Royals Rumblings - News for April 3, 2021

Song of the Day

“Electric Love” - B0RNS

Vahe Gregorian with the KC Star writes about the relationship between Danny Duffy and Salvador Perez.

If for all that it seems like they ought to be able to read each other’s minds by now, well, they can.

There’s little language barrier between them: Perez learned English well before he even reached the major leagues, and Duffy understands Spanish well enough to know what’s being said directly and around the clubhouse even if he’s more comfortable responding in English.

But as he considered the dynamics of their work relationship and the trust between them, the first thing Duffy said was, “We can communicate without saying anything. We can communicate without motioning anything. I feel like I know what he’s thinking. … You can’t teach that. It just comes with time.”

How about an Opening Day game recap from Lynn Worthy at The Star too?

“Best Opening Day I’ve ever been a part of,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “To watch how those guys responded right away then keep coming, go down again, it was a beautiful thing to watch.

How about one more from The Star? Pete Grathoff covered the multiple technical issues that troubled Bally Sports KC’s coverage of Opening Day.

Anne Rogers with MLB wrote about the debut of Kyle Isbel and Jake Brentz.

“That was one of the coolest I’ve ever been a part of,” Matheny said of Zumwalt informing Isbel. “As a Major League manager, I’ve had some exposure to a lot of these guys, but I haven’t been in the trenches with them just scratching and clawing and figuring things out. I had Alec Zumwalt come in, and they have a long history. Alec was with him all the way through, working with the swing.

“It was one I’ll never forget because you could just see that they had a cool relationship, and for Alec to be able to tell Kyle, ‘You’ve dreamt about this, we’ve talked about this, and it’s real.’ I get goosebumps just thinking about what I witnessed. It was special.”

Whit Merrifield was interviewed by MLB Network

Alec Lewis with The Athletic wrote about the Opening Day meaning more than just a regular season win.

“Any time in a season that you’re down five runs, let alone in the first,” Matheny said, “and a team shows the resiliency to be able to fight back, then go down, then fight back again, you can ride something like that for a solid month. Every time you get down it’s now, ‘It doesn’t matter. Here we come.’”

Sticking with The Athletic, Jayson Stark’s Opening Day recap of all the action is worth a read.

Finally, Joey Votto made it into the batter’s box 223 times last year. Want to guess how many times he hit a pop-up in the infield? If you know your Joey Votto trivia, you know that answer is zero. Well, it isn’t 2020 anymore. So what do you think he did in his very first trip to the plate in 2021? Yessir. He popped up to Nolan Arenado. Baseball!

But hang on. We’re not even done here. You’ll never believe what transpired in Votto’s fourth at-bat of the season. Yup. He popped up to Yadier Molina.

So here’s what Opening Day always reminds us: It isn’t last year anymore!

MLB Pipeline ranked the best athlete in each team’s system. Bet you can’t guess who the Royals’s’s’s was.

Royals: Bobby Witt Jr., SS (No. 1, MLB No. 7)The same tools that make Witt a top-10 overall prospect make him an easy selection for this spot. That is to say, all of them. The 2019 second overall pick earned plus grades for all five skills, proving he’s a threat to hit for average and power, steal bases and play a high-quality shortstop. After this hot spring, the 20-year-old may have put himself in line to bring those tools to the Majors at some point in 2021.

Leigh Oleszczak with KC Kingdom calls out the Royals pitching.

Cody Rickman, also at KC Kingdom, took a deeper dive into the offense and pitching from Opening Day.

Mike Gillespie at Kings of Kauffman makes the case for not extending Adalberto Mondesi.

MLB planted a flag yesterday...

KU basketball gave their head coach a LIFETIME CONTRACT.

**I wonder if either party will regret that when their inevitable death penalty drops from the NCAA

...

(Laughs hysterically because he knows it’s not coming. Transfers into tears.)

Food Network really thought they had something here.

GET CRINKLE CUT OUTTA MY LIFE!

Adrenaline Rush of the Week

Opening Day

There’s been a ton of coverage of Opening Day so I won’t give you a unique perspective outside of the fact that it happened this week and I was running high on adrenaline for a good 48 hour period.

I WILL say that every one of us who want to be the first one in line to declare this season a failure needs to think about coming off like the caller did in this tweet.

Don’t be an ignoramus and just enjoy baseball for a few weeks before we start talking about it being a lost year, huh?

Have a Saturday, ya’ll!