Royals Rumblings - News for June 14, 2017

Royals Rumblings - News for June 14, 2017

The Royals will turn to Matt Strahm in the rotation after Miguel Almonte had some shoulder tightness.

“He was going to be a starter eventually,” Yost said. “We just kept looking at the options. When Almonte got hurt, we just don’t have any other rostered options that are ready. You can always put him back in the bullpen. Let’s look at it and see: Maybe we can have a Duffy-type situation.”

Royals scouting director Lonnie Goldberg discusses day two of the draft.

This past season, Tillo used his mid-90s fastball, a slider and developing changeup to hold hitters to a .192 average while striking out 54 in 41 innings. He plans on signing with the Royals.

"He's built like a starter [and] looks like a starter," Royals director of scouting Lonnie Goldberg said. "He has a chance to be a middle-of-the-rotation arm. … This is the guy you dream on."

Not a bad birthday present.

The American League Wild Card race could be crazy.

The Royals, meanwhile, are in a tough spot. They have roughly the same chance of making the playoffs as the A’s, but this is the final year during which the team’s core — the one that made it to the World Series twice and won in 2015 — are likely to be together. The Royals can either ride with that group one more time or try to gather up a collection of prospects to add to a system that isn’t in fantastic shape due, in part, to correctly going for it when they had a chance a few years back. The smart play is probably to unload prospects, but look at the projected end-of-year wins for all the teams about which we’ve been talking....

Let’s say the Royals go crazy, win eight of their next 10 games and then trade for Zack Cozart. Their wins forecast would increase from 75 to 80 and their playoff odds move from 3% to closer to 20%. That’s not likely to happen, but it shows how quickly things can — and will — change over the course of the next month.

Former Royals General Manager John Schuerholz discusses drafting football stars Dan Marino and John Elway for the Royals.

“I’ll tell you this that I haven’t told anyone in an interview before,” Schuerholz said. “After we drafted [Marino] I spoke to his dad several times. In those days if you signed a professional baseball contract you couldn’t play another sport.

Mr Marino, rightly as a concerned dad, said: ‘He loves baseball but if he signs with you that will cost him his scholarship.’ I told him: ‘Mr Marino, I will gladly reimburse the amount if you tell me what it is.’ We were willing to work with him to let him go to college.

Joe Posnanski writes about the legend of Bo Jackson.

“That day we signed Bo was one of my greatest days in professional baseball,” says Art Stewart, now the Royals’ senior adviser to the general manager. “There was just nobody like this guy.”

On the day Bo signed, he asked whether he could take batting practice. Bo had not swung a bat in months. He hit the first pitch he saw off the base of the crown scoreboard in center field. It had to fly 450 feet. Avron Fogelman, who co-owned the Royals, shouted: “Get me that baseball.” Bo promptly hit the second ball he saw to almost the exact same spot, off the base of the scoreboard.

“Get me that ball, too,” Fogelman said.

Kyle Zimmer is back!

Jhonny Peralta is now a free agent and the Red Sox may pursue him.

Baseball Prospectus re-drafts the 2012 draft, where the Royals picked up Zimmer.

Yasiel Puig flips Indians fans the bird.

Aaron Judge is being compared to Babe Ruth.

Moneyball’s draft advice has outlived its usefulness.

Does anyone care about interleague play anymore?

The Mariners home stadium will get a name change.

A bi-partisan bill would end federal tax exemptions on municipal bonds for sports stadiums.

So who can challenge the Warriors in the future?

Did the Chiefs letting Jeremy Maclin go have something to do with them letting their salary cap expert go?

Uber board member resigns after a stupid sexist joke.

Everything Nintendo revealed at the E3 2017 press conference.

The authentic R2D2 unit from the original Star Wars movie will be up for auction beginning at $1 million.

Your song of the day is REM with California Dreamin’.