Cameron Carves the Cardinals
Appreciating the rookie starter, answering a Caglianone-centric reader question
As much as I’d like to wax poetic on Noah Cameron’s unshakeable presence, malleable pitchability, flexible arsenal and determined demeanor on the mound, the numbers tell all we need to know.
He’s eclipsed 30 innings on a Big League bump, still a small sample but enough through five starts to show it’s likely not a flash in the pan. Kid’s got skills. In 31.2 frames, to be precise, he’s leveraged a .148 BABIP — OK, yes, regression is coming — into a league-leading 0.85 ERA among pitchers with 30 or more innings — OK, yes, we’re cherry-picking — to pair with a (again) league-leading 0.79 WHIP.
That’s on the back of a 16% strikeout rate and 8.4% walk rate. The 3.65 FIP and 4.85 SIERA signal what’s to come if he’s unable to elevate the strikeout totals and trim back the free passes, but Cameron successfully walked the tightrope yet again on Thursday afternoon in St. Louis.
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After walking the first two he faced in the second inning on 12 pitches, the left-hander got back into the zone — or at least near it — against Nolan Arenado, earning whiffs on an elevated four-seamer and two diving sliders for a strikeout that allowed him to settle in. Cameron then coaxed a groundout from Alec Burleson on another sweeping slider and a flyout from Ryan Vilade with the changeup to escape an ominous inning.
From there, Cameron was his usual self, facing the minimum over the next three innings to earn a final line of 6 IP, 3 K, 2 BB, 2 H, 0 R. His slider was particularly excellent, returning six whiffs on 13 swings for a 33% CSW as St. Louis chased it out of the zone at a 31% clip.
While the Royals bullpen failed to protect a 3-0 lead in the late going, that’s five consecutive quality starts to open Cameron’s ledger as a Big Leaguer. He’s yet to allow more than one run in an outing. He continues mixing his repertoire from game to game in the way you might expect from a five-year vet, not a five-start rookie.
Despite the bearish FIP and SIERA, plus a scary 99.1% left-on-base rate, he’s deserving of a place in Kansas City’s rotation — that much goes without saying.
But what can and should the Royals do to accompany him with Cole Ragans returning from the injured list? I posited last week and on a recent episode of Crown Talk that they’d likely ship Cameron back to Triple-A to protect the pitching depth.
Yet with another blowup from Michael Lorenzen and positive news on Kyle Wright’s return to form to bolster the aforementioned depth, my position has changed. They can’t send the kid down — not that I ever thought they should, to be clear, just that I thought they would.
Lorenzen is scheduled for starter’s duty Sunday against the White Sox, penciled in for Kris Bubic’s usual turn. Anne Rogers reported “the team plans to give Kris Bubic some extra rest here,” which is an added wrinkle to the future of the Royals rotation. She didn’t (or the team didn’t, at least) expound on what this episode of rest entails, whether it’s a skipped start entirely or simply pushing him back a couple days with a Monday off-day before facing the Yankees in Kansas City.
Bubic threw only 66 combined innings across MLB and MiLB a season ago, working his way back from Tommy John surgery before shoving in the bullpen late last season. He’s already at 75 innings in 2025, and while we’ve heard nothing about an innings limit, it’s hard to fathom the Royals are comfortable letting him traverse much beyond 150 frames.
In order to protect their precocious southpaw for August, September and (hopefully) October, some creativity is required. Fortunately for KC, the depth is there to pull it off.
The most likely outcome for the Cameron/Lorenzen/Bubic triumvirate is Cameron remaining a full-time member of the rotation, Bubic’s starts getting skipped occasionally and Lorenzen operating as a swingman, pitching primarily out of the bullpen while serving as the next man up for Bubic’s missed turns and any other ailments that arise through the rest of the summer.
My brainchild is Lorenzen working as a one- or two-inning opener with Bubic pitching in bulk, protecting the right-hander from seeing the order a second time through while minimizing Bubic’s workload. But I’m just a man with a keyboard and bad ideas.
Reader Questions
Just one mailbag question for this go-round from paid subscriber Seth.
Royal Scrolls included a breakdown of Caglianone’s overall approach and lofty early swing rate, but Seth asks specifically about first pitches.
Across three games, the lefty owns a 38.5% first-pitch swing rate, hacking away five times in 13 plate appearances at the first offering he saw. That’s relatively high, as it would rank him 39th among MLB qualifiers this season — but with only 13 datapoints, I’m not assuming that’s any sort of predictive number. Plus, as you’ll see, there may already be an adjustment in the works.
In Tuesday’s five plate appearances, Jac came out swinging, as you might expect from a debuting 22 year old. Serving as the designated hitter in that opening game, he swung at the first pitch on four occasions while taking a called strike at the knees against lefty reliever Steven Matz.
The pair of fastballs he saw over the heart of the plate were Caglianone’s best results of the night: a 112.1 MPH rocket to center field in the second inning against Andre Pallante (his first at-bat as a Big Leaguer) followed later by a 113.9 MPH groundout in the ninth against Matt Svanson.
Game one on Thursday saw Caglianone practice a bit more prudence as he stepped into the box, swinging at just one of the four first pitches that came his way. That offering resulted in a first-inning-ending 95.6 MPH fielder’s choice — yes, another hard-hit out. His three takes, in order, were a fourth-inning fastball on the black, a sixth-inning fastball in the opposite batter’s box and an eighth-inning sinker down Broadway from left-hander John King.
If you’re tracking at home, through two games, Caglianone swung at the first pitch in five of the first six plate appearances of his career.
Whether the young slugger made a conscious decision or someone with MLB experience offered a word of advice (or instruction), I’m not sure, but Caglianone took all four first-pitches he saw in game two on Thursday night. Those included called strikes in the upper portions of the zone on sliders from Matthew Liberatore and Kyle Leahy along with a called ball on an inner-half sinker from King and a wayward slider from Liberatore.
As I wrote yesterday in Royal Scrolls, I’m not taking much away from these early returns. Only 13 plate appearances is small enough — drilling it down to the first pitches in those baker’s dozen trips to the dish is almost irrelevant. But, it is interesting, as noted above, that Cags swung at five of the first six first-pitches he saw before taking all of the final seven.
Nine of those 13 first-pitches found the strike zone, so Seth may be onto something here that pitchers could challenge KC’s top prospect early in his career. As to whether that’s a common theme among rookies like Caglianone… anecdotally I’d say yes, Big Leaguers are often going to dare young players to prove their worth at this level — but I don’t have the data readily available to back that up.
Good stuff. I really let first impressions from Jacs first game color my view on his first pitch hacking. He can make good contact even with two strikes, so maybe being a bit more patient will be good. I just hate to see young players told to be patient and then end up down in the count so often but letting the best pitch of the AB go by without swinging.
Cameron has had great results so far. He looks polished. I hope he can learn even more from the vets on this staff. He has good role models here in Lugo, Wacha, and Bubic.