Royals Rumblings - News for October 22, 2021

Salvy has been nominated by the MLBPA for the Outstanding Player Award

Perez, who enjoyed the most productive season of his major-league career, has been voted a finalist for the Outstanding Player Award in the American League by the members of the Major League Baseball Players Association. Guerrero Jr. and Ohtani were the other finalists.

MLB Pipeline named Will Klein the Royals Pitching Prospect of the Year.

Klein was effective as a multi-inning reliever in High-A Quad Cities, posting a 3.20 ERA in 70 1/3 innings with 121 strikeouts. Often throwing higher leverage innings for the Bandits, especially during their High-A Central Championship run, Klein had a 1.24 WHIP and held opponents to a .173 average.

He worked off a specific plan laid out by the Royals’ development staff at the beginning of the season to make sure he got his innings in while also being cautious with his workload coming off the low-inning 2020 season. Klein routinely threw around two innings (roughly, based on pitch count) with a bullpen session in between to work on his secondary pitches.

Meanwhile, Zack Haake looked good in the Arizona Fall League:

The outing will make a good building block for the rest of the fall, as the 2018 sixth-round pick showed strong command and sat in the mid-90s with his fastball for the duration of his outing...

The 25-year-old retired nine of the first 10 batters he faced and was able to keep the ball low in the zone. Seven of his 10 outs came either via groundout or strikeout. Haake, facing a Salt River lineup loaded with prospects, issued a two-out walk in the third, but didn’t surrender a hit until the fourth.

The daily Alec Lewis deals with the Royals 2022 payroll:

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That’s it for the “official” Royals news so we’ll go with this hodgepodge section of tangentially-related Kansas City, Royals, and MLB news.

The Dodgers bludgeoned the Braves last night so both series are 3-2. The Astros and Braves will host the final two games in their respective LCSes, needing to win one. The ALCS games are today and tomorrow (if necessary) while the NLCS games are tomorrow and Sunday (if necessary).

Former Royal Franchy Cordero, one of the players traded for Andrew Benintendi, was DFA’d by the Red Sox yesterday. Just a reminder of that trade:

It should, of course, be noted that the DFA of Cordero hardly closes the book on the Red Sox’ end of the Benintendi deal. The Sox still have four other players to show for that deal, though none has reached the Majors yet. Boston acquired right-hander Josh Winckowski and outfielder Freddy Valdez from the Mets (who received Khalil Lee from Kansas City), in addition to picking up righties Luis De La Rosa and Grant Gambrell from the Royals.

An intern for the Northwest Arkansas Naturals, the Royals AA affiliate, won $300K in a Draft Kings football contest this week. Though this jumped out at me a little while reading the story:

On Monday, Danes had 13 entries in each of two contests: one cost $15 and the other was $222. The combined entry fees were a little more than $3,000 for Danes.

Winning $300K is awesome. But if you’re throwing down $3K a week...? Man, interning must pay better than I remember.

Keith Olbermann is selling the Carlton Fisk “stay fair” home run ball... only, he’s not. He’s selling fractional shares of it on a platform called Collectabe. Zombie Deadspin has the story.

The biggest sports news around Kansas City yesterday was the city rolling out the red carpet for its 2026 World Cup bid.

Clark Hunt, John Sherman, Cliff Illig and Chris and Angie Long — owners and/or chairmen of the Chiefs, Royals, Sporting KC and KC NWSL, respectively — were among the local dignitaries alongside FIFA officials during an afternoon news conference in the Power & Light District. Together, they sang Kansas City’s praises and posed for a few photos. Afterward, with bottles of wine on the table, the group dined on some choice fare from Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que...

Officials from FIFA — the Federation International de Football Association — are touring the cities that have submitted bids to play host to World Cup Games nearly five years from now. Members of the international delegation have already visited cities in the eastern portion of the United States, and will later tour candidates in the West.

This is neat:

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Craig and David took yesterday off so I can’t even make fun of them (never mind, it’ll come a little later).

Sean Thornton only posts a few times a year over at Bleeding Royal Blue but he spilled a lot of digital ink with his season wrap: “The Royals weren’t boring in 2021”

So in a lot of ways, that sums up the Kansas City Royals in 2021. Some things went well, others not so much. The Royals finished the year 74-88 and while that was eight wins off of my projected total (I was feeling optimistic that day), considering how bad the team looked in May and June it feels like a solid win total. It’s obvious the Royals need to figure out their game plan for next year and a lot of that is ‘who fits in and where’.

Here’s some quick hitters:

• Mike Gillespie at Kings of Kauffman: “Has this reliever finally arrived?” (it’s Gabe Speier)
• Mike redux: “Why closure to Danny Duffy deal is risky”
• Jordan Foote at Inside the Royals: “The Royals Won the Danny Duffy Trade”

Dumb question: So is Danny Duffy a career Royal if he never throws another pitch? Like if he gets hit by a bus tomorrow goes off and joins the circus*, is he considered to have been buried a Royal?

*I once had a manger say I should not use the “hit by a bus” cliche and instead go with “win the lottery” when talking to team members about why we should have cross-training and backups for work duties

Finally, it’s a slow week, so here’s a silly little behind the scenes nugget from writing for your favorite blog. One of the things about having your name on the masthead is you get a lot of different types of emails in your inbox. Of course, there are a number of legit emails: thanks, cmkeller, for the head’s up on the Negro Leagues Legends baseball card set. I’m subscribed to a handful of Royals blog newsletters so I have stories from Craig, David, et al, filtered straight to trash a Royals Review folder.

There are people who offer you money to write blog posts, presumably to promote something. Of course, I have never accepted money from any of these people. It’s just 100% pure, dumb thoughts straight from the source*. This message brought to you by Lightspead briefs. A couple of times a year, I get an offer to review a book. Unfortunately, I never learned to read. Stay in school, kids.

*except the quoted stuff - but I think that’s pretty obvious

But, every once in a while, you get something unexpected. For instance, there’s a guy who has emailed multiple writers from multiple email accounts with trade proposals centered around Gleyber Torres, typically for a package involving Mondesi. Like that’s the whole email: Player A and Player B for Player X and Player Y. I mean, just cold emailing probably isn’t going to get much of a response. And, for all the jokes about Fanposts, if you wanted to write a whole story there, that’s the ideal venue. So, buddy, this story from Jerry Edwards at Inside the Royals is for you. I hope it makes up for the time I emailed you a response of: “Would you accept a slightly used Deshaun Watson and 100 shares of Gamestop instead?” That was kindof a jerk move on my part. Sorry about that.

The first trade that we will be evaluating is a possible exchange with America’s favorite team in the New York Yankees. Yankees fans have a certain reputation when it comes to drumming up trades that would see them upgrade their roster by giving a little and taking a lot. However, there is an opportunity for the Royals to get possibly get better by trading players from a position of excess.

The Trade:

New York Yankees receive: INF Adalberto Mondesi or INF Whit Merrifield

Kansas City Royals receive: 1B Luke Voit, 2B Gleyber Torres, SP Michael King and OF Estevan Florial

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Let’s revisit Lumines today. Until I was poking around looking for song ideas, I didn’t realize it had been remastered and is on the Nintendo Switch.