Luinder Avila May Be a Key Piece to This Royals Rotation

Going into the 2026 season, many viewed Luinder Avila as more of a bullpen piece than a rotation option for the Royals. 

To be honest, it made sense at the beginning of Spring Training to see him in that fashion based on what the Kansas City pitching staff looked like at the time.

The rotation seemed full, not just with projected starters like Cole Ragans, Seth Lugo, Michael Wacha, Kris Bubic, and Noah Cameron, but also with other arms who saw starts in 2025 like Stephen Kolek, Ryan Bergert, and Bailey Falter. On that end, Avila seemed like an eighth or ninth option in the Royals' rotation at best, especially since he didn't make any starts at the Major League level in 2025.

Furthermore, in limited Major League action in September, Avila was solid out of the bullpen.

In 14 IP, he posted a 1.29 ERA, 0.93 WHIP, 2.15 FIP, a 28.6% K%, and 17.8% K%. He also produced strong TJ Stuff+ metrics, chase, whiff, and xwOBACON numbers. That is illustrated in his TJ Stuff+ summary from 2025.

That said, in Spring Training, JJ Picollo and Matt Quatraro remained steadfast in their belief that Avila had the potential to be an impact arm in the rotation. Furthermore, injuries to starting pitchers Ragans, Bubic, and Bergert thrust Avila into the rotation, even though he had been built up earlier in the year as a reliever. 

It's been an up-and-down sophomore campaign for Avila at the Major League level, both as a starter and reliever. However, on Monday in the Royals' 9-2 victory over the Reds, the Venezuelan righty demonstrated why Picollo and the Royals organization have so much belief in Avila and his outlook as a starter. 

Avila Prevails in Impressive, Though Flawed, Victory

To be frank, it wasn't a perfect or efficient outing for Avila on Monday. 

In five innings of work, Avila allowed a run on two hits with four walks and five strikeouts. He threw 86 pitches, an MLB career-high for him. Furthermore, when looking at his pitch type chart from today's game via Savant, many of his pitches were sprayed all over the strike zone.

Avila missed down and armside a lot, especially with his changeup, sinker, and four-seamer. He also left a lot of balls in the middle that the Reds didn't do enough with. That is illustrated in his ball/strike pitch chart below, which shows not too many of those balls in the heart of the zone put in play. 

While the Reds didn't take advantage of those pitches in the heart of the strike zone, credit has to be given to Avila for his stuff and ability to make batters miss or buckle on pitches in that area of the strike zone. Avila wasn't like Falter out there a week ago against the Yankees, throwing hittable pitches with low stuff quality in the middle of the zone. Rather, Avila was demonstrating excellent quality on all his pitches on Monday in Cincinnati, as illustrated in his TJ Stuff+ summary from today's outing.

When looking at Avila solely on TJ Stuff+, he was beyond impressive.

Overall, the 24-year-old generated a 105 TJ Stuff+ with four pitches with grades of 60 or better. All five of his pitches had grades over 50, and four of his pitches had TJ Stuff+ marks over 100. The only pitch with below-average TJ Stuff+ was his sinker, which had a 96 mark. That said, it was still effective, as illustrated by his .027 xwOBACON and 25% whiff rate.

Below is an example of Avila effectively using his sinker to strike out Edwin Arroyo, who was making his MLB debut. 

It may not rate as well compared to his other offerings, but the sinker has nasty movement and potential. For over-eager hitters, it can lead to poorly connected balls or awkward-looking whiffs, as was the case with Arroyo on Monday.

His sinker and four-seamer (107 TJ Stuff+) weren't the only impressive pitches on Monday. His slider, his primary breaking pitch (26.7% usage), was effective, as illustrated by a 40% chase rate and .189 xwOBACON. It didn't generate as many whiffs as he probably wanted, as illustrated by his 30% whiff rate. However, he was able to get swings and misses when needed, as evidenced in this sword strikeout of JJ Bleday, who hit a home run off Avila earlier in the game.

Once Avila gets more comfortable with his control and command, he could become even more effective with more nasty strikeouts, similar to the ones that we saw this evening at the Great American Ballpark. 

Granted, the Venezuelan struggled with efficiency on Monday in the longest outing of his career. Not only did he walk four batters, but he also had a zone rate of 34.9%. That is nearly 10% lower than his 44% zone rate for the season, which rates as below average. It's going to be hard for him to be effective and eat innings unless he improves his control in subsequent starts and appearances. 

That said, when Avila started trusting his stuff more and finding the zone, he was able to keep reasonable pitch counts in each inning. The most he had in an inning was 20, which was in the fourth. He did this while maintaining his pitch velocity in the later innings, which is not typical for most starting pitchers. 

Below is a look at his pitch velocity chart from Monday's game, via Savant.

If anything, Avila ramped up in the later innings, a sign of the competitiveness and ability that he has in those key spots. Finishing on that kind of positive note should give him some much-needed confidence and momentum that he can carry into his next scheduled outing on the mound.

The Stuff is Better This Year From Avila (Which Is Promising)

When looking at his TJ Stuff+ Summary this season compared to 2025, the improvement in TJ Stuff+ marks across all his pitches is what sticks out the most with Avila in 2026. 

Not only is Avila's overall TJ Stuff+ two points better, but he has two 60-grade pitches this year compared to zero in 2025. He has also seen a five-point improvement in four-seamer TJ Stuff+, a three-point improvement on the slider, and two-point improvements on the sinker and changeup. The curveball is the only pitch that has remained the same.

Granted, the overall metrics haven't exactly improved along with the stuff.

His chase rate is down 1.6%, and his whiff rate is down 5.3%. He has also experienced a 97-point increase in xwOBACON. That said, Avila has thrown more pitches this year, as he has nearly 300 more pitches in 2026 than his total in 2025. Thus, these numbers may simply be a result of initial regression with more pitches, and we're starting to see some positive regression from Avila lately, especially with this most recent start.

As he makes more starts and pitches in more games, his control and ability to minimize hard contact will be key developments to watch.

When looking at his Statcast percentile summary via TJ Stats this year, Avila's velocity, extension, hard-hit% allowed, and groundball rate are all well above-average marks. Conversely, he's struggled to give up barrels and to consistently find the strike zone, which are not great traits for a starting pitcher.

Though there's more blue in this Statcast profile summary than what Royals fans would like, he's trending in the right direction, especially in some key categories like CSW (36th percentile) and whiff rate (34th percentile). If he can build on Monday's win against the Reds, it wouldn't be surprising to see those categories continue to improve over the course of the season.

With the Royals unsure about the futures of Ragans and Bubic, they need pitchers to step up not just to eat innings but to provide effective, quality innings as well. Avila did just that on Monday, even though it wasn't pretty or dominant by any stretch of the imagination.

That said, Kansas City may not need that from Avila.

All they need right now from him are quality outings, even if they aren't officially "quality starts" just yet. Outings where he can go 4-5 innings for now will lead to "official" quality starts down the road, where he can go 6-7 innings and limit the bullpen usage even further.

While the Royals won on Monday, they are still 23-37 and 10.5 games behind the first-place Cleveland Guardians in the AL Central division race. 

They might as well continue to give Avila starts with the hope that he can develop his command and control with each start and become a long-term piece in the rotation that could make Wacha, Bubic, or Lugo expendable at the Trade Deadline.