Royals Rumblings - News for December 13, 2018

Jeffrey Flanagan reports that Ned Yost is reticent to talk about where Billy Hamilton is going to slot in the lineup:

Yost, though, then settled down to discuss potential speed throughout his batting order.

’I like the fact -- when I sit back and look at it, [Chris Owings] has speed, he’s going to be able to do things,” Yost said. “Hunter Dozier has a really deceiving type of speed. I think Hunter will be able to steal 15 to 20 bases. And so we’re going to have a lot of athleticism, a lot of speed.

”But in terms of looking at the lineup, you’ve got Whit, who is a huge on-base percentage guy, led baseball in hits, in stolen bases. Mondi coming into his own last year. [Alex Gordon] really flourished in the three hole. Jorge Soler coming back, and he was really starting to take off before he broke his foot. And we’re going to have a lot of options, and we’ll sit down when we get to Spring Training and experiment with the lineup and see what is best. Not necessarily what works best, because it’s hard to tell in Spring Training, but what feels best, and go from there.”

At Beyond the Box Score, our own PBrenns talks about the Royals’ projections and speed in 2019:

So it’s pretty clear, overall, the Royals will have a bad offense in 2019. Singling out stolen bases though, they seem like a pretty good bet to be elite in that department. Performing the same process above for projected stolen base figures, the Royals stand at the top. Projected for 148 stolen bases, that mark is higher than every other projected total in 2019 and would have led baseball by a significant margin in 2018. The trio of Mondesi, Hamilton, and Merrifield are projected for 106 stolen bases alone. Only six teams had a higher total than that last season.

At the AV Club, 2018 is deemed the year that horror took over the action genre and named Mandy the action film of the year.

At KC Kingdom, Joel Wagler goes out on a limb and says the 2019 Royals will be fast:

Though only 28 years old, Hamilton has 277 career stolen bases. From 2014 through 2017, he averaged 57.5 thefts a season. He joins a squad that boasts the reigning Major League stolen base king, Whit Merrifield. The Royals’ second baseman has led the American League the past two season, averaging 39.5 pilfered bags.

Now throw in young Adalberto Mondesi, who stole 32 bases in just 75 games in 2018. Those three will offer as much speed as any threesome in recent memory. The Indians led the Majors with 135 steals in 2018. It’s conceivable Hamilton, Merrifield, and Mondesi could steal that many themselves.

Boots Riley, director of this year’s visionary satirical piece Sorry to Bother You, writes of a film he loved this year.

Jeff Sullivan marvels at the fact that the Rays (?!) actually made a free agent splash.

For all you Mandy fans (surely all of you) hoping for an Oscar nomination for Jòhann Jòhannsson for the beautiful score to the year’s best film, such hopes are apparently in vain.

David Laurila peels back the layers of the Jayson Stark onion to find out how he thinks about writing on the heels of the announcement that he’ll be the J. G. Spink Taylor Award honoree in this Cooperstown class.

Jo Blo lists Mandy amongst its top films of 2018, with lots to say (spoilers abound) in its support of such a wonderfully insane film.

These Native American tribes are actively trying to save the bison from the brink of extinction.

All those Marvel shows that Netflix just canceled? They’re not going to Disney+ any time soon.

Paste’s top 15 horror films of the year are presented here without need for comment.

The song of the day is “Seasons Reverse” by Gastr del Sol:

And here’s the Mandy soundtrack because you know you want it: