Royals Rumblings - News for February 4, 2016

Filling in for Max in this mornings Rumblings are Josh Duggan and Shaun Newkirk; please forgive them.

Royals Rumblings - News for February 4, 2016

Not unlike most people around these parts, Alex Gordon likes to hit near the top of the order per Jeffrey Flanagan:

"I always like hitting more toward the top of the order," Gordon said at Royals FanFest. "Would I rather hit second? Yeah, probably."

Old pal Craig Brown digs into walks on the play index at Royals Authority with many nuggets including:

In 2015, a team opened their offensive portion of a game with a walk 144 times. That seems like a low number. I mean, there are 30 teams that play 162 games each. (Except Cleveland and Detroit, who played just 161 games. How did I miss that?) That’s a total of 4,858 opportunities to start a game with a walk.

Three times in 2015, the Royals opened their offensive portion of the game with a walk. Surprise, surprise, each time it was Alcides Escobar. Maybe it’s not so surprising, considering Escobar hit at the top of the order in 131 games, so he certainly had opportunity. Motive? That’s another thing. We know he’s all about reaching Peak Escobar, but we should be nice and realize that three walks leading off the game isn’t all that bad. In fact, it’s around the median for leadoff hitters. Curtis Granderson and Matt Carpenter each walked seven times leading off a game, which was the most in baseball last year.

The Royals will raise the World Series flag opening night, but won't pass out rings

The Royals will raise their 2015 World Series championship flag before they open the season April 3 at Kauffman Stadium, but the players will have to wait until the second game to receive their rings.

The change in dates will allow television viewers in Kansas City to see the entire ring ceremony. That would not have been possible on ESPN's national broadcast. Fox Sports Kansas City is expected to broadcast the April 5 game.

That's according to a team source, who told The Star that the ring ceremony would occur before the Royals and Mets play the second game of their season-opening series at 3:15 p.m. Tuesday, April 5. The season opener, originally scheduled for April 4, was moved to 7:37 p.m. April 3 to accommodate ESPN's "Sunday Night Baseball."

Lee Judge tells us why Royals pitchers need to lead the league in hit batters.

Despite being called the Bad Boys of Baseball, in 2015 Royals pitchers were ninth in hit batters. Eight American League teams a€” including the Toronto Blue Jays hit more.

Once again, Dave Eiland isn't talking about hitting batters intentionally. Dave's saying the Royals pitchers need to pitch inside and if they do that some hitters will get hit unintentionally.

Dave wants the Royals to have the reputation of a team that isn't afraid to pitch inside. And one way to get that reputation is leading the league in hit batters.

John Viril at Kings of Kauffman ponders what do-overs Dayton Moore would do if he were trapped in the movie Groundhog Day.

In a long line of overall bad tattoo moves, a Royals fan gets Danny Duffy in a bear suit tattooed on his arm.

Former Royals pitcher Jamie Quirk says he's eager to coach the Royals A+ affiliate Wilmington Blue Rocks:

"The Royals are a tremendous organization. Obviously, reigning world champs. They do things the right way," Quirk said. "Why they are here is because Wilmington does things the right way, and they work together very well. I'm glad I have the opportunity to be here. I can't wait."

David Hill at Kings of Kauffman thinks that keeping Alex Gordon was the Royals' best offseason move.

Former (brief) Royal Jonny Gomes will play in Japan in 2016.

Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports writes about how free agency changed 40 years ago.

Jeffrey Flanagan reports that the Royals have released Louis Coleman, who was designated for assignment to make room on the 40-man roster for Ian Kennedy.

Purple Row scribe steps over to Baseball Prospectus to write about the role of race in baseball's statistics.

At The Hardball Times, Steven Martano looks at the fates of the Black Sox not named Joe Jackson.

Kotaku looks over some entries for Star Wars: Reimagined.

YouTube's paid subscription platform "Red" will premiere its first batch of original content next week.

Don't mess with Elon Musk; he'll cancel your Tesla pre-order.

Shaun's obligatory stock market links

Alphabet (ex-Google) and Apple are fighting over the largest market cap in the entire world

Talking head and possible billionaire Jim Cramer wonders if it's time to sit this market out...again

Finally the IPO drought is over with two biotech companies offering yesterday, the first time since 2011 with no January IPOs

The US dollar had it's largest single-day plunge since the announcement of quantitative easing by the Fed seven years ago. This helped revive the market late in trading yesterday and boosted oil 8%.

Local mutual fund company Waddell and Reed (a top 50 mutual fund family by AUM) shares dropped 14.4% after a weak earnings report drop of 22%.

Frinkiac let's you search over three million The Simpson episodes for screencaps by dialogue and create memes

From the looks of this article at The Verge, it looks like the world of which Philip K. Dick and George Orwell warned us is descending upon St. Louis.

Per Pitchfork, now is the time to throw your name in the hat if you are a female vocalist/keyboardist and would like to be a member of M83.

Priming the pump for the one episode of Saturday Night Live a decade that I might watch, Danger Guerrero at Warming Glow opines that these promos are good enough to stand alone as their own show.

In "There are spies lurking behind every corner" news, the government could soon be subpoenaing your toaster.

Someone with entirely too much time on their hands recreated all 27 years of 120 Minutes and Subterranean on YouTube. Relive your misspent youth.

Stephen Galloway of the Hollywood Reporter sits down for a lengthy interview with Oscar nominee George Miler.

Shaun's song of the day is "It's Midnight" by Saint Paul and the Broken Bones.

Since we're tag-teaming this, Josh's song of the day is "Sleepy Dog" by Wand.