The Royals’ bullpen has been a significant upgrade from what fans saw a year ago, especially at the beginning of the 2024 season. One Royals reliever, though, who’s gotten off to a rough start in 2025, is Sam Long.
In five games and 4.1 IP, the 29-year-old lefty reliever has a 12.46 ERA and 2.77 WHIP. It’s a disappointing start to the season for Long, especially after he posted a 3.16 ERA and 1.20 WHIP in 43 outings and 42.1 IP a season ago in his first season with the Royals.
Not much has gone right for Long on the mound this year. His K rate is down from 25% last year to 12.5% this season, and his walk rate is up from 9.7% a season ago to 12.5% this year. He has also given up more hard contact, as his hard-hit rate allowed is 38.9%, a 5.6% increase from a year ago.
While the surface-level metrics are eye-poppingly bad, his deeper numbers are more complicated.
Long’s xERA is 4.57, and his xFIP is 4.79. His actual FIP is 6.76, but that’s still 5.70 points lower than his actual ERA. Furthermore, Long has displayed intriguing pitch quality metrics despite his initial struggles via TJ Stuff+.
Of his five pitch mix, three pitches have tjStuff+ marks over 100, and three have grades over 50. Those pitch ratings are an upgrade over fellow lefty reliever Angel Zerpa.
As Royals fans can see, Zerpa only has one pitch with a tjStuff+ over 100 and no pitches with a grade of 50 or higher (though the sinker comes close at 49). While Zerpa’s ERA is still rough at 6.75, it’s much more palatable than Long’s double-digit mark.
So is Long salvageable in the Royals’ bullpen, based on his pitch quality? If so, what does he need to adjust? If not, when do the Royals cut him loose and bring up someone from Omaha?
Diving Deeper Into Long’s Struggles
While we understand Long’s pitch quality via TJ Stats, what do his other metrics, like zone, whiff, and xwOBA CON, look like on his arsenal this season? After all, while process is necessary to understand for context, results matter at the end of the day, especially for relievers who are expected to come through in tough, high-leverage spots (which seems to be the case for Long, based on early leverage metrics via Fangraphs).
Here’s a look at those metrics via his TJ Stats player summary card through April 7th.
Long has been flooding the strike zone with his pitch mix, as demonstrated by his 55.2% zone rate. He also hasn’t been hit too hard, based on xwOBA Contact, which is 0.313. He is producing a groundball rate of 64.7%, a 21.8% increase from his mark in 2024. Conversely, Long is allowing a .471 BABIP, a 105-point increase from a season ago.
Thus, there has been an element of flukiness regarding Long’s rough beginning in 2025. Long is doing what he needs to regarding contact, but hitters are finding holes, which unfortunately results in runs in crucial spots.
Long could be doing a better job of inducing chases and whiffs. His whiff rate is only 13.6%, and his chase rate is only 18.6%, both mediocre marks. When looking at pitch run value zones from this year and last, it’s interesting to see what parts of the zone Long is doing better and worse than a year ago.
Long succeeded on the upper edges (zones 1-3) in the strike zone, the middle, and the armside edges in 2024. This year, however, he has been considerably worse in the middle and the upper armside edge (zone 3). He still has been acceptable in the upper glove side edge (zone 1) and just below that in zone 4. That said, his pitches aren’t succeeding in the strike zone like they did a season ago.
His heatmaps on base hits and outs (both strikeouts and fielding outs) seem to correlate with those struggles in those particular pitcher-run value zone charts as well.
Here’s an example of Long hitting that zone 1 area with his fastball against Cleveland’s Nolan Jones, which froze him and struck him out to end the inning.
Conversely, here’s what happened when Long missed in zone 3 against Kyle Manzardo (notice how Salvador Perez is setting up away).
Long has good enough stuff to succeed again in the bullpen in 2025.
Despite an uneven Spring Training in Arizona, the Royals seemed to believe in him enough to give him a spot in the bullpen. His 2024 metrics were solid enough, and based on his pitch metrics a year ago, which mirror what we are seeing this year, there’s no reason to believe that Long can’t achieve better chase and whiff rates with more innings.
The four-seamer and slider will be key to Long’s turnaround in 2025.
Last year, his four-seamer had a 29.4% chase and 22.5% whiff rate. His slider had a 38% chase and 38.8% whiff rate. This season, the four-seamer has chase and whiff rates of 14.3% and 4.3%, respectively, and his slider has rates of 30% and 26.3%. Those are both subpar, especially for pitches that he throws 43.8% and 41.7% of the time, respectively.
The four-seam tjStuff+ this year is identical to his mark a year ago. So, command of that pitch will be vital for him to improve the four-seamer’s chase and whiff ability.
As for his slider, his tjStuff+ of 98 is four points lower than a year ago. Therefore, he will need to improve not only the pitch command but also the quality, especially in spin and horizontal break, which are lower than a season ago.
If he can’t do that, he may not be with the Royals much longer, especially since he has exhausted his Minor League options.
Who Could Fill Long’s Spot?
I think Long will get at least until mid-May to prove his worth. He likely will see a reduction in high-leverage appearances, and that began on Tuesday night, as Matt Quatraro opted for Angel Zerpa, John Schreiber, and Daniel Lynch in the 7th through 9th innings with Lucas Erceg, Hunter Harvey, and Carlos Estevez (likely) unavailable.
However, if Long can’t turn things around, who should JJ Picollo call up from Omaha?
Evan Sisk could be an option. Sisk is on the 40-man roster and would give the Royals another lefty to employ in the bullpen. The former Twins prospect has done a good job of minimizing hard contact and producing outs with the Storm Chasers early this year via his Statcast metrics.
However, his stuff hasn’t precisely been eye-popping, as the pitch quality plot data demonstrates.
Sisk has only one pitch with a tjStuff+ over 100 (slider) and only one with grades over 50 (sinker and slider). Thus, it’s likely he would get more exposed against better hitting.
A better option (and on the 40-man roster) may be Jonathan Bowlan, who’s been equally successful as Sisk in the batted-ball metrics, but with slightly better strikeout and whiff rates.
Furthermore, Bowlan’s pitch quality plot data is much more impressive than Sisk’s, making Bowlan a more intriguing option for the Royals’ bullpen if Long can’t hold onto his spot.
Bowlan sports four pitches with a tjStuff+ over 100 and grades over 50 (including one over 60, which is a changeup). Thus, even though Quatraro would lose another lefty in the bullpen, they still would have Zerpa and Lynch as options. Furthermore, he would gain a hard thrower who can minimize hard contact while providing big-time stuff with his five-pitch mix.
It’s about time that Bowlan receives a shot to show what he can do in a Major League bullpen.
Long’s struggles could result in that becoming a reality sooner rather than later.
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