KANSAS CITY -- Daniel Lynch IV is back in the Royals’ rotation, and the club is asking him to answer a bigger question than just what happened Friday night.
Can he still start?
Lynch has settled into life as a high-leverage reliever this season and has thrived there, too, putting up a 1.96 ERA out of the bullpen. But he never stopped wanting another crack at starting, and now the Royals are giving him one out of necessity, with injuries stripping away depth this year and even affecting the club’s outlook heading into 2027.
The first outing didn’t go the way Lynch wanted. In the Royals’ 6-4 loss to the Cubs at Kauffman Stadium, he was charged with four runs in 1 2/3 innings.
The trouble started in the second, when he gave up back-to-back two-out singles before walking Dansby Swanson to load the bases. Pete Crow-Armstrong then chopped a softly hit ball into the hole between first and second; Michael Massey got a glove on it, but his throw missed Lynch, who was covering first, and a second run scored.
Jose Cuas later surrendered a two-run single to Seiya Suzuki, which completed Lynch’s line.
“As a competitor, don’t want to give up runs,” Lynch said. “You want to put your team in the best position to win.
So that was disappointing. And also just finally getting the opportunity to do this again, I really wanted to go out there and make a statement just on a personal level.
“... Bases-loaded with one of the best hitters in the world.
Made a pitch, and it was a really tough play. That’s just the way the game goes sometimes.”
Even with Mason Black covering five innings of bulk relief and allowing two runs, Friday was not a one-off arrangement. The Royals intend to keep Lynch in the rotation for now and build him up gradually.
His season high in innings remains two, and his season high in pitches is 37, both from April 1. He threw 35 pitches against the Cubs, and the club plans to raise that limit with each start.
They do not want to pull him back into the bullpen between outings unless an emergency forces their hand.
The move comes with a cost right now. Kansas City loses its best left-handed relief weapon, and there are no lefties in the bullpen at the moment. But the Royals are thinking beyond this season, and they want to see whether Lynch can be part of the pitching depth they’ll need to rebuild this offseason.
“Our hope is that he stays in [the rotation] for the rest of the season, and we’ll see,” manager Matt Quatraro said. “We don’t know that he’ll be built up completely to throw six, seven, eight innings at this time of year with a decent workload under his belt already out of the bullpen.
We have to be responsible with that. But if he takes this and runs with it, that’s something we can consider.”
Lynch’s path makes the assignment a familiar one. He came up as a starter and made 51 career starts across his first three big league seasons before the Royals moved him to the bullpen.
“When you fail at something, you want to try again,” Lynch said. “So I’m grateful that the opportunity came up.
… Grateful for the people who have helped me. I’ve had some really good people in my corner that have really helped me get better.
I’m just grateful for the journey.”
A few offseason tweaks to his delivery helped unlock a little more velocity and more swing and miss, which fueled his success in relief this year. So did a change in approach.
“I have to give a lot of credit to [pitching coach Brian] Sweeney because he was the one who instilled this in me,” Lynch said. “He was like, ‘You can throw anybody your changeup.
You can throw anybody your sinker, anybody your slider.’ Then I started doing it.
It worked. And the confidence grew.”
Now the Royals want that same conviction to travel with him back to the rotation. Lynch said he tried to treat Friday like a relief outing, keeping the scouting work light and leaning on catcher Carter Jensen with the plan the same way he would late in games.
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