Royals Rumblings - News for October 18, 2018

Jeffrey Flanagan interviews the Royals’ top draft pick from 2018, Brady Singer:

Favorite baseball movie?

Singer: “For Love of the Game.” Absolutely. I always think of that part when he’s on the mound and the fans are getting on him and it’s loud, and he just says, ‘Clear the mechanism.’ And then it’s all quiet. I kind of still say that to myself when I’m out of the mound. Just clear all the noise from the stands and everywhere else and totally focus.

Favorite movie, any genre?

Singer: Well, to keep it PG, I’d still say “For Love of the Game.”

Clearly he hasn’t sat through any of the anti-smut meetings yet.

Speaking of top prospects, Jim Callis profiles Khalil Lee, who is refining his approach in the Arizona Fall League:

“In Double-A, you see a lot of the pitchers are basically big league-ready,” Lee said. “They can throw all their pitches for strikes, they can put it where they want it, thrown any pitch in any count, so it was just good to see that and experience that.

”Just being able to jump on that first good pitch I see was the biggest thing for me. I had to really just focus on hitting that first good one and putting it in play. When I didn’t get that first one, I just had to battle and just fight to put the ball in play.”

Dazed sits down with Panos Cosmatos to talk about this wonderful cult hit called Mandy, that some of you may have heard of.

Craig Brown breaks down how the Royals were built.

Did you get a chance to read my interview with Rob Neyer? Part One can be found here. The rest are linked at the beginning and end of the articles. His new book, Power Ball: Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game is pretty great. Having read the book isn’t vital to enjoying the interview, but it would enrich the experience. He was kind enough to carve out 45 minutes of his life to chat, nearly all of which made the four-part series.

Grant Brisbee wants us all to remember that Joe West sucks.

The streaming home for Mandy has been announced. Get your subscriptions lined up.

At FanGraphs:

• Sheryl Ring points out the lunacy of the Mets putting forward José Reyes for their nominee for Marvin Miller Man of the Year.
• Craig Edwards breaks down in excruciating detail Manny Machado’s bush league play at first in Game 4 of the NLCS.

(h/t to Gatsby on this one)

At the Ringer, Zach Kram notes that Craig Counsell dipped into a century-old bag of tricks for yesterday’s one-out starter fake-out.

Start planning your trips to Canada, stoners.

Meet the Atlanta filmmakers responsible for the Cheddar Goblin.

Netflix’s Marvel series aren’t going away quite yet (despite Iron Fist’s cancellation).

The song of the day is “Forging the Beast” by Jóhann Jóhannsson from the original motion picture soundtrack of Mandy: