I pulled an audible with this week’s minutes. Initially, I wanted to take a closer look at Chandler Champlain. However, Ben Kudrna absolutely dominated on Sunday, to the tune of six scoreless innings. He was named the Midwest League Pitcher of the Week and became the focus of this week’s Monday Minutes. Kudrna hasn’t changed much since being drafted as a high-school product back in 2021. Part of the Royals under slot savings from Frank Mozzicato went to Kudrna. He throws a mid-90s fastball, a changeup, and a slider. The slider is a “gyro” slider, featuring north-south movement without much horizontal break.
Pitch Mix
This week’s start got off and running at a good pace. Kudrna worked quickly through the first and second innings, using just 11 pitches to get through the first. The second inning ended with a baserunner caught stealing at second base without a pitch home. Most of his early success came off the changeup. This is normal for Kudrna — the changeup is his best offering and he uses it often, especially against left-handed hitters.
Kudrna’s fastball sits 94-95 and can play nicely up in the strikezone. His command of the pitch can be inconsistent at times, and there’s still work to do with shape. Without knowing for certain, it looked as if Kudrna used a couple of different fastball grips on Sunday. At times, the pitch was straight, with good ride and life up in the strikezone. Other times, it featured a late arm-side break. You can see the difference in the two below, with the second one resulting in a called third strike on the inside half of the plate. Again, without knowing for certain it looks like a four-seam and two-seam mixture. The two-seamer plays well with the changeup and helps that pitch to be even more effective.
Rounding out the pitch mix is Kudrna’s slider, which offers more vertical life than horizontal break. He goes to the pitch often against right-handed hitters and won’t use it nearly as much against lefties.
Final Line: 6.0IP, 3H, 0ER, 0BB, 9 SO
Kudrna got through the first three innings allowing just one hit. He struck out the side in the third inning, giving Kudrna four of his nine strikeouts through the game’s first three frames. Much of his early success centered around the fastball and changeup combination. Kudrna attacked inside the plate against lefties, and away from right-handed hitters. The game plan worked well early on, reaching a three-ball count just one time when Kudrna’s command started to get away from him some to round out the third inning.
The Chiefs started to adjust some to open the fourth, swinging at a first-pitch fastball but popping it out to the left side. Despite what looks like solid spin and a good approach angle, Kudrna has more work to do with fastball location before he makes his way to Double-A. He started out this at-bat against Miguel Villarroel with a lively fastball that wasn’t ever really all that competitive. It missed far too high up in the zone. If located on the black, the pitch gives Kudrna a 0-1 advantage.
He quickly worked himself into a 2-0 count without throwing a competitive pitch. This is where Kudrna’s youth starts to show itself late into starts. He has a tendency to overthrow at times as he starts to fatigue and it can work him into trouble.
The trouble didn’t last long this time, however. Down 2-0, Kudrna attacked the zone. When he’s able to do so, this is where the righty can really excel. Kudrna racked up three consecutive swinging strikes on pitches with good life in the zone to notch the strikeout.
It’s situations like this that help Kudrna put up above-average swinging strike totals. To start 2023 at Low-A, Kudrna was all the way up to 16.5%. That fell some to a still healthy 12.4% after a midseason promotion to High-A and has worked back up to 13.7% so far in 2024. Despite the healthy swinging strike rates, Kudrna has never been able to post elite strikeout totals. He’s found success often, but even this season when he’s been better than we’ve ever seen, his strikeout rate is still at just 25.3%. That’s still a healthy number but ranks 98th among all MiLB arms with at least a 13% SwgStr% this season.
The same trend has followed Kudrna throughout the minor leagues thus far. In 2023 with Quad Cities, his swinging strike rate remained healthy but he saw his strikeout rate dip below 20%. The solution for me lies in pitch mix. So much of Kudrna’s arsenal breaks to the glove side which eventually helps hitters to pick up on tendencies late into counts. Adding a cutter could give Kudrna a weapon that breaks in on lefties and away from right-handed hitters. That wrinkle would make his current fastball that much more effective and could help him put away more hitters.
Composure and Fundamentals
The diciest part of the outing came in the fifth inning for Kudrna. The first hitter of the inning reached on a single. The next batter in the inning reached on a single that should’ve been ruled an error. It was the first runner to reach scoring position for the Chiefs in the game and it came with no outs. By now, signs of fatigue were starting to show and the game could’ve easily gotten away from Kudrna. Instead, he remained composed on the mound and worked his way through it.
The third batter to come to the plate put down a sacrifice bunt right in front of the pitcher’s mound. Kudrna could’ve risked a difficult throw to second but settled for the easy out at first base, allowing a second runner to advance into scoring position. The next batter worked a 3-1 count, for only the second three-ball count against Kudrna in the game thus far. He got across a foul tip strike two, then took his time with a step off after a fouled off 3-2 pitch. Gathering himself, Kudrna fired across an inside pitch that broke into the zone for the clutch punchout.
These situations are where Kudrna looks advanced well beyond his years. He rarely lets a situation get away from him and doesn’t let the moment get the best of him. The final hitter of the inning swung at the first five pitches, fouling off three of them. Kudrna responded by throwing a pitch he hadn’t thrown all game against a right-handed hitter. He threw a back-door heater that froze the batter, breaking into the zone for strike three to escape the inning unscathed.
Long-term outlook and a potential promotion
Kudrna struck out two hitters in the sixth to cap off what was his best outing of the season thus far. He finished the day with a season-high nine strikeouts. It was also his only outing of the season without a walk. Not only was it the best outing of the season — it could be seen as the best start of Kudrna’s MiLB career thus far. It marks the only time Kudrna has posted at least nine strikeouts and zero walks in an outing in his pro career. This season started strongly for Kudrna, followed by a valley of sorts that looks to be trending back upward.
Much of the “struggles” we’ve seen from Kudrna this season centered around strikeouts. From May 28 through June 23, Kudrna walked 19 batters and struck out 26 in 33.2 IP. That’s not an ideal ratio you’d like to see from a top pitching prospect. That stretch came after a hot start to the season. In his first five starts of the season, Kudrna had struck out 32 in just 25.2 innings of work — against just nine walks. That valley of production is clear below as well when comparing whiff rate and CSW% over the course of this season.
Those trends above are what make Kudrna a difficult prospect to gauge long term. On one hand, he’s shown a good ability to induce swinging strikes throughout his minor league career. On the other hand, it hasn’t resulted in consistent above-average strikeout totals. The fastball variation that worked on Sunday stood out as a clear path forward for Kudrna — and a way to hopefully generate more strikeouts long-term. I don’t recall seeing that sort of whippy, glove-side action from the heater in recent starts. It adds an east/west wrinkle that Kudrna’s arsenal has been lacking for some time, although I still think an eventual cutter could raise the ceiling even more.
To earn a promotion to Double-A, Kudrna will need that rounded arsenal to succeed. The Royals tend to use High-A as a stage for developing arsenals in their minor league arms. We saw this last season with Frank Mozzicato when he added a slider and started using it in-game action. Once they’re confident in the arsenal moving forward, they will start to consider a promotion to Double-A. For Kudrna, that could come by late summer. Sunday’s start was a successful one after a string of more mediocre outings. If he can show confidence in his pitch mix and continue what we saw Sunday over a longer stretch of outings, he will start pushing the issue and earn a trip to Northwest Arkansas that much sooner.
