Royals Rumblings - News for December 5, 2018

Royals Rumblings - News for December 5, 2018

David Lesky at Baseball Prospectus Kansas City looks at the new metric DRC+.

Looking at some of the outliers, Perez hit .235/.274/.439, but his d numbers were .266/.305/.475. Why did he fail to reach them? I don’t know, but we did talk quite a bit throughout the season of how hard he hit the ball throughout the season, so that certainly played a role. Ryan O’Hearn is a huge drop from wRC+ to DRC+, though he’s still tops on the team in either metric. His “d” numbers were .264/.347/.512 compared to .262/.353/.597, so basically the power was the difference there.

Alex Duvall at Royals Farm Report wonders how close Kelvin Gutierrez is to the big leagues.

Often times with minor league hitters that haven’t had a ton of success, one of the big concerns becomes strikeouts. Kelvin Gutierrez is no Nicky Lopez, but he only struck out in 17.4% of his PA’s with the Naturals in 2018 and his SwStr% was only 10.1%. That’s not elite, and it’s not going to be his calling when he reaches Kansas City, but it goes to show that contact skills won’t be a huge concern with Gutierrez either. Should the Royals need to call on Gutierrez to play third base, they won’t have to worry about ruining his development.

Trey Hillman is reportedly joining the Marlins’ coaching staff.

Patrick Corbin spurns the Yankees and signs a six-year, $140 million deal with the Nationals.

The Astros sign catcher Robinson Chirinos.

The Mets are now interested in catcher J.T. Realmuto.

The Dodgers and White Sox are among the teams pursuing Bryce Harper.

Is Major League Baseball to blame for the Mariners firesale?

2080 Baseball has names to look for in the Rule 5 draft.

Reliever Merrill Kelly jumps from the Korean league to sign a two-year deal with the Diamondbacks.

When new GMs start trading away prospects, it typically doesn’t fare well.

What does a typical 2018 starting pitcher look like?

Bill Madden defends voting for Placido Polanco for the Hall of Fame.

Seattle is getting an NHL team. Where should each league expand to next?

NBA prospect Markelle Fultz has thoracic outlet syndrome.

Robot janitors are coming to a WalMart near you.

Tom Cruise is here to address a very serious problem - motion smoothing on your television.

Epic Games takes on Steam with its own game store.

Your song of the day is Run-DMC with Sucker MCs.