Royals Rumblings - News for September 8, 2016

Jeffrey Flanagan reports that Eric Hosmer is the Royals’ nominee for the Roberto Clemente Award:

Hosmer, the Most Valuable Player of this year's All-Star Game and a three-time Gold Glove winner, is this year's Royals nominee for the prestigious Roberto Clemente Award.

Voting is underway and fans are encouraged to participate in the new process of selecting the winner of the Roberto Clemente Award by posting any nominee's voting hashtags to MLB's official social media accounts, @MLB on Twitter and Facebook.com/MLB. Hosmer's official hashtag is #VoteHosmer.

Major League Baseball announced the 30 club nominees on Tuesday for the annual recognition of a player who best represents the game of Baseball through extraordinary character, community involvement, philanthropy and positive contributions, both on and off the field. Each club nominates one player to be considered for the Roberto Clemente Award in tribute to Clemente's achievements and character by recognizing current players who truly understand the value of helping others.

Go vote for the Son of God.

In Jesse Newell’s latest in his great K-Zone series at the Star, he investigates what has driven Alcides Escobar’s success over the last month:

Escobar has nearly doubled his pull rate over the last month. We saw another example of that working well for him last night, as he muscled a pitch up over the plate for a game-tying single to left.

Since Aug. 12 — a day Escobar went 2-for-4 and officially started his recent hot streak — he has worn out the pull side with hits.

In his first 114 games, Escobar had just 31 hits to the pull side of the field, according to StatCast data. In his hast 24 games, he has 17.

Old RR scribe Clark Fosler looks at what could have been with a healthy Luke Hochevar during the Royals’ recent bullpen blow-ups:

After Ian Kennedy allowed a one out walk in the seventh, he was replaced by Scott Alexander, who was tagged with a single and a sacrifice fly that tied the game. The Royals eventually ended up emptying the bullpen and losing in 13 innings. If, as he had done in 16 of 18 previous situations, Hochevar does not allow the inherited runner to score, what would that have meant not only to that game’s outcome, but to the general state of the bullpen for days afterwards? Would it have changed the dynamics in game one versus Detroit when Peter Moylan masterfully stranded three runners in the relief of Danny Duffy, but surrendered a Miguel Cabrera home run when he came back out for the seventh?

I believe a healthy Luke Hochevar makes an appearance in at least one of those two games described about and also in the game this past Sunday. Would two Luke Hochevar appearances in the past week equal two more Royal wins? Two games back of the second wild card with a 74-64 record versus four games back at 72-66? Yeah, I think Royals’ fans would take that. Heck, I would take just one more win.

All of the above is so much the theoretical and implies that the rest of the Royals’ bullpen, which was so good for so much of August, does all of what it did even with Hochevar taking up one of the spots. It’s an exercise to nowhere that proves nothing. I know, however, that on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Detroit that it would have be nice to have Luke Hochevar available when trouble began in the seventh inning.

The Baseball Hall of Fame just launched their Digital Archive Project. It looks pretty cool so far.

Eno Sarris looks at what righty is the most like a lefty.

Sure looks like The Ringer is in Apple’s pocket.

This six-part LA Times feature might be the best read on the internet in weeks. It’s totally worth the time to read all of it.

Netflix’s Luke Cage is getting some good advance reviews.

Don’t worry about climate change. There’s totally nothing to worry about.

Look, vigilantism is generally a pretty bad thing, but...

Think your spouse has gotten on your last nerve? Rob a bank to get away from him/her.

The song of the day is “Berlin Got Blurry” by Parquet Courts: