Why the KC Royals need to continue their patient approach with Jac Caglianone

My boys are Disney kids through and through. I wouldn’t have it any other way. They’ve been watching the movie Cars quite frequently, which I’m all about.

There’s a line in the movie where Lightning McQueen is rizzing (I have a Gen Z living at home teaching me slang) up one of the characters.

He says, “I create feelings in others that they themselves don’t understand.”

This has to be how Kansas City Royals fans feel about their young phenom, Jac Caglianone. Since his debut in early June, he has brought a palpable jolt of excitement to the fan base and the baseball team.

The number of Caglianone jerseys at The K is growing by the week, and by all measures, it looks like his teammates love playing with him.

That’s the good news. The bad news is he’s not exactly having a Lightning McQueen-esque start to his first season in the big leagues.

He’s hitting .151 with four home runs and seven RBI in 119 plate appearances. That's not quite what the Royals were hoping for when they called him up from Omaha. That being said, he belongs here, there's no reason to send him back down.

He's proved all that he can in the minor leagues; he needs to figure things out at this level by facing major league pitching. The only way you get better at major league baseball is by playing major league baseball.

There have been encouraging signs from Cags as he’s started to look more confident at the plate.

Has the rookie finally found his footing in the league? Let’s look at the numbers and see if there’s anything he can hang his hat on.

The path to success in Majors hasn’t been smooth for Caglianone

Jac Caglianone’s transition to the MLB hasn’t been paved with roses and grand slams. His talent was evident from his first plate appearance in the bigs.

We knew it was only a matter of time before the game slowed down for Caglianone. If the Royals front office and their fan base were injected with truth serum, they would say Jac has underwhelmed relative to expectations.

Some astute baseball analysts have compared Jac’s power potential to that of Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani. While that’s exciting to hear, it’s probably not the bar we want set for our No. 1 prospect.

Those lofty expectations were always too high for a kid with only 315 at-bats between High-A and Triple-A. For comparison, Bobby Witt Jr. had 661 at-bats in the minor leagues.

Expectations needed to be tempered because a slump like the one he experienced was always possible. Caglianone endured a dreadful 1-for-40 stretch between June 21 and July 2. That’s good for a .025 average.

Since then, he’s 4 for 28, giving him a .154 average. Still nothing to write home about, but an improvement from his nearly two-week stretch of not having any success.

There’s hope Caglianone is turning things around

Since July 2, he’s had a .423 SLG and 70 wRC+. These are not spectacular numbers by any means, but his .269 ISO is certainly a number he should be proud of.

Looking at his splits via Fangraphs, he has a .306 average when he stays through the middle of the field. We saw that play out in real-time when he unloaded on a pitch and sent it 466 ft to dead center.

While it’s a great sign to see Cags crush a baseball like that (lefty on lefty matchup, no less), it’s not enough to feel super confident that he’s figured anything out. The Royals must remain patient with him; he will undoubtedly go through another cold stretch before the year ends.

It will ultimately be up to Caglianone to make adjustments to how pitchers are throwing to him. It’s worth noting that Caglianone didn’t thaw out of his cold slump until he received a day off. The Royals held him out of the lineup on June 18 and July 3, two stretches during which Cags played every day for 13 games in a row before having a day off.

He’s a combined 4-9 with two homers and two RBIs. This tells me that the young kid needs a mental break now and then. The pressure could be getting the best of him.

Matt Quatraro and his staff have employed a 13-game-on, one-day-off schedule for Caglianone, and I expect that to continue unless a switch flips with Jac.

The Royals are being patient with him compared to other highly touted prospects. Take Roman Anthony from the Boston Red Sox. Since his debut on June 9, he has been in the lineup every day with no days off (except when the team is off) for 28 consecutive games.

They are treating him like a regular, everyday player without kid gloves. The Royals are not choosing that approach with Jac Caglianone. The best thing we can do is be patient as Cags navigates his first season on a team that may not be ready to contend with the big dogs just yet.

His time will come, that I can guarantee you.