Royals Rumblings - News for June 10, 2016

Royals Rumblings - News for June 10, 2016

Craig Brown at Baseball Prospectus Kansas City marvels in the Royals' historic offensive ineptiude.

The four runs scored by the Royals in these six games also represents a sort of bottom for the franchise as far as offensive output. Never before has a Royals team had a six game stretch where they scored so few runs. The previous low was six runs done just twice in team history. The 1990 team did it, as did the 1974 team. Newsflash: Both those teams were poor baseball teams.

Lee Judge says the offense is struggling because of the whiffs.

So far in 2016 the Royals struck out 422 times in 2,181 plate appearances. If my fancy new phone is right, that means the Royals are striking out at a rate of 19.3 percent, a decent increase over the past two seasons. And in the past six games it’s worse; the Royals have struck out 53 times in 208 plate appearances. And just in case you don’t feel like doing the math, that means they’ve struck out more than 25 percent of the time.

After the Royals won the 2015 World Series, a champagne-soaked Rusty Kuntz told a group of reporters that they had shown the value of getting the ball in play — over these past six games the Royals are getting the ball in play less.

Mike Podhorzer at Fangraphs is buying in on Danny Duffy.

In addition to all the swings and misses Duffy has induced, he’s also doing something else he had only been mediocre at previously — throwing strikes, lots of them. His strike percentage has skyrocketed and would actually lead baseball among starters if he qualified for the leaderboard. If you include all pitchers without a minimum, he ranks 17th out of 548.

So let’s sum things up. Danny Duffy is throwing as hard as a starter as he had as a reliever, generating a league leading rate of swings and misses and displaying pinpoint control by becoming a strike throwing machine, all the while allowing lots of fly balls in a park and on a team where that may actually be preferred, and generating many easy outs via the pop-up.

What's the word on Alex Gordon?

"I would say 2-3 weeks away" - @FlannyMLB on the return for Alex Gordon #Royals

— 610 Sports Radio- KC (@610SportsKC) June 9, 2016

Royals scouting director Lonnie Goldberg talks about the draft:

Finally, he said while it's a unique group, he feels like most years there will be a solid group of outfielders and right-handed pitching.

— Scott Chasen (@SChasenMLB) June 9, 2016

An analyst says only about 250,000 people attended last year's World Series rally.

Local pitcher Riley Pint goes #4 overall in the draft to Colorado. Complete coverage of the MLB Draft.

The White Sox designate pitcher Mat Latos for assignment and sign first baseman Justin Morneau.

Grant Brisbee looks at alternate draft histories that nearly happened, like Bo Jackson playing for the Yankees.

Could a four-man outfield work and who would be the best candidates for it?

Are there biases in the first round of the MLB draft?

The softball team of the Broadway production of Hamilton is undefeated!

Deadspin is airing rehearsal footage from the new FS1 show with Colin Cowherd and Jason Whitlock.

The internet is having a field day with Steph Curry's new Under Armour shoes.

The Chik-Fil-a app is #1 at the Apple store, so how well does it work?

Disney movies are about to be made in China.

Comedy Central puts over 300 Key and Peele sketches online.

Your song of the day is The Temper Trap with "Sweet Disposition."