Even if Major League Baseball returns this year in an adjusted format and possibly with expanded rosters, there’s still a very real possibility that the minor leagues won’t be able to play anything resembling a traditional season.
While major league teams like the Kansas City Royals won’t feel that impact immediately, it could mean last year’s No. 2 overall draft pick Bobby Witt Jr., last year’s organizational Double-A player of the year Khalil Lee, top-rated pitching prospect Daniel Lynch, highly touted catching prospect MJ Melendez and host of other potential building blocks for the future lose an entire year of development and set back their timetables on when they could contribute to the big league club.
That is one scenario Royals assistant general manager/player performance J.J. Picollo knows the organization must be ready to handle.
While Picollo remains optimistic and has endeavored to make the most of this extended period of players training in relative isolation, he’s not oblivious to what may be the harsh reality in coming months.
“From a game/competition standpoint, there’s really nothing we can do, as much as I hate to say that,” Picollo said. “We’ve had some players asking, ‘If I could, should I face hitters?’ At this point, we’ve told them just hold off on that. ‘We’ll have time to get you guys ramped up, get your pitch counts up to a respectable number, so we’d rather you not face hitters right now.’
“But if it got to the point where we’re in the unfortunate situation where the season is canceled, yeah, then you’ve got to consider things like that. Regardless of what that might look like from one individual to the next, not playing competitive games at the appropriate level for each player, that hurts.”
For now, minor league seasons remain suspended and not canceled.
Of course the logistics of staging a minor league season with multiple leagues at various levels — Rookie, Short A, Low-A, Advanced-A, Double-A and Triple-A — figures to be a gigantic undertaking, and one that might not be possible in the wake of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. It certainly puts the likelihood of a season in doubt.
That said, Picollo stressed that each major league organization faces the same predicament. There’s no competitive disadvantage for any of the players in the Royals’ system compared to another farm system if minor league games aren’t played in 2020.
“It’s kind of like time is frozen for a year, that’s what it would feel like,” Picollo said. “Just like this past month has felt like. So we’ll just try to keep encouraging them. The short answer is there’s not a whole lot you can do as far as replacing the game competition.”
Picollo holds onto a measure of optimism that the minor-leaguers will still be able to have some sort of competitive season.
Ultimately, an altered season might be similar to a collegiate redshirt year. In college programs, redshirt players can practice and train during the regular season, but they can’t compete in games.
Most of the time, they play a full collegiate summer league season to make up for lost time and keep competing.
“We’re doing what we can from a motivation standpoint, communication standpoint with our players about what they need to be doing right now for if we get a chance to get back,” Picollo said. “Obviously, if it gets to the point where there’s not a season, we’ve got to shift our intention and try to figure out what it may look like. We still would be optimistic about something in the fall, if it came to that. We’d want to prepare our guys for some type of instructional league/fall league type setting just to get some games in.”
There’s no template or comparable scenario in recent minor-league history to what could be at hand next. Even during the MLB strike seasons of 1981 and 1994, the minor leagues never missed an entire season.
Not even World War II shut down the minor leagues.
“We’ll come up with something,” Royals general manager Dayton Moore said of a scenario in which there’s no minor league season. “This is what we do. We’ll figure out the best way to develop players.
“The thing is, time is something you can never recoup. It’s gone. The clock is ticking, but there are ways to take advantage of the calendar year from a developmental standpoint that we’ll explore. You don’t get time back, and we’re certainly losing time. We understand that, but everybody is in the same boat.”
In the meantime, with players scattered around the globe, the player development arm of the Royals organization has focused on teaching mental skills that translate to the field.
Along with webinars on baseball fundamentals, players have heard from guest speakers from both inside and outside the organization. Recently, All-Star Whit Merrifield and outfielder Hunter Dozier spoke to minor-leaguers about their own experiences, adversities, growing pains and lessons learned. Held via a Zoom conference call, the session included a question-and-answer segment.
And former major-leaguer and current minor league pitching coach Jeff Suppan recently talked to the organization’s pitchers about daily mental preparation.
“The Zoom calls are good and the goal of them is really just to engage their minds and give them topics that they would be interested in as opposed to just doing this because we have to do it,” Picollo said. “That’s not why we’re doing them. We’re doing them because we think we can take advantage of a tough time and address areas we’ve always talked about addressing … (but) didn’t have the time to do it.”
This week, members of KC’s strength and conditioning and performance science department had a meeting with the organization’s hitting and pitching coaches that featured some back-and-forth on kinesiology and how to assess and improve players’ pitching deliveries and swings.
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