothing special, as it sits at around 91 mph and opponents hit .286 against it in 2022. His secondary and tertiary offerings are mostly lackluster, but the curveball is a legitimate get-over pitch that helped him a ton quite recently. Lyles went to the curve 400 times this year, seeing an opponent batting average of just .205. Over the past three seasons, he's significantly decreased the usage of his four-seamer while increasing his sinker usage rate as a result.
While there are some benefits to having Lyles pitch for the Royals, he's never been worth two Wins Above Replacement and nine of his seasons have been worth less than 1 fWAR (with two being negative values). He doesn't strike out many hitters, doesn't have great deception and also doesn't limit hard contact. It's likely that pitching more at Kauffman Stadium will help lower Lyles' HR/9 allowed but at its core, this move appears to be Kansas City merely getting someone who can take the ball every fifth game and give them below-average work in an extended capacity compared to some of the team's other starters.
What does this mean for Kansas City's pitching staff?
Speaking of the Royals' other starters, adding Lyles into the fold means that he's going to assume a spot in the rotation. While he does have some relief experience in the past, he's been almost exclusively a starter for multiple years in a row. With Brady Singer firmly entrenched at or near the top of the pitching order and the aforementioned Yarbrough possibly factoring into that picture as well, that makes for at least two-and-a-half arms accounted for.
Elsewhere, there's ample reason to expect Daniel Lynch to take a spot in the rotation due to his combination of pure "stuff," age and upside. That leaves the likes of Kris Bubic and Jonathan Heasley fighting for starts, and there are multiple others such as Brad Keller, Max Castillo or maybe even Angel Zerpa who could work their way into that mix. This is without even bringing up prospects like Alec Marsh and Jonathan Bowlan, and the equation gets even more complicated when considering question No. 3.
Is it time to change perspective on KC in the Zack Greinke sweepstakes?
Less than 12 hours before the news broke about Lyles being close to a deal with the Royals, I wrote about why the club's delay in re-signing Zack Greinke wasn't anything to worry about. Reasons such as the pitching market being inflated, Greinke already having been patient in the past during free agency and Kansas City still clearly having an open spot for him made sense, after all. Adding Lyles to the rotation suddenly causes a logjam if Greinke follows suit, though, bringing that last point into question.
It remains to be seen whether this move is related to the Royals' progress (or lack thereof) with Greinke or if there's still room for him to return to the team. When the club was rumored at the beginning of the offseason to be eyeing a pair of veteran arms for the rotation, one of those names closely attached was always Greinke. Now that Yarbrough and Lyles will be occupying spots, that dynamic has a chance of changing as the calendar soon flips to 2023.
UPDATE: Since the original publishing of this article, the Lyles signing has some new details. Per Feinsand, the contract is a two-year, $17 million commitment.
