Royals Rumblings - News for March 20, 2018

Royals Rumblings - News for March 20, 2018

Rustin Dodd at The Athletic writes that an unorthodox delivery has helped Richard Lovelady.

On a day early in camp, Yost positioned himself behind a cage on a practice field during a live batting practice session as Lovelady stood on the mound. From slightly more than 70 feet away, looking straight ahead, Yost could not find the baseball.

“I had trouble picking the ball up, and I wasn’t even hitting,” Yost said. “ It’s on you before you pick it up.”

Yost describes Lovelady’s motion as “herky-jerky” with a “jump” at the end. The assessment is fairly close. There is a hitch with the left arm. There is an explosion off the rubber, his arm flying across his body. There is a baseball cutting through the air at 95 mph.

“It’s all kind of coming at you,” Yost said. “Boom. Where is it?”

Former Royals slugger John Mayberry reflects on his career, and how he would have been a sabermetric darling.

“Funny you say that, because back in my day, if you walked, it was like you had a bad at-bat,” Mayberry said. “Taking a walk -- you didn’t do nothing. Nowadays they understand the importance of not killing a rally -- a walk doesn’t kill a rally.”

And consistently drawing walks and getting on base can make you rich today.

Colby Wilson at Baseball Prospectus Kansas City calls on the Royals to play Ryan O’Hearn.

Unless he’s totally spent, Lucas Duda will perform better in 2018 than Ryan O’Hearn will.

He’s also 32 years old. What good is he doing—hitting well-enough to get a mildly regarded prospect in July, assuming everything works out just fine? He could. I’m even mildly hopeful. But what I’d rather see is O’Hearn and his ilk contributing and providing hope that the future could look better than the present.

Baseball America gave their predictions on the year, and listed the Royals as the team whose rebuild they were most pessimistic about.

Royals: The cupboard is close to empty.

The Royals made a minor trade with the Mariners.

Pete Grathoff has five things you may not know about new Royals pitcher Justin Grimm.

The Yankees and Red Sox will play a regular season series in London.

Seriously, why is Alex Cobb still a free agent?

The new mound visit rule has an enforcement problem.

The most fun fantasy team fake money can buy.

Jason Vargas will have surgery on his non-throwing hand.

Manny Machado explains his move to shortstop.

The star power of Reds prospect Hunter Greene is already evident at camp.

The federal tax reform bill may cause certain baseball trades to be treated as capital gains.

The best players who spent their entire career with lousy teams.

Meet the guy behind UMBC’s Twitter account that exploded this week.

An autonomous vehicle kills a pedestrian in Arizona.

Faith-based movie audiences are proving to be solid at the box office.

All 856 episodes of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood are coming to Twitch.

Your song of the day is David Byrne with Everybody’s Coming To My House.