Royals Rumblings - News for May 23, 2018

Royals Rumblings - News for May 23, 2018

Ned Yost is focused on improving, not necessarily wins.

While some observers thought the Royals might be closer to a .500 team coming out of Spring Training, Yost said he held no expectations in any direction.

”What difference does that make?” Yost said. “I never said that [the Royals could be a .500 team]. We just go at it every day. And work every day. Keep going until we get better.

”I don’t look at it ... I come to the ballpark with the mindset of how to win a game today. What good is it to sit and look at what we did in the last week? What good does that do?”

Jason Hammel is not a fan of shifts.

In his Mellinger Minutes, Sam Mellinger admits that Dayton Moore has flaws, but he’s likely not getting fired anytime soon.

But, if you’re asking about why Moore isn’t being fired, imagine who you’d want to replace him:

Someone with experience rebuilding, ideally done through building a farm system, and it would be really great if you could find someone who’d even won a championship. You’d want someone who could have a good relationship with the owner, and who would enjoy Kansas City and be in this for the long haul.

You would want, in other words, someone exactly like Dayton Moore and, to borrow a phrase, there is no GM tree.

Craig Brown at Baseball Prospectus Kansas City looks at the team’s high double play rate.

The Royals current OBP is .318, which actually isn’t that bad. In fact, it’s right at the league average rate. Yet those baserunners aren’t translating into runs. After Monday’s shutout, the Royals are scoring just 3.87 runs per game, the second worst average in the AL and well below the major league average of 4.42 runs scored per game.

There are a lot of reasons the Royals aren’t bringing those runners around the bases to score. Their propensity to ground into double plays is certainly one. This year, the average team is grounding into a double play 10 percent of the time they have a runner on first and fewer than two outs. The Royals lead the majors in double play rate at a hefty 14 percent.

Royals pitchers aren’t keen on using a bullpen car.

“I think it’s kind of weird, but that’s just because I’ve never seen it,” Karns said. “I like to jog in. I like when you see a bullpen guy coming in during a game, especially to start a fresh inning, like you see (Kelvin) Herrera come in and it’s just like everyone knows it’s the ninth inning. You can just see the guy’s face.

“I don’t know if the fans feel the same way about it. I don’t know if they care about seeing a guy jog 250 feet to the mound.”

Rustin Dodd at The Athletics talks to former Royals pitcher David Cone, who has made a name for himself as a Yankees broadcaster.

Rob Manfred says that streaming baseball games on Facebook is going great.

MLB owners wanted a salary cap for years, but that may have changed.

If Manny Machado played third, would he be MVP?

Carlos Gomez accuses drug tests of not being so random

Rich Hill has blister problems but doesn’t want to pee on his hands.

Grant Brisbee thinks baseball fights are dumb.

Jon Bois shows how Rickey Henderson revolutionized baseball.

53-year old Rafael Palmeiro is playing in the independent league the Kansas City T-Bones play in, and he homered this week.

Who had the more amazing sports run - the Las Vegas Golden Knights, or Leicester City last year?

The NFL is considering a 15-yard penalty for kneeling during the national anthem.

Hedge funds own many of the newspapers across the country now.

Wireless carriers may be sharing your real-time location data with third-parties.

What worked and what didn’t in the latest season of Saturday Night Live.

Your song of the day is De La Soul with Eye Know.