For much of the 2022 MLB season, no team had a worse pitching staff than the Royals. The team got off to historically bad starts, which had lots of fans and pundits around Kansas City wondering why the team has struggled so much with developing their young pitchers. Since the All-Star break, however, things have turned around, and now guys like Brady Singer and Kris Bubic are starting to come into their own. Speaking with 610's Fescoe In The Morning on Wednesday, Royals manager Mike Matheny gave some insight into why that may be happening.
"We watched this young core group of guys and we were so excited to watch them get here," he said. "And you see the talent, and you just wonder when they'll be able to make that next level. And that next level is pitching deep into games. We've got a couple where it's like, man, this guy looks like he has complete-game stuff ... We're guarding arms, I think we're wiser now. We've learned a lot from the medical world about how to protect the arms of our players and pitchers, but these guys aren't prepared to go deeper into games. So part of this is just the evolution of even going from the minor leagues to the major leagues. We really guard our pitchers when they come up through the system, but then expect them to go deeper into games. It's part of the natural learning process that has to happen at the major league level."
You can listen to Matheny's entire interview (8-minute mark) in the embedded player below: