Royals Rumblings - News for April 22, 2016

Royals Rumblings - News for April 22, 2016

Sam Mellinger writes about Joakim Soria, who is taking the struggles in stride.

"This is a show," Soria said. "This show is for them. It is a show. They come to the game, and if they feel they want to boo, then they do. They boo. We work for them. If they think a boo is OK, then it’s OK. As a human being, you try to do the best. That’s it."

It’s mentioned that Soria — now in his ninth big-league season — has been around long enough to handle this. "If you put that in your mind, that’s bad," he said. "You take that out of your mind. Obviously, I want them to cheer better than boo, but if they feel that way, that’s OK. At the end of the day, this is a show for them."

Jayson Stark looks at why the projections can't figure out the Royals.

For one thing, publicly available defensive metrics just aren't as reliable as other numbers. So that at least makes it theoretically possible, Miller theorized, that "everybody is underrating how much the Royals' defense matters." Except ... eh, wait a minute. They're constantly getting credit for their defense,

"So nobody is ignoring it," Miller said. And if you look at metrics like defensive efficiency, he said, "The Royals don't actually turn a huge number of balls in play into outs."

So "underrated" is a word that doesn't seem to apply to this team's defense. What's more accurate, said Szymborski, is that projection models are "naturally conservative" in the way they factor in defense. Too much year-to-year fluctuation in the way we measure defense. Too much potential for injuries to wreak havoc on an overly optimistic projection.

David Lesky at Baseball Prospectus Kansas City writes how important location is for Chris Young.

Basically everything in 2016 has been middle up. That doesn’t give the hitter anything to think about. Sure he lived up in the zone during the 2015 season, but he kept the batters honest by throwing enough pitches down in the zone that he was able to make a few mistakes up in the zone. This year, he can’t do that because the hitter doesn’t have to even consider a pitch in the lower third of the zone.

What does it all mean? It’s hard to say for certain because Chris Young is no spring chicken. At 37, it’s very possible that he just doesn’t have the stuff anymore to get hitters out. It happens to the best of them. So yeah, maybe Young is just done. But his velocity is where it was last year. His spin rate is where it was last year. What has changed is his release point and his location. That sure seems like something that is fixable to me.

Alex Gordon contributes a recipe to a University of Nebraska cookbook.

The Royals react to the death of Prince.

Marlins and Pirates players are worried about the Zika virus for their games in Puerto Rico.

Commissioner Rob Manfred says expansion is coming in the long term.

An attorney pens the first textbook on law and baseball for law schools.

What is umpire school really like?

MLB agents are upset about teams leaking info on negotiations to the media.

Baseball analyst C.J. Nitkowski gets criticized for making a crack about a female fan on her phone at a game.

Terrific piece by former Kansas City Star reporter Wright Thompson on the unraveling of Tiger Woods (h/t the laundry)

A 17-year old Canadian basketball player turned out to be a 30-year old African man.

The Saudis have a $2 trillion plan to get off oil.

Game of Thrones has been renewed for a seventh season.

How a season of "The Americans" gets made

Your song of the day is Prince with "Creep."