Royals Rumblings - News for May 21, 2020

Royals Rumblings - News for May 21, 2020

Sam Mellinger writes how the Royals changed Kansas City’s relationship with baseball forever.

This is easy to forget now, but those championship Royals were doing the same thing as late as July 2014. They’d won just three times in a stretch of more than two weeks around the All-Star break, fallen below .500 in July, and it sure felt like that familiar cratering when manager Ned Yost simply claimed he had “a second-half team.”

Then his star first baseman broke his hand.

That whole run felt like some magic trick, like the losers who’d worn those jerseys for so long had been replaced by baseball’s brashest, fastest, hardest-throwing bunch of unapologetic badasses. It was like a popup concert from your favorite band, when all you’d been expecting was another trip the grocery store.

It all felt so new. So fresh. So unbelievable, in the literal sense of that word.

Manager Mike Matheny chatted with fans via video conference, writes Pete Grathoff.

“There’s some guys that have to work in their their own garage,” Matheny said. “They’ll take what equipment they have, and they’ll modify a workout for them. There’s just no excuse anymore. But a lot of them have access to their own personal gyms. And so they’re putting the throttle down. And they’re sending us all the feedback, they send us back a written (note) on how their workout went.

“And then our pitchers are all throwing bullpens. And same thing, we’ve got guys throwing against a blanket. We have other guys who have their own individual catcher. The really smart ones right when this quarantine started to happen, they went and recruited catchers and said, ‘You’re a single guy, you don’t have a place to live. You’re living with me. We’re going to quarantine together.’ And that’s worked out really well. It’s happened with quite a few of them.”

Jay Jaffe lists the best player for each club not in the Hall of Fame.

Kansas City Royals: Zack Greinke

He has pitched for five other teams since being traded away in December 2010, but Greinke was drafted by the Royals in 2002 and put together his strongest season for them in ‘09, a year in which he led the AL in ERA (2.16), FIP (2.33) and WAR (10.4), the last of which trails only Randy Johnson’s 10.7 in 2002 among all pitchers in this millennium. He has already surpassed 200 wins (205) and is in range of 3,000 strikeouts (2,622), as well as the JAWS standard for pitchers (59.6); at 36 years old, he still has some quality innings left in that right arm.

Brad Keller is the guest on the State Your Line podcast.

Clint Scoles at Royals Academy looks at some reliever options in the draft.

Shawn Bauman at Kings of Kauffman looks at the Royals/Yankees rivalry over the years.

Royals marketing executive Matt Schulte talks about working while baseball is on pause.

Some players want safety protocols loosened.

Dan Szymborski looks at which teams will be the biggest losers if no season is played.

MLB is expected to list the 120 minor league teams it intends to keep affiliations with and where they will play.

The Oakland Athletics miss a rent payment for the Coliseum.

Pirates infielder Kevin Kramer undergoes hip surgery and will be out 4-6 months.

How did each team get their name?

The NCAA approves voluntary activities for football and basketball beginning June 1.

A look at the stadium revenue NFL teams could lose if there are no fans this year.

Why is Singapore’s fatality rate from COVID-19 so remarkably low?

The Snyder cut of Justice League is coming to HBO Max in 2021.

Ranking the best episodes of Community of all time.

Your song of the day is Cameo with Word Up.