Royals Rumblings - News for December 7, 2018

As is often the case, particularly in the offseason, BPKC gets the top spot. David Lesky tackles pace of play. I especially like how he worded the second point because I’m right there with him.

Why in the world do the umpires need to wait for the manager to challenge, stroll over to the headphones, stand there as if they’re doing anything while waiting for New York, only to then take their time to make the call after they’re given the result? These replay officials are already watching the games. They need to be ready with the call in a much shorter time frame than they currently do. And, oh yeah, enforce the 10 seconds the managers have to make their decisions. No more hands in the air while they wait for the thumbs up or thumbs down from their guys.

As for pitching changes, I don’t know what the solution is exactly, but I know that what is happening now is slowing games down after the fifth or sixth to a point that it even bothers me and I’m the audience that they basically can’t lose.

RFR’s Drew Osborne continues his series on minor leaguers the Royals should trade for. Today’s target is at least a 55 on the name scale: Genesis Cabrera.

Cabrera would immediately be in the conversation with the Royals top starting pitching prospects even though he didn’t have immediate success when he transitioned to the Texas League. I promise you the stuff is better than the numbers. Where Cabrera gets into trouble is when he flattens out his stuff. That happens because he leaks from his leg lift to the point he drives to the plate. This can be a fairly easy fix. When he stays back he can drive the ball downhill and has explosive life on his pitches. The problem is he hasn’t fixed it yet.

Remember yesterday, when we had news with the (I keep calling him Micah) Chris Owings signing? That was fun. Joel Wagler of KC Kingdom claims “Chris Owings brings versatility and upside”.

In today’s Best of Royals Review (TM), we’re taking the wayback machine. In the first couple of years, all of the front page content was from Will (or was something called a “Fan Post” that surely no longer exists). Near as I can tell, the first writer to join Will on the masthead was NHZ (if there even was a masthead back then). He had a weekly-ish series called Spreadsheet Baseball in 2007 and 2008. Today’s Best of RR: Spreadsheet Baseball: A Rivalry Renewed

In this one, NHZ looked at Opening Day 2007 (aka the Alex-Gordon-struck-out-with-the-bases-loaded-in-his-first-MLB-at-bat-but-pretty-much-everything-else-went-great game) and revisits the previous couple of years between the Red Sox and Royals:

Yester[day] afternoon’s 7-1 Royals victory was a microcosm of why baseball is such a great game; a small-market team, fresh off signing a guy “for too much money and too many years” because he’s all they could get for a number one starter, defeats the large-market team and their usual murderers’ row of a line-up. On one warm afternoon at “The K,” Gil Meche slew the Dragon that is the Boston Red Sox, limiting them to one run over seven innings. The well-paid Red Sox were generally quiet over the duration of the game, whereas the mostly young line-up of the Royals knocked Curt Schilling out of the box after four innings.

Yesterday’s Sheryl Ring article on Fangraphs gets the entire “non-Royals baseball” section today. DISCLAIMER: THERE’S SOME PRETTY BAD STUFF IN IT. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

The Human Side of the Cubs’ Addison Russell Decision

For those unfamiliar, she typically writes about the legal side of the game for Fangraphs. However, yesterday, she wrote about Addison Russell, how she became a baseball fan, and some very personal stories about abuse and growing up transgender. Again, as noted above- there’s some dark content.

Unfortunately, our song of the day over the next few weeks may have a number of game repeats as I got dumped onto a new long-term project at work.

Since Smash Bros Ultimate drops today (and, as of last night, became the best selling game on Amazon for 2018 a day before it was even released), we’ll look back at Super Smash Bros Melee for the Gamecube. Today’s video is 10 hours(!) of the Main Menu 1 theme on repeat (no I have not watched all 10 hours to make sure that’s all there is):