Royals Rumblings - News for June 16, 2016

Omar Infante is no longer a Royal.

Hours before he got designated for assignment, former Royals Review overlord posits that it was time for the Royals to move on from Omar Infante:

Perhaps you could understand the Royals keeping Infante around if he could still make contact. But what I’m looking at above is akin to a starting pitcher who has lost about five mph off his fastball. An almost 8% decline in contact rate? Going back to 2008, his career contact rate is just above 84 percent. He provided that in 2014, but since then…not so much. Again, we’re looking at a player who is in a complete decline.

Infante is a sunk cost. The Royals can continue to hope they can squeeze some value out of their aging and injured second baseman, but as the tables above illustrate, that’s highly unlikely. These are not the old Royals in that they’re desperate to get something, anything, from a player. Despite the highs and lows of the current season, this team is very much in the thick of the pennant race. They need to be serious about their chances, which means they need to identify the players who can best advance their opportunity. Infante no longer fits on this team. It’s time for the Royals to move on.

Since everyone had Omar Infante on their mind, Rustin Dodd speaks of his then undecided fate further in his mailbag at the Star:

The Royals don’t know what their roster will look like in a week — there could be another injury, they may need 13 pitchers for depth purposes, and on and on. But here are a couple of things about the Infante situation.

▪ The Royals will always err on the side of keeping inventory — that is, keeping as many players in their possession as possible.

▪ Infante is owed around $12.5 million through the 2017 season, including a $2 million buyout on an option year in 2018.

Clint Scoles looks at the late-round picks for the Royals in this year’s draft.

Jeff Sullivan notes that Salvador Perez may be trading contact for power in an InstaGraphs entry at FanGraphs.

At BP, Dustin Palmateer attempts to get to the bottom of whether old friend Johnny Cueto’s shimmies work.

At The Hardball Times, Frank Jackson looks at how Bowie Kuhn and Charlie Finley helped define one another.

Curb Your Enthusiasm is finally set to return for a ninth season, and David Mandel answers what questions he can about the show’s return.

The Office (UK) spin-off faux-rockumentary David Brent: Life on the Road will be coming to Netflix.

So it’s probably best to steer clear of Oakland police chiefs.

These Chinese “naked loans” are exactly like they sound and are vile.

The song for today is from Flowchart side-project (with HollAnd) Commercial. It comes from Commercial’s self-titled 1999 release on Darla Records simply titled “Track #4" much like the rest of the tracks on the record.