Royals Rumblings

Royals Rumblings - News for August 8, 2014

We're a second half team.

By Max Rieper@maxrieper Aug 8, 2014, 8:00am EDT

Royals Rumblings - News for August 8, 2014

Craig Brown at Royals Authority is ready to "buy in" to the Royals season.

All the teams in the Wild Card hunt have some serious flaws. The winner will be the team that doesn’t necessarily overcome those flaw, but it will be the team that is able to gloss over them effectively over the last seven weeks of the season. The Royals have as good a chance as any team to grab that second Wild Card. Are the Blue Jays, Yankees, Mariners, and Indians appreciably better? Does any one of the five teams in the mix have a marked advantage over the other four. The answer to both of those questions is, "I don’t think so."

Jeffrey Flanagan writes that a patient Mike Moustakas is a better Mike Moustakas.

But seriously, this season, the problem with Moustakas is really quite simple: When he gets overanxious at the plate, he is doomed.

Moustakas is the worst first-pitch hitter on the team, hitting just .100 when he hacks that quickly. (By the way, Lorenzo Cain is the best first-pitch hitter at 15 for 33). It's not that Moustakas is generally a wild swinger. He is swinging at pitches outside the zone just 30.8 percent of the time this season, actually below his career 33.2 percent average, according to fangraphs.com.

Moustakas' problem is hacking at that first pitch. Of course, sometimes that first pitch is a strike, and he is not a great hitter when he falls behind in the count (.187). But when Moustakas is patient and works the count, and he actually gets ahead in the count, he is All-Star material: a .307 hitter with a .434 on-base percentage and a whopping 1.170 OPS.

Nori Aoki says he is finally adjusting to American League pitching, and it has produced results more recently.

Manager Ned Yost picked up his 800th win as a manager on Wednesday.

"I’d like to make an announcement," Kuntz said. "That was the No. 800 win for manager Ned Yost. No. 800." From behind his desk, Yost grimaced. "Beat it, Rusty," he replied.

No manager with 800 wins has a worse winning percentage than Ned Yost, so there's that.

David Lesky at Pine Tar Press writes that the Royals have one of the best young pitching duos in the game with Danny Duffy and Yordano Ventura.

The beauty of having Ventura and Duffy step up this season is that it does seem to make the Royals window for contention a little easier to stay open. Prior to the season, the rotation was James Shields, Jason Vargas, Jeremy Guthrie and a lot of questions. Duffy had such a bad spring that he was sent to AAA and Ventura was impressive, but you never know with a rookie. Looking ahead to 2015, what did the Royals have? It was Jason Vargas and his likely average numbers, Jeremy Guthrie a year older and then even more question marks. Now, though, the Royals seem to have four of five rotation spots accounted for and can use their limited funds left (and yes, even with money coming off the books, they’ll have limited funds) to help the offense. As Rex Hudler would say, it’s a beautiful thing.

The Royals are one of twelve teams whose games are #1 in local broadcast ratings during summer prime-time hours. But I thought baseball was dead and no one was watching anymore?

Greg Hall at Platte County Landmark thinks the Kansas City Star has a future star in Royals beat writer Andy McCullough.

Jose Molina is very, very slow.

Some of the advice the NBA is giving to its rookies at its rookie training session is really...something.

If people live in your house and use your credit cards and drive your car, you should know their last names.
— Sarah Lyall (@sarahlyall) August 7, 2014