Royals Moving Nathan Adcock Into Higher-Leverage Situations

The Kansas City Star reports that the Royals are trying to move Rule 5 pick Nathan Adcock into higher-leverage situations in order to have more "flexibility" with their bullpen:

Going forward, it looks as if Adcock — who is 1-0 with a 2.45 ERA in 11 innings — may even see his bullpen role increase for the Royals, who enter a three-game homestand against Baltimore tonight with a 15-13 record.

Yost said Sunday that he plans to use Adcock in more pressure situations, because if Adcock performs, it would give him some added flexibility in the late innings. Currently, fellow rookie Tim Collins has been the primary left-handed setup man.

The paper also reports that, due to the fact that Adcock's secondary pitches are weak, the Royals think he will be a reliever in the long term. It's way too early to draw any conclusions about Adcock yet statistically, but he has four strikeouts and three walks in his first 11 innings, and that matches pretty well with what he did in Spring Training (four strikeouts and four walks in 13 innings). If that continues, the Pirates probably won't end up regretting their decision not to keep him, even if he does get a fair number of grounders along the way.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see if the Royals follow through on their plan to use him more - they already went two weeks without using him at all throughout mid-April.