Royals finally give surging farmhand from Andrew Benintendi trade his shot in majors

The Kansas City Royals have been in dire need of bullpen improvements this season as beyond their heavy hitters in the backend, injuries and underperformance has made it quite the revolving door. Their ‘pen sits third last in the majors this season with a 5.08 ERA as one of just for teams with an ERA mark above 5.00. They also hold the highest WHIP and BAA in baseball.

One of the culprits for underperformance has been Eli Morgan and his 5.51 ERA. However, the Royals took strides to address that ahead of their Tuesday game in Cincinnati by optioning Morgan back down to the minors and selecting the contract of right-hander Beck Way from Triple-A Omaha.

Way is arguably best known for being the final remaining piece from the Andrew Benintendi trade with the Yankees in 2022- which was once thought to be dead in the water years later. However, he’s finally broken out this season and vindicated the Royals somewhat for that deal after T.J. Sikkemma and Chandler Champlain didn’t work out for them.

He’s throwing to a respectable mid-4.00s ERA with a sub-.250 BAA and a 32.6% K-rate to just a 7.8% walk rate in 30 innings of work with the Storm Chasers this year. While stats like his 1.30 WHIP aren’t overly impressive, he seems to be a product of some bad luck as his 3.22 FIP shows that Way has been better than the initial numbers would indicate.

Beck Way’s arrival might have shut the door on Eli Morgan’s comeback season

The writing seemed to be on the wall for another Morgan demotion to the minors. After a fairly successful opening month of the season, where he threw to a 2.61 ERA and looked like a steal of a minor league signing, like the Royals as a team, the wheels fell off in May.

In 5.0 innings pitched this month, Morgan looked essentially unusable after returning to the majors on May 18. He posted a 10.80 ERA, 2.80 WHIP and .481 BAA. He was striking hitters out at just a 5.40 clip per nine innings and was surrendering 3.60 HR/9.

While he still has options available and could make his way back to the majors in case of emergency, with names Steven Cruz underperforming, the Royals may need to do better than someone like Morgan. On top of that, it’s not as if Alex Lange is underperforming as heavily in recent weeks, having only surrendered one run in his last nine appearances, so that’s one less spot that needs to be accounted for right now and thus one less spot for Morgan to gun for.

He came in on a minor league deal, so it’s not as if there’s an overly large investment in him. Perhaps it might be awhile, if ever, that we see Morgan in a Royals uniform again.