Royals Rumblings - News for November 17, 2020

Royals Rumblings - News for November 17, 2020

Jim Bowden at The Athletic writes about each team’s “must-extend” player, with Salvador Pérez for the Royals.

Pérez came back successfully from Tommy John surgery and had a banner 2020 campaign. He slashed .333/.353/.633 with 12 doubles, 11 home runs and 32 runs batted in 37 games and 150 at-bats. Pérez, now 30 years old, is still one of the best defensive catchers in the game. He frames well, calls an excellent game, shuts down the running game at a 27 percent clip and is a field general on the infield. The Royals are rebuilding around young starting pitching and for that to work successfully, they have to sign Pérez to an extension this offseason. J.T. Realmuto is going to become the highest-paid catcher in baseball soon, behind Yasmani Grandal of the White Sox, and Pérez is going to fit in contractually somewhere right after those two, although he’ll be paid more for his defense.

Clint Scoles at Royals Academy parses recent comments from Dayton Moore.

Rob Bradford: A team that may feel best about this season is a team that feels they have had a good job evaluating their internal talent. Do you feel you have a good grasp more or less than when you went into it?

GMDM: “I’d say less because you didn’t get a chance to watch your players compete over the course of a season against outside competition. The toughness it takes to get through an entire minor league season. We’re hopeful about our current evaluations, but they’re incomplete due to the day to day evaluation.”

It starts to go sideways here for me. If the Royals brass doesn’t feel like they got a good enough feel of their prospects this season due to a lack of games against opponents, it isn’t easy to pull that trigger.

Ben Clemens at Fangraphs writes about how Nicky Lopez had a lot of caught stealing for someone with zero stolen bases.

Next year, Lopez might reclaim his successful base-stealing form from the minors. I can flat guarantee you that he knows he had a poor year on the basepaths, because you simply can’t be that bad and not realize it. Whether he does or not, however, he likely won’t match this year’s futility. These perfect shutouts are getting less and less common over the years, even if the occasional brutal baserunning season still happens.

Mike Gillespie at Kings of Kauffman does not want to see Maikel Franco on a long-term deal.

Former Royals pitcher Lindy McDaniel dies at the age of 84.

Former Royals outfielder Jarrod Dyson is giving away Thanksgiving turkeys.

The Braves sign Drew Smyly to a one-year, $11 million deal.

The Mets are interested in free agent outfielder Marcell Ozuna.

Why JT Realmuto is the best free agent available this winter.

How the MVP could boost Freddie Freeman’s Hall of Fame case.

Mike Clevinger signs a two-year deal with the Padres, and will need Tommy John surgery.

Minor league teams have their lawsuit aiming to secure coverage for losses from COVID-19 thrown out.

Eric Longenhagen at Fangraphs writes about the coming deluge of non-tenders.

The NC Dinos look for their first ever KBO title in the Korean Series against the Doosan Bears.

Former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda is hospitalized.

Cody Bellinger is a voice actor, lending his talents to the video game Assassin’s Creed.

James Harden may be trying to engineer a trade to the Nets.

Northwest Arkansas is offering people $10k and a mountain bike to move there.

HBO Max is finally coming to Amazon Fire devices.

A new documentary about Nickelodeon is a nostalgia trip.

Your song of the day is Janet Jackson with Black Cat.