Royals Rumblings - News for June 17, 2015
Jason Vargas played catch to test his injured elbow.
"It wasn’t getting stiff when it was sitting around, so it was moving a little bit better," Vargas said.
Craig Brown at Royals Authority tracks the All-Star voting results by week and wonders what will happen.
I assume the likely result will be some sort of change of the process in 2016. Maybe the players will get a ballot. Maybe the voting will return to the stadium. It’s pretty obvious why MLB moved the voting to online only was because they could get more total votes that way. It’s no different from a slide show on a worthless website. Instead of clicks, MLB is collecting votes in bulk. That way, they can point to the millions of ballots cast and prop up their legitimacy. It’s a baseball banana republic. Except they didn’t realize the potential consequences of removing the ballots from the parks. Oh, well. Lesson learned, I guess.
Hunter Samuels at Pine Tar Press looks at Salvador Perez's weird season.
It appears this high-contact, low-on-base slugger is one of a kind. Out of 1,513 batting seasons in the last 10 years, Salvador Perez is the only player to have a walk rate no higher than 3%, a strikeout rate no higher than 15%, and an ISO of at least .180.
Just for fun, I wanted to look back farther than 2006, to see if Perez has any peers in this category. Plus, I thought with lower strikeout rates in previous seasons, perhaps some other player would have accomplished what Perez has thus far. I went all the way back to the year 1900 – that’s 12,499 qualified batting seasons – and found the following list of results, meeting the same criteria from above:
1994, Carlos Baerga
2015, Salvador Perez
That’s it. That’s the list.
Andy McCullough had a chat and reported that Sean Manaea has been getting in games in the Arizona Summer League.
The Royals-Cardinals game that was postponed on Sunday will be rescheduled for July 23.
The Royals-Brewers game will be broadcast nationally on Fox Sports 1 tomorrow night.
Omaha's Francisco Pena blasted three home runs last night, but it was a Casey Kotchman walk-off homer that won it for the Stormchasers.
ESPN's Jim Bowden lists Salvador Perez as a starter and Wade Davis, Mike Moustakas, Alcides Escobar, and Alex Gordon as reserves for his All-Star team.
Testimony is heard a second time in the trial involving a man hit in the eye by a hot dog thrown by Royals mascot Sluggerrr.
The FBI is investigating the Cardinals for hacking into the Astros databases, a highly illegal and unethical violation and there really wasn't much of a competitive advantage to them doing so.
What are the legal implications of the hacking?
Was it all done just to embarrass Jeff Luhnow, a former Cardinals executive?
Grant Brisbee looks at the unwritten rules of hacking a team.
Just when you wanted to hate the Cardinals though, Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times pens a dumb column.
Jeff Francoeur pitched two innings last night, and struck out a hitter. Frenchy!
The Padres name Pat Murphy their manager for the remainder of the season.
Royals sixth-round pick outfielder Cody Jones and his TCU Horned Frogs lost to Vanderbilt despite tossing a no-hitter for six innings.
Zachary Levine of Just a Bit Outside looks at who can become the next Astros.
Keith Hernandez makes $3,000 a year in residuals from his appearance on "Seinfeld."
The Warriors are your NBA champs. Nice to see the Bay Area finally win a title, it had been, what, nine months?
Is Bubba Watson the most divisive player in golf?
Why Mitt Romney (or any American) will never be FIFA President.
Donald Trump announces his candidacy for President and has the worst favorability rating of any Presidential candidate since 1980.
Charles Farrell writes about musician Ornette Coleman, who passed away last week.
What impact will the $500 million box office weekend by "Jurassic World" have on Hollywood?
Your song of the day is OutKast with "Git Up, Git Out".