In Daniel Lynch’s big league debut, the Kansas City Royals scored six runs. But when three Royals pitchers—Scott Barlow, Jake Junis, and Lynch himself—all had bad enough nights on the mound to combine to allow eight runs, it’s hard to win. The Royals did not.
Lynch debuted as the 21st best prospect in all of Major League Baseball, per Baseball America, and was the second-best left-handed pitching prospect behind the San Diego Padres’ MacKenzie Gore. Lynch was the highest-ranked Royals prospect to debut since the days of Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, and Danny Duffy in 2011.
It was clear why Lynch was such a well-regarded pitcher—Lynch’s wipeout slider induced some foolish-looking swings and misses, and he supplemented it with a workable changeup and a fastball that sat at about 95 MPH and topped out at 97 MPH.