Royals may’ve found bullpen savior in win over Twins amid Carlos Estévez debacle

The Kansas City Royals’ bullpen was greeted with the worst possible case scenario to start the season after Carlos Estévez blew his very first save opportunity in extraordinarily brutal fashion, surrendering six earned runs in Saturday’s 6-2 loss to the Braves.

The defeat may’ve just resulted in him losing not only his closer’s role, but his high leverage role too, as per comments from Matt Quatraro. And in the process he also managed to suffer an ankle injury after being hit with a comebacker, making his health status uncertain as well as his role.

With shuffling all but guaranteed in the ‘pen, the Royals seem to be in need for a replacement for Estévez in he backend trio – even if it’s only temporary.

And in their home opening win over their division rivals in the Minnesota Twins, they may’ve found just that name to step in.

Enter Nick Mears, who looked sensational in his first outing as a Royal.

New Royals reliever Nick Mears might just the bullpen answer they desperately need right now

Coming on in a two-run game in the eighth inning, Mears managed to face the minimum. He’d first strikeout Twins star Royce Lewis before eliminating the damage of surrendering a single to Brooks Lee by getting Trevor Larnach to ground into an inning-ending double play.

And it wasn’t just the box score that made Mears’ outing so noteworthy, his stuff looked better than anyone who took the mound on Monday.

One of the biggest qualms of Estévez’s lackluster spring training and start to the 2026 season was his decreased velocity. This makes Mears throwing four of the five hardest pitches from any Royals reliever that much more significant of a feat.

Looking at Mears from a wider lens too, while his back of the baseball card stats in his time with the Rockies and Brewers can look somewhat iffy, his above-average season in every major advanced metrics category minus walk rate and groundball rate in 2024, followed by a 93rd percentile chase rate, 79th percentile walk rate, 76th percentile extension and 67th percentile fastball velocity in 2025, make him more of a promising high leverage candidate.

In all likelihood, the two frontrunners to occupy the seemingly vacant closer’s role are Lucas Erceg and Matt Strahm, but if they move up, Mears just put himself on the map to form a potentially new Royals backend trio.

With an off day on Tuesday before finishing the Twins series on Wednesday and Thursday, Royals fans will have to wait to see how Quatraro deploys his bullpen moving forward.