Royals Rumblings - News for February 15, 2019

Jeffrey Flanagan at MLB.com talks about Cheslor Cuthbert’s quest to make the team in Spring Training. He was left off the 40-man roster after a season derailed by injury.

”I didn’t know it was fractured right away,” Cuthbert said. “At the beginning, the MRI showed a lot of swelling. And I rested, and then tried to come back, and it was still hurting. Then we had another MRI and it showed a fracture.”

Vahe Gregorian of the KC Star revisits some of Kyle Zimmer’s trials and tribulations.

From his view behind the plate for Kyle Zimmer’s spring training debut in 2013, reserve Royals catcher Cam Gallagher recalled Wednesday, the No. 5 overall pick in the 2012 draft had “electric stuff’ and routinely was throwing 97 or 98 mph. “’This guy is going to be in the big leagues for a long time,’” Gallagher thought then.

Lynn Worthy, newly minted Royals beat writer for the KCStar, catches up with Brad Boxberger, one of the newest Royals:

“Ideally I’d love to close,” Boxberger said. “I mean, I love the opportunity, but any role that I’m in I’m going to try and succeed at.”

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum will have a 100th anniversary celebration in 2020:

The museum in the 18th and Vine District announced plans for a yearlong celebration that will start on Feb. 13, 2020, the 100th anniversary of a meeting at the Paseo YMCA that sparked the Negro Leagues. Those sessions between interested owners were led by Andrew “Rube” Foster.

Royals Farm Report continues their series of predicting organizational rosters. Yesterday, Alex Duvall took a stab at High A Wilmington:

I had an awful time trying to put this roster together. I hate to be the guy that complains about there being too many journeyman in the upper minors blocking some of the younger guys buuuuut... What do you do with all of the pitching? No way I’d leave Yefri Del Rosario in Lexington. There’s not really space in AA for Singer or Lynch unless the Royals wanted to just start cutting guys (I might, I just don’t think they will). The starting rotation of Del Rosario, Hernandez, Lynch, Singer, and Kowar has to stay in tact in my opinion.

Royals Blue even awakened from its months’ long slumber for Spring Training.

We don’t work for the Royals in any capacity (except giving them free publicity) but this ticket offer dropped into my inbox yesterday. It sounds like Opening Day tickets aren’t moving quite as quickly as they’d like. They’re dynamically priced so that the cheapest ones are $60+ fees but if you buy one, you get a ticket for another game at $5.

Editorial note: If you haven’t been to Opening Day, do it! This is your chance! About half of the time, the Royals start on the road so you don’t even get a shot at Opening Day. When it is at home, the get-in-the-door price can be $100+. It’s at home, it’s $50, and the team will be 0-0, just like everyone else. GO!

Today’s entry on The Best of Royals Review (TM) is a time capsule of being a Royals fans about a decade ago. It’s more righteous fury from Will with Dayton Moore Tells Fans to Trust the Process, Ignore Reality.

A common story format for blogs from the late 00s was to take a beat writer’s article and then dissect and rebut it. The 2009 team was supposed to compete, at least modestly, but at this point in the season, it was 37-57 and going nowhere. Bob Dutton got some Dayton Moore quotes because, frankly, there wasn’t much to talk about on the field: “You get a good group of people together. You work hard together. You trust in one another. You go through the difficult times. You work hard to make good decisions. You keep guys together and, eventually, it will happen.”

Will quickly savaged that by picking apart the language:

Working hard is not a process, it is simply toil. Belief in... I guess yourself and your group is not a process either. Basically, Dayton’s described something between a particularly Maoist-bent cult and a generic American family. Neither is likely well-suited to run the Royals.

This story had a number of touchstones of Royals baseball from the late aughts:

18-11! NEVER FORGET!

It also presages one of Will’s best pieces ever: Who does this sound like?

Moore and his team are coming off like a former #1 pick who reached the Majors, had a nice rookie year, and has decided he doesn’t have to adjust his approach at the plate ever again.

FYI: Frenchy didn’t get to the Royals until 2011. However, his name was mentioned in the comments, as was Yuni’s.

Speaking of which, the comments have their own gold:

• Fernando Vina School of Linguistics’s mentioning the Winchester Mystery House
• A reference to “Peace for our time”
• A McCovey Chronicles reader stopping by to wish us the best because RR reminded him “what it was like to be in a truly hopeless situation”
• Coach Feb defending GMDM but hating on Hillman

It would be hard to write a more 2009 era RR article than this one.

So much content coming out from Fansided now that Spring Training has started so it gets its own section today:

• Leigh Oleszczak with a trio of stories. The first speculates “Kyle Zimmer could make his MLB debut in 2019”.
• She also has (slideshow alert): “Five questions to answer in Spring Training”.
• And here’s her take on the Jake Diekman signing.
• Martin Vogels at KOK put in his two cents about the signing, too.
• As does Martha Waltem.
• Chase Jones asks “Will Nicky Lopez put pressure on Hunter Dozier?”
• Trevor Hooth also mentions Lopez: “Experts think Nicky Lopez can contribute in 2019”.
• Finally, Hooth declares “Get ready for a closer by committee”.

Three listicles this week:

Jonah Keri from CBS has “10 reasons to be excited for the 2019 MLB season” and the Royals make the list!

9. The Royals! Seriously!

On their way to 104 losses and a last-place finish in 2018, the Royals did at least do one thing well: They terrorized opposing pitchers on the basepaths. Whit Merrifield led the majors by swiping 45 bags, while young shortstop Adalberto Mondesi stole 32 in 75 games, a pace that would have netted 69 in a full 162-game season.

The Royals are going to be bad again this year...so why not get even faster? Joining KC this season is Billy Hamilton, the major-league leader in steals over the past five seasons with 262 of them. Add in recently acquired superutility man Chris Owings (double-digit steals in each of the past four seasons) and Terrance Gore (the most electrifying extreme specialist in baseball) and the Royals could trot out a track team that’ll look a lot closer to the Whiteyball Cardinals than the exaggeratingly risk-averse, analytically-beholden teams of today.

To which we say: Hell yes.

Also at CBS, Mike Axisa lists “The most interesting non-roster invitee for all 30 teams”:

Royals

SS Nicky Lopez. The Royals opted against bringing any of their big-name pitching prospects (Daniel Lynch, Jackson Kowar, Brady Singer) to big-league camp this year, so Lopez gets the nod as their most interesting non-roster player almost by default. He’s a classic scrappy middle infield type who hit .308/.382/.417 with more walks (60) than strikeouts (52) in 130 games split between Double-A and Triple-A last year. Barring a trade, Kansas City’s future infield likely has Whit Merrifield at third, Adalberto Mondesi at short, and Lopez at second.

Also, keep an eye on righty Kyle Zimmer in camp. The fifth overall pick in the 2012 draft is supposedly healthy after years of injuries. He will go out to the mound with three well-above-average pitches on his best days. Zimmer is on the 40-man roster and therefore not a non-roster player.

At Fangraphs, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel post “Who We Expect to Make the 2020 Top 100”. Two Royals make the list:

College-aged PitchersIt’s hard to imagine any of these guys rocketing into the top 50 overall. Rather, we would anticipate that they end up in the 60-100 range on next year’s list. Gilbert was a workhorse at Stetson and his velo may spike with reshaped usage. Singer should move quickly because of how advanced his command is. Lynch’s pre-draft velocity bump held throughout the summer, and he has command of several solid secondaries. Abreu spent several years in rookie ball and then had a breakout 2018, forcing Houston to 40-man him to protect him from the Rule 5. He’ll tie Dustin May for the second-highest breaking ball spin rate on THE BOARD when the Houston list goes up. We’re intrigued by what Dodgers player dev will do with an athlete like Gray. Phillips throws a ton of strikes and has a good four-pitch mix.

Brady Singer, RHP, Kansas City Royals

Daniel Lynch, LHP, Kansas City Royals

We’re continuing February’s PAX South Indy games theme and revisiting a game from earlier this month. Below is one of the boss battles from Just Shapes & Beats. Here’s Noisestorm with Barracuda: