Royals Rumblings - News for August 4, 2017

Considering the Royals just went on a 9-game winning streak and now are in the midst of a less fun stretch, let’s revisit an article from last year by a handsome and beloved RR author. It talked about what teams did after a 9+ game winning streak as the Royals went on one of those last year, too. This would be the addendum:

The Royals went 5-5 in the game 10 games after their 9 game streak and finished 81-81. I think most remember how the Cubs and Indians ended. The Red Sox also had a 9 game win streak in mid September, finished the season 1-5, and then were skunked 3-0 by the Indians in the ALDS. This season, the following teams have had win streaks of 9 or more: Royals (yay), Indians (yup), Dodgers (twice: one in June and one in July), Astros (natch), and the Rangers (huh).

Darin Watson at BP Kansas City looks at the schedule:

The good news for the Royals is that they appear to have a softer schedule than Cleveland. Royals opponents have a weighted actual winning percentage of .489. Meanwhile, Cleveland’s opponents are at .497. Appearances may be deceiving, though: Royals opponents have a third-order winning percentage of .502. while Cleveland’s are at .495.

Fan favorite Jarrod Dyson visits Kansas City for the first time since he was traded to Seattle.

"It's like coming back home," Dyson said before the opener of a four-game series between American League playoff contenders.

In yesterday’s Rumblings, OMD linked to a BtBS story about revocable waivers. Matt Snyder at CBS also writes about this. Here’s a story from MLBTR about how August trades work that you should ASAP or, at least, PDQ.

CBS also mentions some names that might change hands and the Royals are featured prominently on the list. Alonso, Bruce, Granderson, and Napoli are listed for them, but I got the impression that Melky was the end of shopping in the corner OF/DH market. We’ve heard the noise about SPs Lynn and Estrada and MI help in terms of Asdrubal Cabrera or Jed Lowrie make a lot of sense.

Recent opponent Baltimore is in a similar situation as Kansas City, which explains why they were buyers instead of sellers

Maybe Duquette should be taking a bigger-picture approach, weighing the next five years as heavily (if not more heavily) than the next two. But this is the path he chose. We'll see if it works. No matter what, when you break it down, the Orioles' deadline isn't as incomprehensible as it originally seemed.

Old friend, Greg Holland, is having an unexpectedly great season out in Colorado. But he did miss a game earlier this week due to a “kitchen accident” where he cut his finger. Been there, done that. Recently, even.

Andrew Miller is going to the DL, but probably for not very long.

Former K-State and current South Carolina basketball coach Frank Martin appears to be a fan. Gamecock alumnus Whit Merrifield reached out to him on Twitter.

ESPN’s Sam Miller penned an article entitled “Dear 1987, you're not going to believe what has happened to baseball”, which sounded like a good idea but was a little disappointing, frankly. But it linked to an older one of his that I hope hasn’t been posted before. It that painted extra innings as a dystopian deconstruction of baseball, talking about how each inning is statistically different and that was pretty cool.

The Cubs gave Steve Bartman a World Series ring and he opened up about how his life has been pretty miserable since being scapegoated in 2003.

David Laurila of Fangraphs posted a couple of articles about Frank Herrmann’s and Lars Anderson’s experiences in Japanese baseball.

MLB and Phoenix are fighting about who gets to pay for repairs at Chase Field.

Essentially, this seems to boil down to a case where MLB and one of its teams wants someone else to foot the bill on a stadium-related matter. Otherwise, hey, baseball might go to another city. In that sense, this is business as usual.

I don’t want to be too political in Rumblings but THIS IS IMPORTANT! As Farmhand wrote about, a major eclipse is coming. Well, this could be disastrous things for Donald Trump... according to astrologists.

Speaking of the moon, last Friday, we talked a lot about the SNES holy trio including today’s game. I will readily admit my bias here: Final Fantasy IV is one of my favorite games of all time. As a whole, the game is not as revolutionary or polished as its successors. It has its fair share of innovations, being the first FF for the 16-bit age with the ATB system being chief among them. But the sound effects and graphics fall a bit short and there's not a lot of the customization that is present in later games. Many decry its completely linear structure but I count that among its strengths not weaknesses. It allows for a tight, dramatic plot with memorable characters.

For our purposes today, this is the first great Nobuo Uematsu soundtrack. Our song, The Red Wings theme, ushered in the cinematic RPG age six years before Final Fantasy VII amped this idea up to 11. When starting Final Fantasy IV for the first time, gamers had never experienced anything at all like it*: a perfect military theme and a dramatic cinematic which dropped players right into Cecil's story (as well as that of Kain, Rosa, the Red Wings, and the Mysidians).

*one /could/ make an argument for the cinematics in the NES Ninja Gaiden series, which were also awesome and ahead of their time