Royals Rumblings - News for April 13, 2017

Royals fan Spectrum subscribers were supposed to maybe get screwed last night. One night earlier might not have been a bad thing.

Blair Kerkhoff explains that the reason the Royals were keen on Jake Junis was because they got (Junior) Yosted:

Yost’s son, Ned, is the batting and third base coach for the Colorado Springs Sky Sox, who played Junis’ Omaha Storm Chasers last week. Junis started and pitched 6 1/3 innings, allowing four hits and two runs while striking out seven.

“I called him after the game and asked him how Jake did, and he said really, really good,” Yost said. “We got reports from all angles.”

Junis was scheduled to start for Class AAA Omaha on Wednesday. Instead, he was in the Royals clubhouse, a No. 65 uniform hanging in his locker. Junis, the team’s 29th round selection in the 2011 draft, is with the parent club during the regular season for the first time.

Mellinger talks about how Strahm’s early struggles are the team’s first big hurdle (apparently going into the season with more GLARING question marks than seemingly every team in baseball doesn’t count):

So he ended up throwing his fastball less, his curveball more, and it was all being hit hard or taken out of the strike zone.

A year ago, he induced swings and misses on 12.2 percent of his pitches, the same as Chris Archer, and better than stars like Justin Verlander and Chris Sale. Even in such a small sample, he showed enough to inspire belief.

Well, before his demotion, that number was at 5.2 percent — slightly below Chien-Ming Wang’s 2016 with the Royals. Wang remains unsigned this year.

Find out more about Jake Junis, courtesy of Pete Grathoff:

This is Junis’ first time on the 25-man roster. Here are five things to know about him:

1. Although Junis, 24, was a 29th-round pick in the 2011 draft, he received a $675,000 signing bonus. He signed with the Royals instead of playing at North Carolina State.

2. After high school, Junis’ advisor/agent was Sam Samardzija, who is the brother of San Francisco Giants pitcher Jeff Samardzija, according to SaukValley.com.

David Lesky believes the Royals are sending mixed messages in sending down Matt Strahm while keeping Raúl Mondesí in the majors.

Patrick Brennan (painting_the_corner404) tells us what we can expect from Jake Junis at KoK.

Joe Posnanski assesses the panic levels for each last-place team, including the Royals.

FanGraphs’ Nicholas Stellini on Yoenis Céspedes’s three-dong night.

Dave Cameron weighs in on Byron Buxton’s horrendous first week.

Ben Carsley tries to find who to blame for the constant onslaught of “Joe Kelly has great stuff.”

Rob Manfred continues his toothless fight against Chief Wahoo.

It took Google three hours to disable Burger King’s homepage-hijacking ad.

The City of St. Louis is suing the NFL over the Rams’ relocation.

A must-read list of the eight most ridiculous moments in the Fast & Furious series.

Netflix plans to stop chasing tax incentives.

R.I.P. J. Geils.

Louis CK is in hot water for possibly ripping off Tig Notaro’s clown short on last week’s SNL.

The song[s] of the day is[/are] “With Him / Best To You / Better Numb” by Blood Orange.