Royals GM Tempers Gators Jac Caglianone Call-Up Buzz

There is arguably no hotter hitter in professional baseball right now than former Florida Gators slugger and Kansas City Royals top prospect Jac Caglianone.

Unsurprisingly to those who watched him at Florida, the Gators' single-season homerun record holder has continued to smash baseballs in his first full season in the minors, including an unbelievable five home runs in his first six career triple-A games.

However, though the former sixth-overall pick in the MLB draft is hitting .326 with 14 homers and a .996 OPS on the year, don’t expect to see him called up to the show anytime soon, no matter how much the Royals may need the boost.

“I don’t want to put a timetable on it, but we want to see him for a little bit…We certainly weren’t saying when he went to Triple-A ‘have a good first week and bring him to Kansas City’.” Royals’ General manager J.J. Picollo said Monday. “It’s not fair to any player, Caglianone or whoever, when a team may be scuffling offensively to try and put it on him and hope he is going to come save the day.”

While Cags has been smoking the baseball, slugging at a .923 pace in his first 26 at-bats in Omaha, Kansas City’s lineup has not. The Royals currently rank 25th in team slugging and last in home runs hit amongst the 30 MLB clubs while having only three hitters slugging above the league average this season.

"The best way to break any player into the major leagues is to try to bring them up when the team is hot and offensively scoring some runs,” Picollo said. “The hardest part about this is that we are trying to do what is best for the player.”

Even with the former two-way college star finding instant success at the highest level of the minor leagues, Picollo and the Royals organization seem to be looking for more than just flashy stats.

"We want him to face more advanced pitching in triple-a, see how they game plan for him and how he adapts and makes adjustments not just game-to-game but at bat to at bat.” the third-year GM explained. “He went through it a little bit with Tulsa, so he learned something with that…whatever weaknesses there may be, Major league pitchers are going to be looking for that and try to exploit it.”

Though not mentioned directly, the Royals also likely hope to add reps in the outfield for Caglianone, who has played as a corner outfielder in half of his Storm Chasers appearances, with Vinnie Pasquantino looking like the long-term first baseman option in the bigs. Also, there is always the lingering service time manipulation aspect that leads organizations to keep their top prospects in the minors until they can add a year of team control.

Regardless, Caglianone will have to continue to impress and remind the organization why they selected him if he wants to make the big-league club early.

“To hit five (home runs) in a week is a pretty good accomplishment,” Picollo said. “How hard he hits them, how far he hits them, that’s not too surprising…that's been his track record for a number of years.”

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