Royals Rumblings - News for May 25, 2021

Royals Rumblings - News for May 25, 2021

Vahe Gregorian writes that the comeback on Sunday was reflective of the Royals’ attitude.

They’ve gone through these sorts of crucibles enough now, Matheny said afterwards, that they can have legitimate conviction about being “right in this” in such games.

Maybe they can consider the notion as part of the DNA of this team.

With a certain caveat: This characteristic is only true until it isn’t.

“We need stuff like that to continue to happen,” Matheny said.

Alec Lewis also writes about the “scratch-and-claw” Royals.

Of the Royals’ 45 games, 12 have been decided by one run. The Royals are 7-5 in those games. Matheny thinks there will be more.

“I don’t think it’s good for my heart or most people watching,” he said, “but we’re going to have a lot of these. And that’s not a bad thing. And we still haven’t seen this team fully click, and that’s the cool thing.”

Kris Bubic talks to Lynn Worthy about pitching well despite not having his best stuff.

“I could kind of tell early on that fastball command was, you know, a little spotty,” Bubic said. “There’s not many days I don’t get any swings and misses on my changeup. It’s probably a product of facing them again and the recency of that.

“I wasn’t able to execute as much as I wanted to. But damage control in the first and doing my best to hold it there with kind of so-so stuff the whole time was the mindset. I didn’t really care how I got it done just as long as we put up a couple zeros.”

The Royals optioned reliever Jake Newberry down, but have not yet made a corresponding roster move.

David Lesky at Inside the Crown comments on a monster weekend from some farmhands.

Pratto went 7 for 11 with four home runs, eight runs batted in, three walks and two strikeouts. Melendez went 6 for 13 with three home runs, five runs batted in, a double, three walks and one strikeout. Bobby Witt, Jr. has started slow, but he went 6 for 15 with two homers over the weekend. It was a heck of a weekend for three bats the Royals are likely going to be counting on in some way here relatively soon. I would anticipate the plan for Pratto is to be the first baseman next year with Carlos Santana at first. Melendez needs to be added to the 40-man this winter, but with Salvador Perez signed long-term and the organization loving Sebastian Rivero, he might be a key to a trade.

Craig Brown at Into the Fountains writes about what we’ve learned about the Royals so far.

Finally, they’re also despite my frequent laments that the Royals have squandered myriad scoring opportunities early in the year, they’re actually performing above league average when it comes to scoring base runners. The Royals have had a total of 913 base runners and brought 132 of them around to score, a 14.5 percent rate of success. League average on scoring base runners is 13.9 percent. The issue with the Royals though is the total amount of base runners. With a team OBP of .304, they’re just not getting enough hitters on base.

Baseball America has Vanderbilt pitcher Kumar Rocker going to the Royals in their latest mock draft.

This is the lowest we’ve mocked Rocker all spring, but there’s a very real possibility that he slides due to teams targeting hitters at the top of the draft. It’s worth noting that both Rocker and Leiter should have more time to push themselves back up draft boards than high school players and other college players who won’t play as deep into the postseason, so this could look like nothing more than wishful thinking in July if Rocker shoves.

Did this really happen or is Whit just messing with us?

Royals Farm Report has a new weekly segment on the minor league leaderboards.

Kevin O’Brien at Royals Reporter looks at the need for more bullpen depth.

Red Sox General Manager Chaim Bloom defends trading Andrew Benintendi away.

Royals Assistant General Manager Jin Wong speaks up about some of the recent hate crimes against Asian-Americans.

Nationals outfielder Juan Soto apologizes to teammates for an embarrassing play.

The Blue Jays will call up top pitching prospect Alek Manoah.

The Twins may already be sellers in the trade market.

Jay Jaffe puts this year’s no-hitters in context.

The Oakland Athletics will conduct a fact-finding trip to Portland.

Rays owner Stuart Sternberg is sued by his minority owners for secretly negotiated the Montreal deal.

Former big leaguers are finding college programs a better fit for coaching than the pros.

C.C. Sabathia is playing on a Central Park softball team.

A rare Honus Wagner card sells for $3.75 million, the second-most ever for a card.

Julio Jones wants out of Atlanta.

Phil Mickelson proves you’re never too old to reinvent yourself.

How will Bitcoin miners address crypto’s sustainability problems?

What will shopping look like now that the pandemic seems to be waning?

Scientists think they may finally know the origins of watermelons.

Your song of the day is Belle & Sebastian with Step Into My Office, Baby.