The Kansas City Royals advised minor-leaguer Jac Caglianone, their first pick in the 2024 draft and top overall prospect, that he could accelerate his path to the majors by focusing his development on mastery of the art of socking huge dingers. I realize that this is pretty much exactly what every organization is saying to every player in the minors at every opportunity. I realize, too, that this is what the sport itself is communicating to everyone, everywhere, all the time: If you would like to play baseball in the majors, the surest way is by learning to wham the ball over that wall.
Caglianone’s case is special. For one thing, the Royals have a profound need in their lineup for someone even remotely dingerish. As of Monday morning, Kansas City’s puny hitters have combined to sock just 34 homers in 60 games, by a hideous margin the fewest in the majors, and just more than a third as many as have been whammo’d by the Los Angeles Dodgers. Cal Raleigh, mighty sockdolaging catcher for the Seattle Mariners, has already clobbered 23. It’s not by design. “There are too many good players in that room,” said frustrated manager Matt Quatraro, way back in April, after his team was shut down by Max Fried of the New York Yankees. “It’s part of baseball. They have to keep their heads up and keep going.”
The Royals made a little run after that, charging to a season-best eight games over .500 by the second week of May, but their offense just cannot get going and wins are simply too hard to come by: Kansas City just dropped a three-game set to division-leading Detroit despite allowing a total of one run over the final two games. The series-clinching run for the Tigers was scored Sunday on a damn wild pitch. Sooner or later, you would understand if Kansas City’s pitchers became homicidal.
Not very long ago the Royals won a World Series with a buzzing little death-by-paper-cuts-ass offense, which at the time was viewed as weird and novel and in retrospect looks like nothing short of a miracle. And, hell, the Royals of 2025 are hanging in there, a couple games over .500 despite having scored fewer total runs than every team in baseball save the nauseating and blasphemous Colorado Rockies. It can’t last. However delightfully idiosyncratic they might be, the Royals will not pitch their way to glory if their lineup remains for much longer in Peashooter Mode. Arm parts are simply too delicate nowadays: shoulders are inflaming all over, forearms are tightening, elbows are snapping like crazy. A good pitching staff can crumble away to nothing in a month. The Arizona Diamondbacks pound the ball all over the damn place and their season is presently swirling around in the commode due to pitching injuries and underperformance. Now that Corbin Burnes appears to be kerploded, they might truly be dead! And they’ve outscored the Royals so far this season by a whopping 112 runs!
The Royals have scraped a winning record from circumstances that would be stirring if they didn’t scan as lightly fluky. Kris Bubic, a 27-year-old fella who three years ago was a Patrick Corbin-level disaster on the mound, is today the top pitcher by bWAR in all of baseball. Veteran journeyman Michael Wacha is having a career year. Rookie Noah Cameron, called up to make four starts for an injured Seth Lugo, compiled a sub-1.00 WHIP while dishing a thoroughly average mix of pitches. Cole Ragans, the only guy in there who is supposed to be real good, is also the only one of their rotation guys who has missed real time. Their starters have pitched to the league’s third-best combined earned-run average, and their bullpen has pitched to the league’s seventh-best. For all that terrific run prevention the Royals have been outscored on the season by seven dang runs. I dig that they’re finding a way—barely—and I sincerely love this for the Royals and for their fans. The baseball season will be much more fun if all of this pitching brilliance is real as hell. On the other hand, whew, it will feel like some real star-crossed bullcrap if their summer fizzles away due to a persistent dearth of dingers, a fatal sockdolack.
When the Royals tell a prospect to focus on dingers, it’s about more than best practices. It is a plea: For the love of God, please, can’t you see that we are starving? Caglianone appears to be the lad for this job. The sturdy 22-year-old hits some big honking damn dingers. He blasted 68 of them at Florida during the 2023 and 2024 seasons, and cranked another 15 of them in 50 games at two levels of Kansas City’s minor-league system this season, while slugging a downright James Wood-ian .593. Caglianone—whose delightful four-syllable last name appears to have been Brett Favre’d down to “Cag-lee-own”—has freakish, Oneil Cruz-like power in his bat. Back in April, in his first at-bat at Double-A Northwest Arkansas, Caglianone ripped a single to left field at a terrifying 120.9 miles per hour, a number made even more disturbing by the fact that Caglianone is a left-handed hitter. This would be the 13th hardest-hit ball in play of the Statcast era. Every one of the harder hits was smashed by someone you think of as a huge lumberjack freak; six of them were hit by Giancarlo Stanton, Lord of Exit Velocities. Caglianone swings the mightiest of lumbers.
Kansas City’s career advice to Caglianone—smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em, with “’em” being dingers—is notable too because this mighty youth can also hurl that damn ball. In his senior season at Florida, Caglianone threw 73 innings, pitched to a 5–2 record, and struck out 83 batters. The scouting report over on MLB says Caglianone’s fastball “flirted with triple digits,” and that young Jac wanted to be a two-way player—to go Ohtani mode and become a legend—before the Royals one-tracked him in order to accelerate his professional development. Caglianone is presently a first baseman, where his huge bat and limited athleticism will fit right in, but inside this young man there is a flamethrowing closer just waiting to take the mound. The Royals have made noise about keeping the door open for Caglianone to someday do some pitching, but their immediate need for slugging is such that they couldn’t afford any delays in his route to the majors.
It’s all very sensible. I for one will be watching out for Kansas City’s next lopsided score. Maybe Caglianone settles in and starts crushing audacious dongs all over the place, and the Royals start producing runs like a real-deal big-league outfit! Or maybe their hitting continues to suck mondo ass, and their pitching luck turns, and they find themselves on the wrong end of a blowout! What better time to put The Kid out there on the mound, and let him fire rockets homeward. It’s a win-win, so long as you don’t care too much whether the Royals are doing the winning.
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