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After a brief stop in Omaha, right-handed reliever made his Royals debut last night. Ned Yost’s thoughts on the signing, as told to the Kansas City Star:
“He’s a good competitor, a good teammate, good make-up, fell in love a little bit with his cutter,” Royals manager Ned Yost said of the reports on Barnes. “He’s got a good fastball, got to get him back to using it a little bit...They just got into a crunch because they picked up some guys and needed a roster spot. They didn’t really want to get rid of him. It’s good that we were able to get him. I’m anxious to see him. We’ll mix him in.”
This was mentioned in yesterday’s glorious Rumblings comments, but if anyone missed it, our friend Alex Duvall found out that the Royals nixed a trade that would have sent Ian Kennedy to Atlanta for LHP Joey Wentz.
Ian Kennedy is a sunk cost. Ownership refusing to take on some salary relief AND Joey Wentz for a year and a half of Ian Kennedy’s services just befuddles me. I can not make my self understand it in a baseball sense.
At Royals Academy, Clint Scoles talks about Nick Howard, a former first rounder the Royals signed and are sending to Omaha.
Despite being forced into working through the yips and a shoulder injury Howard wasn’t willing to give up. Instead, he headed down to the Florida Baseball Ranch and reworked his motion and appears to have found his upper 90s stuff again. With that discovery, the Royals signed him and will give him an opportunity to prove he’s major league worthy with an assignment at Triple-A.
Joe Posnanski writes about the absolute mess the Royals were in for the 2006 draft.
Think about it: The Royals were terrible, they had the No. 1 pick, the most important pick in team history, and nobody even knew who was in charge. The Royals did have a scouting director, Deric Ladnier, who was left over from the Baird regime. He would be responsible for making the pick. But he also knew that Moore was going to become his boss the day after the draft, so he obviously wanted to make a pick that would make Dayton happy. And he also knew that the Glass family had just fired Allard Baird, so he wanted to make a pick that would make them happy.
A plea to make wine as commonplace as beer at MLB parks, from Michael Clair Cut4.
Michael Schur, creator of many genius TV shows and, more relevantly to this news item the force behind the sports commentary site Fire Joe Morgan, will do color for Saturday’s White Sox game.
Ohio State University wants to trademark the word “THE” because of their whole “THE Ohio Statue University” thing. Hard pass.
In the advice column of the week, I present a classic case of the Letter Writer having no idea they’re the baddie: “I resent my coworker’s sick days” at Ask A Manager. Having once been the chronically ill person in the office, uhhh, we hear the whispers no matter how “civil” you think you’re being when we’re able to be in the office.
The picture up top is a dog at a ballgame, because I love those. Here is a whole album of baseball dogs I have met over the years. Please enjoy responsibly.
Song of the day: HIGHWOMEN!!!!!!