Royals Rumblings - News for April 22, 2015

Royals Rumblings - News for April 22, 2015

The Royals aren't pleased that Oakland escaped without being punished by Major League Baseball.

Alcides Escobar sat in a black chair watching the discussion before saying to no one in particular, "Why they don't fine anyone on Oakland? Why they don't suspend anyone on Oakland?"

Brett Lawrie is now the protector of "playing the game the right way."

Lawrie says other teams also tired of way Royals are behaving this year; says it shows lack of veteran leadership.

— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) April 21, 2015

And he blames you, the fan.

Brett Lawrie on crowd at Kauffman Stadium. RT @JaneMLB: Lawrie says, "Shame on their fans for antagonizing everything that went on there."

— Andy McCullough (@McCulloughStar) April 21, 2015

SHAME ON YOU! If only we all played the game the right way like Lawrie.

The Athletics owner also criticized the Royals.

Yost, who'd spoken to Herrera, expanded on that Monday, telling reporters in Kansas City, "I can see what he was saying. We kind of talk about it all the time. 'You better think about it. Because we've got guys that throw 100. You want to mess around?' That's all he was doing."

A's owner Lew Wolff, told of those comments, said, "Is that a threat? That's despicable. And you can quote me on that."

And he knows despicable. Have you seen his stadium?

Lee Judge doesn't see the Royals as the bad guys here.

I’ve seen camera angles that make the Herrera pitch look lower than the shoulders and I’ve seen camera angles that make the pitch look higher. If Herrera wants to argue it was unintentional, gesturing at his head didn’t help his cause. But the other guys started it and Major League Baseball did not fine or suspend Lawrie for blowing up Escobar. If MLB fined or suspended Kazmir for throwing at Cain, that hasn’t come to my attention. If MLB found anything wrong with Jeff Samardzija hitting Cain on opening day, I haven’t heard about it.

The Royals may not be totally innocent, but in this case the Royals aren’t the bad guys.

Vahe Gregorian has an interesting piece on Kendrys Morales who is in the big leagues after thirteen attempts to defect from his native Cuba. Dayton Moore has an interesting admission in the piece.

"Well, the truth of the matter is we tried to sign Torii Hunter," Moore said. "And if we would have signed Torii Hunter, we probably wouldn’t have done anything with Kendrys, truthfully. "But we didn’t win in negotiations there; Torii wanted to go home (to Minnesota). So we went after the next-best available bat, and we felt Kendrys was that guy."

There are a couple of interesting tidbits in Andy McCullough's chat session, including updates on the health of John Lamb, Kris Medlen, and Luke Hochevar. He was also asked about the adjustments made by Edinson Volquez,

He's done a lot of work with Dave Eiland, building off his work with Ray Searage in Pittsburgh, to maintain his delivery. It's the idea of getting his hand out of his glove quicker and not letting his arm drag.

And so many pop tart references.

Vahe and Andy talk about the Royals suspensions here.

Aaron Gleeman puts Paulo Orlando's amazing triple performance in context.

To put Orlando’s triple total in some career-long context, here’s a list of players with five career triples and their games played totals:

Mike Sweeney – 1,454 games

Paul Sorrento – 1,093 games

Bo Diaz – 993 games

Kurt Suzuki – 981 games

Ben Grieve – 976 games …

Paulo Orlando – 7 games

Orlando is very fast and doesn’t hit many homers, so he did rack up a lot of triples in the minors. He totaled 14 triples in 286 games at Triple-A and 18 triples in 282 games at Double-A. But what the Brazilian rookie is doing now is crazy.

Craig Edwards at Fangraphs is keeping an eye on Salvador Perez's workload this season.

Beginning last Wednesday, the Royals embarked on a schedule where they will play 32 games in 33 days including six days after night games not counting the two they have already played in that stretch. A win early in the season is worth just as much as one at the end, and it is difficult to take a player out of the lineup before the grind of the season has worn him down. Perez is young and last season he showed that he could perform well playing in a lot of games, but the odds that he can continue down the same course year after year get smaller. If Yost is serious about getting Perez some days off and preserving him over the course of the season, the next month will go a long way in determining whether the offseason chatter was anything more than words.

Royals minor league affiliates the Northwest Arkansas Naturals and Lexington Legends will make televised appearances on the CBS Sports Network.

Are the Cubs the most watchable team in baseball?

Jeff Pearlman, a long-time critic of Barry Bonds, has an interesting interview with his son Nikolai Bonds.

Is "batting around" when nine hitters are up in an inning, or is it ten?

Talk about veteran presence, the Cards call up a pitcher who is a Navy veteran with three deployments under his belt.

The NFL schedule was revealed in dramatic fashion last night. Here is the Chiefs schedule.

Here's your NFL Draft Preview.

How to know when to give up a debate. (h/t Minda)

Why was Ben Affleck trying to hide the fact his ancestors were slave owners?

There are absurd lines to await the opening of the first Taco Bell in Tokyo. What is the exchange rate in yen for $11?

The movie Galaxy Quest is becoming a TV show.

Just how incompetent is the Empire in the Star Wars universe?

Your song of the day is Pharrell with "Despicable Me."