Triggs surrendered eight earned runs on eight hits, two walks and a wild pitch over 3.2 innings in Monday's 10-3 Cactus League loss to the Royals. He struck out four but also gave up three home runs.

EDGE Analysis

Triggs was taken deep by Mike Moustakas, Paulo Orlando and Brandon Moss, struggling with his fastball command while also focusing on his changeup, which led to most of his troubles. The projected No. 4 starter for the time being while Sonny Gray's lat injury moves everyone up a notch in the rotation, the right-hander has one more tuneup start scheduled before his regular season debut on April 6. "I think it was a combination of two things," Triggs said. "We went to the well quite a bit working on the changeup, which is something you do as spring is coming to a close. I wanted to get a better feel for that. And, two, you're naturally going to put yourself into less-than-ideal counts if you're working on what's clearly your fourth pitch, and you need fastball command to balance yourself out, and that was mediocre at best, so it was kind of the perfect storm of those two things."