Royals Rumblings - News for July 7, 2016

On this interesting Hardball Times piece from Alex Chamberlain breaking down Inside Edge’s defensive calculations, Eric Hosmer is shown to have had the most difficult 2016 season for a first baseman, helping to describe at least a little why he is getting knocked so heavily for his defense this year.

At the Star, Pete Grathoff takes a gander at the five worst rotations in history at giving up home runs:

It’s early July, so you’ve probably noticed that Royals starting pitchers have a problem with allowing home runs this season.

They’ve been historically bad. According to Fangraphs, since 1871 no team’s rotation has a worse rate of home runs allowed per nine innings than the Royals this season (1.73). That’s out of 2,835 teams, and includes both the 1875 Red Stockings and 1875 White Stockings, who both didn’t allow a home run.

The good news? This year’s Reds team is nipping at the Royals’ heels (1.70), powered in part by the nine home runs Cincinnati starters allowed in the last three games (13 1/3 innings). In fact, both teams’ starters have allowed 85 homers this season, but the Royals have thrown six fewer innings.

Rustin Dodd briefly gets into what is wrong with the Royals in this video at the Star.

At Baseball Prospectus KC, Hunter Samuels dives into what adjustments Cheslor Cuthbert has made this year:

Since Moose’s knee injury, Cuthbert has hit .290/.329/.471 over 147 plate appearances, with seven dingers and four doubles. Now, he still isn’t walking very frequently (5.4 percent walk rate), but his strikeout rate isn’t unreasonable (20.4 percent), and when he’s putting the ball in play, he’s making solid contact.

This appears to be a trend. It isn’t unusual for a player to take some time to adjust to a new level, especially for a player who’s always been several years younger than the average player in his league. While it can be difficult to track changes in the minors due to a lack of data, we can dig into a few things to see what adjustment Cuthbert’s made recently.

Edinson Volquez was doing his best Johnny Cueto imitation for some fans in Toronto:

Perhaps Royals fans can take solace in the fact that the Blue Jays are crushing it again.

With the bill in the House designed specifically to short-change minor league baseball players likely dead, Samuel Mann at Baseball Prospectus looks at the lawsuit pitting 2,200 minor leaguers against Major League Baseball.

Fox & Friends doesn’t sound all that friendly as former anchor Gretchen Carlson alleges in a lawsuit.

Rose McGowan destroys former EW critic and now Variety writer Owen Gleiberman for writing a piece critical of Renee Zellweger’s plastic surgery.

Sarah Silverman got a freak case of epiglottitis and almost died, which she opened up about on Facebook.

That low-carb diet you’re suffering through probably doesn’t work. Or maybe it doesn’t not work. Best choice? Throw your hands in the air and do whatever you want, paying the price in the years of your life that were probably going to suck anyway.

All the things you can learn about animals at the LA Zoo.

Jon Jones was yanked from a bout with Daniel Cormier that was going to unify the Light Heavyweight belt in what was supposed to be the main event of a huge UFC 200 following an anti-doping violation.

A half-million hoverboards are recalled, not for false advertising but rather because they catch fire, explode, and maim people.

The fantastic, award-winning essayist/short-story writer George Saunders goes on the road to understand just who Donald Trump supporters are.

The song of the day is “Lonely Boy” by Andrew Gold.