Royals Review · Apr 4, 2022
Spring training battles: The bullpen
These are the final days to trim the roster down before the season opener on Thursday against Cleveland. The Royals trimmed the roster down to 34 on Saturday, then sent Angel Zerpa down after his start, leaving just 18 pitchers left in camp. We don’t know yet how many pitchers they will carry - expanded 28-man rosters to begin the year could allow them to carry up to 16 pitchers if they wanted to. And we don’t know if Mike Matheny plans to use a five-man or six-man rotation to account for the shortened spring training. Most likely roles will be pretty fluid all season, but particularly at the beginning of the year.