Royals Rumblings

Royals Rumblings - News for December 12, 2019

Salvy’s on first?

By Max Rieper@maxrieper Dec 12, 2019, 8:00am EST

MLB: Detroit Tigers at Kansas City Royals

Royals Rumblings - News for December 12, 2019

Salvy won’t dive right back into catching every day next year, writes Lynn Worthy.

“I think it definitely makes it a little bit different than what it would normally be,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “If you saw a guy who might get a start a week, or maybe two, it’s going to look a little different from that at the outset at least.”

The Royals will ease Perez, who’ll turn 30 in May, back into the lineup next season and attempt to mitigate the impact of his catching duties by likely having him serve as designated hitter and play first base.

Mike Matheny expects a big year out of Ryan O’Hearn, writes Jeffrey Flanagan.

“We don’t look away from things that guys can control, which is hard-hit rate [roughly 44 percent both years],” Matheny said. “We realize there’s always something we can do, little adjustments that can be made along the way to hopefully open up that door. You watched Hunter Dozier and Ryan O’Hearn kind of go neck and neck through the system where you can see what may translate for somebody like Hunter could absolutely translate the same way for Ryan.

”So I don’t think you have to dig very deep to see the potential that’s there, and hopefully [we’ll] be able to continue to create tools and an atmosphere for Ryan O’Hearn to flourish.”

Flanny also has a Winter Meetings update.

As Moore pointed out again, no one on the team is untouchable. But the ask for Merrifield has been too high for other teams right now and likely will stay that way. The same can be said for left-hander Danny Duffy and slugger Jorge Soler. Moore said he wants to keep his core group of players intact, and also indicated he doesn’t see the Royals in a position to eat salary on potential trades anyway.

And he writes about the search for pitching.

“I think that’s smart [to improve the rotation],” Moore said. “People ask us how we can improve our bullpen. Well, if we find a fifth starter, we could pencil in [Glenn] Sparkman and [Jorge] López in the bullpen. I think that’s ultimately how we’ll improve our bullpen. We’ll look to [find a fifth starter].

”But we’ll go into Spring Training with a strong number of young pitchers in camp. We’re kind of debating on who should come to camp and who shouldn’t.”

Also re. #Padres trade talks, they've liked #KCRoyals OF/utilityman Whit Merrifield for a long time & talked to KC about him again this week. Sources say they pushed OF Wil Myers on KC but while KC still likes Myers a little, no way KC taking that $$.
— Scott Miller (@ScottMillerBbl) December 12, 2019