Much of the Royals’ offseason has centered around an entire rebuild of the team’s pitching staff. The bullpen will be made up of more new faces than returning arms. In the starting rotation, two of the five starters weren’t in the organization at the end of last season. A third — Cole Ragans — joined the team before last year’s trade deadline. Brady Singer is the only “safe” returning starter who was also in the rotation on Opening Day 2023.

This brings us to the fifth spot in the rotation. The final spot will be needed early in 2024 and remains the only uncertainty in the rotation as it currently stands. Spring training is only just now underway, meaning injuries could rock the boat and change things in an instant. As things stand now, that fifth spot looks like it might come down to Jordan Lyles or Daniel Lynch IV. At least, that’s been the consensus to this point. Is there another option worth considering beyond the two of them?

Is there a third option for the Royals to consider at the back end of their rotation?

Lyles and Lynch should be seen as the favorites to snag that final rotation spot by the end of spring training. At this moment, I’d give each an equal chance to snag the spot. Lynch doesn’t have the track record of innings. He does offer some upside and the team still has a notable draft investment in him from back in 2018. He’s team controllable for three more seasons. Lyles, on the other hand, has a track record of innings and more MLB experience to speak of. He’s only under team control for the 2024 season but is currently the fourth-highest-paid player on the roster at $8.5 million.

There are arguments for both, but those arguments for each arm aren’t much stronger than the arguments against them. In 2024, Lynch pitched in just 52.1 innings due to injury. He finished the year with a 5.17 FIP and 5.33 xFIP. Lyles wasn’t much better, although he did muster 177.2 IP. He was worth 0.2 fWAR and ended 2024 with a 5.62 FIP and 5.34 xFIP. Neither of those performances should be enough to earn either arm a place in the Opening Day rotation. With that said, do the Royals even have a choice? The answer is yes.

Should the Royals again lean on an opener to open the 2024 season?

Last season, manager Matt Quatraro turned to an opener as the season progressed. Much of this was due to injuries in his starting rotation that forced his hand. Brad Keller, Kris Bubic, and Daniel Lynch all landed on the injured list. This left the team with a three-man rotation at some points. However, even later in the year when minor leaguers Angel Zerpa and Alec Marsh had been promoted, the team still utilized an opener. That decision helped Marsh and Zerpa find more success on the mound. Marsh, for example, finished the year with a 7.84 FIP as a starter but a 3.77 FIP as a reliever. If the Royals are serious about making pitchers earn their spot this spring, an opener for the fifth spot in the rotation should be just as likely as Lynch or Lyles.

The great news about Opening Day roster decisions is that they’re hardly permanent. Brady Singer was moved to the bullpen to open the 2022 season. By May he was dominating the White Sox with seven scoreless frames as a starter. The Royals can make the right decision this April and then pivot in another direction as needed. If Lynch or Lyles can’t firmly grasp the fifth spot by March 28, the best option for Matt Quatraro is to continue the competition into April.

There’s still time for decisions to be made, and competition hardly ends come April

There’s still plenty of time for things to settle, but Kansas City has at least a handful of fringe starters who could make an opener situation work. Rule 5 pick Matt Sauer should get bullpen time to start his MLB career (if he makes the roster), but the team views him as a starter long-term. Others, such as Anthony Veneziano, Angel Zerpa, Alec Marsh, and Jonathan Bowlan have been starters throughout their professional careers thus far. The best option for the Royals by the end of March may not be Lynch or Lyles. Instead, it should be seen as entirely possible they pair up Lynch and Lyles each with an opener to allow competition to continue.

For Sauer, an opportunity as an opener would give the team ultimate flexibility. They can use him on a reliever’s load of innings — pitching one or two innings every five days — but adjust that as time goes on. What if Sauer impresses over five outings as an opener? He’s already starting the game, the team could easily leave him in for a full spot start after some successful outings. The same goes for Veneziano, Marsh, or any of the other inexperienced arms with upside.

On the flipside, maybe the opener does their job for one or two innings and Lynch or Lyles pitches well for three or four innings in the middle of the game. The Royals would take that every day and twice on Sundays over what we saw last season. If either arm shows enough promise, the team could easily give them starts later in the year if they felt that the opener wasn’t needed. Lyles, however — at this stage of his career — could see the benefits of following an opener all season.

There’s plenty of ways the Royals could go as the spring continues. It’s for this very reason that the team didn’t settle this winter and kept adding depth. Because of that, the options at the back of the rotation shouldn’t be seen as a choice between two arms. Instead, it’s a choice of which path gives the team the best chance to win. With all the added depth, there are a handful of possibilities, not just two.