Friday, February 27

Welcome to this edition of the Royals Beat newsletter. My name is Anne Rogers, and I'll be delivering news and insight to your inbox all season long. Thanks for following along!

SURPRISE, Ariz. -- There is trash talk. There are eye rolls. There are frustrated laughs and annoyed huffs and satisfied grins when they know they’ve just struck a nerve with the other.

There are two left-handed starters in Royals camp who were hell-bent on beating each other in every competition during the daily pitchers fielding practice workouts before games started this spring, and the banter hasn’t stopped.

“Cole and Noah,” one coach said, laughing, as he walked away from a fielding drill for the pitchers one morning, “might kill each other.”

Cole Ragans and Noah Cameron have emerged as two of the fiercest competitors the Royals have, and they’ve turned that competitiveness on to each other. All in good fun, of course.

“I think everybody knows it,” Cameron said. “I told him, ‘Hey, you are a lot better at throwing a baseball than I am, but I will beat you in everything else.’”

Ragans shook his head in mock disappointment. (Or real disappointment. Who’s to say?)

“We know each other’s buttons we can push, so we just aggravate each other constantly,” Ragans said.

This all seems to have started because of the pitcher athlete rankings that are going on their third consecutive spring, a competition created by bullpen coach Mitch Stetter to inject some energy and fun into what can be monotonous days of PFPs before Cactus League games start. When camp begins, Stetter puts out a “preseason” list ranking the pitchers in terms of their athleticism. He uses previous competitions, their background in sports and their defense from previous seasons to help put the list together.

Then Stetter lets the competition play out in fielding drills, and others not really related to what could happen in a game, like shooting a baseball into a bucket, using a fungo bat to see who could hit a ball closest to a cone set up in the shortstop area of the dirt or catching a tennis ball hit with a racket high in the sky with their bare hand.

These drills are what Cameron is the best at … and what irks Ragans so much.

“Did you see some of the competitions he won?” Ragans said, incredulously. “Like bounce a tennis ball three times and hit it to a cone? Who is good at that? Why is he good at that?”

Cameron can only laugh at this.

“I’ve always been really coordinated,” Cameron said. “Good at a lot of stuff. I’m trying to humble myself. I can’t keep going.

“... I may not be able to run very fast or jump very high or throw very hard. But I can hit a ball close to a cone.”

Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that Cameron actually won the athlete competition this year, coming in first ahead of Alec Marsh, Michael Wacha, Seth Lugo and the rest of the group.

“Cole wasn’t even close,” Cameron laugh-whispered.

Ragans sighed, then said: “If anyone else won, I wouldn’t say anything at all, but of course it’s him.”

The Royals get a kick out of watching Cameron and Ragans go back and forth with each other, and some teammates egg them on, too. What the Royals really love, though, is that they get to see the competitiveness of each of them play out when they’re pitching important games this season.

“They’re into it, they do some goofy things, and it’s awesome to watch,” manager Matt Quatraro said. “And it transfers into the game, too.”

And what’s the harm in a little fun?

“We love each other,” Cameron said. “It’s just really fun to mess with him.”

In the first Cactus League game a week ago, the Royals ran out of their two challenges by the third inning, and the club realized it might need a better way to assess and get used to the system. Bench coach Paul Hoover devised a plan with the pitching department that allows for a pitcher to tap his chest if he thinks the pitch he just threw could be challenged.

Coaches in the dugout take note of the pitch and where it was in relation to the zone, then relay that information to the pitcher after the inning. This way, everyone can learn the system better without wasting the two team challenges, which the club prefers to have available for hitters.

“Just more reps,” Quatraro said. “We’ve been talking all winter about what we’re going to do and want the guys to use it. We’re tracking who’s doing it, when they're doing it, situations, pitch types. We’re trying to keep track as much as we can.”

Learning the zone, which varies by the hitter’s height, is the most important thing players are trying to do right now. What has also been illuminating is the fact that if any part of a baseball touches the zone -- even a tiny bit -- it’s a strike. Players have to be almost 100% sure it’s out or in if they’re going to challenge.

Tracking “everything,” as Quatraro says, allows the Royals to see who has a good understanding of the zone and the strategy of a challenge. The club will likely have basic guidelines on who’s allowed to challenge and when, but it’s also going to be individualized.

“It’s a matter of [learning the zone] and also to prove to our other players and pitchers and coaching staff that we can identify what’s a strike and a ball,” Lugo said. “If you can figure out who’s good at the strike zone and who’s not, you can tailor the game to that, have some stricter or looser rules depending on who’s good at it.”

Thursday’s game against the D-backs was a glimpse into what Jac Caglianone (who hit a 460-foot homer Tuesday) and Carter Jensen could bring to the Royals this season, with the 22-year-old sluggers going a combined 5-for-7 with six RBIs. Jensen hit his first spring home run, a 416-foot shot to right-center, while Caglianone hit four balls very hard -- including a 120.2 mph double.

That would have been the third-hardest-hit ball in the Majors last season behind Oneil Cruz (122.9 mph) and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (120.4 mph).

Smoked.

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