Royals Rumblings - News for November 2, 2017

Congratulations to the new champs, the Houston Astros!

The Astros won, and they’ve got their dongs to thank for it.

Carlos Correa used winning the World Series as the platform by which to propose to his girlfriend.

Yu Darvish may have been tipping his pitches, but (possibly while tripping balls) Tim Leary posits that probably didn’t matter.

Jeffrey Flanagan reports that Kyle Zimmer had sutures removed in a minor (at least for him) surgery:

"He's in a good position to go back home, start throwing around Christmas time," Royals assistant general manager J.J. Picollo told MLB.com. "He'll be ready for Spring Training.

"One of the past procedures he had, there were sutures purposely left in to promote healing. At some point, the surgeon knew they would have to come out. I don't want to say the sutures caused pain, but at times they caused discomfort. So we had them taken out. Very minor. We knew that back in May this would happen in the offseason. So he's fine and ready to go."

Baseball Prospectus KC’s David Lesky looks at the quality of contact that the Royals’ pitching staff allowed this past season:

As a team, the Royals pitching staff did an okay job at limiting hard contact. According to Fangraphs, their hard contact percentage of 31.4 percent was the 13th best in baseball. Middle of the road isn’t bad. And they were 15th in soft contact percentage at 19.1 percent, so that checks out. According to average exit velocity, though, the story was slightly different. They allowed the 10th highest average exit velocity at 87.1 MPH. As with any stat, you can’t glean everything from an average, but it’s a good way to start looking at the very least.

Among pitchers who threw at least 20 innings for the big league club this year, the biggest culprit in terms of giving up hard hit balls by percentage was Ian Kennedy at 41.7 percent. This might shock you, but he also gave up the least soft contact at 11.8 percent. That’s a far cry from his career of 16.9 percent soft contact and 33.7 percent hard contact. I guess we’ll find out in 2018 if this past year was about age or about injury for him.

Royals Farm Report’s Drew Osborne profiles Foster Griffin in the latest entry in their prospect watch series:

Griffin does a good job using his frame to get extension and throwing downhill which gives his pitches life at the knees. He will mix between the 2-seam which sinks armside and the 4-seam which almost seems to jump because it doesn’t have that same movement. He will throw the 4-seam inside to the RHHs and the pitch will stand them up, getting to their hands, and follow it with the 2-seamer away which gets defensive swings and poor contact. Griffin does a really good job with this which is why his pitchability is considered advanced. He can also use the top of the strike zone well.

The changeup also has really good armside run (or fade) which makes it very tough on RHHs. This is a great pitch for him. Griffin also throws a curve that has more of 1-7 movement on it. The shape of the curve is late movement with tight break. He doesn’t throw one of those big looping curveballs that has a lot of people dropping their jaw. But when every pitch comes out of the same tunnel and moves differently, it can be quite perplexing as a hitter. And I will say from watching several of his outings last year that Griffin does a really good job tunnelling. I saw good and bad Foster last year.

And RFP’s Alex Duvall tackles prospect Daniel Tillo:

Tillo is a kid that projects as a middle-of-the-rotation starter. He uses a mid-90’s fastball with a pretty nasty slider and still-developing change up to neutralize opposing hitters. He’s a guy I fully expect to start all the way through his minor league career, and he’s already found success as a starter in his first professional season.

After starting the year in the AZL, Tillo was promoted to Rookie League Burlington where he made 7 starts and threw 31 innings. In those 31 innings, Tillo posted a 3.48 ERA, a 3.57 FIP, struck out 25 and walked only 6. Tillo’s 1.74 BB/9 may have been the most encouraging part of his rookie campaign.

Kings of Kauffman’s Nicholas Sullivan relives the glory days of two years ago.

The recently relieved Dave Eiland has landed in the Big Apple again.

Surely aided by its proximity to Kansas, Kauffman Stadium draws the third-most out-of-state fans of any stadium in baseball.

BP’s Jarrett Siedler looks at the role trust has played in this year’s World Series.

These are the five things Justice League needs to accomplish to avoid sinking the DCU.

Perhaps more shows should emulate Stanger Things and Bojack Horseman when dealing with subtext.

Huge planet. Tiny star. Huh?

The song of the day is “Drift Away” by Dobie Gray: