Royals Rumblings - News for July 30, 2021

Of course the big news of the day was the sad departure of Duffman. Max penned the initial RR story but there are a lot more links to be had.

Here’s Anne Rogers’s story about it at MLB.com:

The deal marks the end of an era for one of the longest-tenured Royals — and one of Kansas City’s most beloved players. He grew up at Kauffman Stadium and became a veteran leader in recent years on a young team as the Royals rebuilt after their World Series runs.

Alec Lewis:

Of course, the Kansas City Star was all over the news with 4 different articles.

Lynn Worthy got the breaking news story:

And he got Dayton’s Moore’s comments about the trade:

“But we still felt that the return was value enough for us to do what was right for the organization and also do what was right for Danny. I do know that he had a desire to pitch for the Dodgers and be in a pennant race and potentially win a World Series. That was appealing to him.”

Vahe Gregorian penned the retrospective profile:

It’s because he was the most real Royal there was, a three-dimensional, soulful, pensive and vulnerable person considered the ultimate teammate by former Royal Eric Hosmer … and, as Moore put it on Thursday night, by hundreds of others during his time here.

Pete Grathoff got the Twitter roundup.

Some Rany Twitter?

Anthony Franco at MLBTR tucked this paragraph into his story about the trade:

Of course, nothing stops the Royals from pursuing a reunion with Duffy this winter. He’s beloved amongst team personnel and fans. It seems that’s reciprocated, as the 32-year-old has gone on record in the past about his affinity for the organization and the city. The Royals haven’t been shy about pursuing free agent reunions with members of their mid-2010’s teams in recent years, and it’s possible they’ll take a similar course of action with Duffy during the upcoming offseason.

Sara Sanchez at Fangraphs speculates Duffy might be part of the middle relief plan for LA:

So with 36 hours until the deadline, the Dodgers made a deal with the Royals to replenish some of that depth with injured veteran Danny Duffy, who is in the final year of his contract and could work as a middle reliever or spot starter. Given his nature as a rental, the two teams will settle on player(s) to be named later from a pre-approved list, with Los Angeles also getting some cash back from Kansas City.

Meanwhile, in other Royals trade news:

I know there’s some Royals blogging today that I missed, but we’ll have to catch up on it another time.

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I’d like to take this moment to both be excited and also annoyed about how the NBA Draft, MLB Trade Deadline (next section), and Olympics are all right now. I mean, it’s pretty cool to have so much news right now. On the other hand, I only have so many eyes and sports brain cells to rub together. Part of this is because of COVID and, well, not much we can do about that except get your shot and wear a mask.

I get that the NFL season dominates the sports landscape here in the US and, once training camp starts up, there are more people caring about the Chiefs 3rd WR situation than the MLB playoff races. I don’t get it, but I guess you do you. With the NFL trying to spread out their calendar even longer to dominate more of the year, it leads to a crush where other sports get less and less time in the spotlight so we have times like this where items that could have gotten their own week or two of hype instead have to compete against each other. It’s just not great for the average sports fan.

Anyways... onto the news around the MLB. It’s a busy day!

Noted jerk and borderline-HOF caliber pitcher Curt Schilling’s request to be removed from the HOF ballot has been denied. It appears that he wanted to take his ball and go home because he thinks he has a better chance getting voted in by the players on the veteran’s committee than the BBWAA due to his off-the-field antics. The HOF said “nope”. I’m sure this will help his chances in his 10th and final year on the ballot in 2022.

Schilling in his retirement has become a political firebrand who has often indulged in controversial and incendiary rhetoric, including social media posts about Nazis, Islamophobia, and lynching journalists, as well as making uncomfortable comments about children. Schilling was also fired from his job as an analyst with ESPN after sharing an anti-transgender meme. The fact that the BBWAA ballot instructions mandate consideration of a candidate’s “character” long ago opened the process up to off-the-field considerations. Schilling’s defenders, however, would likely note that standard has been inconsistently applied over the years — the Hall of Fame already includes a number of criminals and racists. Schilling himself has posited that voters have in essence punished him for his political views.

Terry Francona is stepping away from managing Cleveland due to health issues. I had heard he had some health issues but I had no idea just how bad they were until reading this article.

Francona will get admitted into the Clinic on Friday to give him three days to get prepped for surgery to have his left hip replaced on Monday. Doctors want to be extremely careful with him after he ran into clotting issues just one year ago. He’ll likely have five or six weeks to recover from that before he will undergo another surgery to have a rod placed in his foot because of the staph infection, which will require 10 weeks of keeping all weight off his leg before he moves into a boot, aided by crutches.

After getting the first suspension for sticky stuff, Mariners pitcher Hector Santiago will be serving a much longer 80-game suspension for PEDs.

If the season ended today, the Reds would be the first team out of the playoffs in the NL. Joey Votto is single-handedly trying to get them there, having homered in 6 straight games.

Fortunately, it sounds like 7-inning doubleheaders will be a thing of the past soon next year. But yesterday there was an exciting little league length game. The Phillies were down 7-0 in the 3rd and 7-4 going into the 7th before Brad Miller hit a walk-off grand slam.

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The trade deadline gets its own section. Yes, there may be more trades that came in after this was written but here’s the big ones from yesterday.

Where do we start? How about the Nats as the Schwarber trade was mentioned above? The Nats traded Kyle Schwarber to the Red Sox. Not to be outdone, Schwarber’s former Cub teammate Anthony Rizzo is on his way to the Yankees.

Back to the Nats, the Padres got Daniel Hudson from Washington. But, wait, wasn’t San Diego in on Max Scherzer and the favorite to acquire him yesterday afternoon?

Yeah, well, that deal fell apart and the Padres’ hated NL west rival, the Dodgers, Death Star’d away Scherzer and Trea Turner in a giant blockbuster that sent LA’s two best prospects, Josiah Gray and Keibert Ruiz, among others, to Washington.

And, while this seems a bit anti-climactic after that, the Mariners tried to quiet their clubhouse mutiny by replacing closer Kendall Graveman (sent to Houston earlier in the week) with Tampa’s closer, Diego Castillo. Aren’t the Rays also in the playoff hunt?

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While we’re talking about the Olympics, how about a game I’m kindof surprised I haven’t done yet: World Class Track Meet for the NES.

It was the 16th best-selling game on the NES at over 3M. However, that’s a bit of a misnomer as it was a pack-in game with the Power Pad. As an aside: I didn’t realize this pack-in set existed for the NES in Europe. Curse that awful game - I owned it and never beat it, only once making it to Shredder (if you don’t know what game I’m talking about, count your blessings).

The game was an Olympics sport simulator using the aforementioned Power Pad to challenge animal-nicknamed racers like Turtle, Bear, Horse, Rabbit, Bobcat, and, of course, Cheetah in the 100-meter dash, long jump, 110-meter hurdles, and triple jump.

The Power Pad was marketed as a way for kids to play video games an get exercise. They even targeted mom with the amusing Dance Aerobics (which deserves some credit for being rudimentary DDR). But let’s be honest - it was a video game, not exercise. Every kid who had the Power Pad knew the sneaky joys of heel stomping to run extra fast, using your hands to (pun intended) pad your long jump score, and turning off the TV right when your sister is about to jump... or so I’ve heard.