Royals Rumblings - News for October 10, 2018

Royals Rumblings - News for October 10, 2018

In his Mellinger Minutes, Sam Melliner considers who the next Royals manager will be.

My friend Derrick Goold was first to the scene on the Royals’ interest in Mike Matheny. Not that Derrick needs it, but I can confirm the interest. There will be other names that come up, too, and they don’t necessarily have to check every box.

If someone like Raul Ibañez was interested, for instance, the Royals might look past their desire for someone with previous experience.

There was a time I wondered if Pedro Grifol or Jason Kendall were being “groomed,” and each would be interesting choices if they wanted the job, but I don’t think that’s happening.

David Lesky at Baseball Prospectus Kansas City evaluates pitching coach Cal Eldred.

In all, I really liked the trend of a fair amount of young pitchers. I’m not sure this is the best way to evaluate Eldred as a coach, but is there really a great way to evaluate coaches? It’s kind of on the players. I’d say the improvements throughout the year at least reflect well on him and seeing guys like Junis, McCarthy, Keller, Fillmyer and some others improve in various ways as the season progressed makes me hopeful for him to be able to continue to make an impact as the pitching staff theoretically skews younger over the next few seasons. I’m not sold on him, but I do feel much better about him than I did early in the season.

Drew Osborne at Royals Farm Report profiles Royals outfield prospect Nick Heath.

Heath is a career .273/.350/.348 in the minors with 91 walks to 221 strikeouts. Heath has 100 career stolen bases and just 29 caught stealing attempts. Overall he is successful nearly 78% of the time. Nick gets on base enough to make the stolen base his primary weapon. As he goes forward, it would be nice to see him bump his slugging percentage up slightly but not at the expense of getting on base. Heath does have some pop and can hit it out of the park but is not focused on that. Over the last season, he cut his strikeout to walk ratio down from 3:1 to 2:1 which helped him raise his on base percentage by 60 points from 2017 to 2018.

Rustin Dodd talks to Kansas native and Red Sox adviser Bill James.

Seven Royals players began play in the Arizona Fall League this week, including Khalil Lee.

The Royals are looking for a new in-game host for Kauffman Stadium next year.

The Royals have filed a trademark suit against the National Women’s Soccer League franchise the Utah Royals.

The Padres fire a pair of coaches who once played in the Royals organization - Matt Stairs and Josh Johnson.

Mike Clevinger is maaaaaad at MLB Network’s Robert Flores (h/t TheeJMVE).

Will Alex Bregman be baseball’s next supervillain?

The Rays extend manager Kevin Cash.

The Twins will interview David Ross for their managerial opening.

Agent Casey Close, who represents Alex Gordon among others, may be a candidate for the Mets GM job.

The surprising trades that built the Brewers.

The new touchback rule is changing college football without changing it.

An ownership group has come forward to push for the MLS in St. Louis.

What will the decline in IPOs mean for small investors?

Google is shutting down Google+ due to security concerns and the fact no one uses it.

The Miss America pageant has banned four states from participating due to leadership squabbles.

Your song of the day is The Silver State with Under the Rug.