Royals Rumblings - News for August 25, 2021

At FanGraphs, Chet Gutwein asks if games have become less competitive since the trade deadline.

CrYadier Molina and the Cardinals will spend one more season together.

Craig Brown waxes poetic about Daniel Lynch’s sinker at Into the Fountains (and then later, the slider):

The arm-side run on this pitch is just insane. Astros batters saw 27 sinkers in total on Monday, they swung at just six of them. They didn’t miss, fouling off three and putting three in play.

Ah! I think I know what you’re going to say. “But Craig! You make such a big deal out of swings and misses. How can Lynch’s sinker be such a great pitch if he’s not getting any whiffs?”

Swings and misses are a big deal. But so is movement. So is location. So is catching your opponent somewhat off guard with selection.

So are a lot of different variables. And while Lynch wasn’t missing bats, I think we can safely say that when the Astros are swinging just six times out of 27 pitches, they were generally off-balance against this pitch.

David Lesky also wrote about Lynch, starting with the slider (with some great gifs) and also noting this:

I thought Lynch made a really interesting point in his postgame press conference regarding pitching against teams twice in a row. He mentioned that he spent the entire year in 2020 at the alternate site facing the same hitters every single time. Obviously, those players weren’t quite on the level of this Astros offense, but I hadn’t really considered that before.

Bobby Witt, Jr. can hit homers with half as many hands as most people.

MLB suspended Arizona’s Caleb Smith 10 games for a foreign substance.

Lori Petty answers burning questions about A League of Their Own, including whether Dottie dropped the ball on purpose.

Check out the new trailer for the ESPN docu-series Once Upon a Time in Queens, about the 1986 Mets.

The incredible story of Ray Caldwell, the MLB pitcher who survived a lightning strike to finish a game.

Nerlens Noel is suing Klutch Sports for $58 million in lost wages.

Dick Vermeil is a finalist for the NFL Hall of Fame.

Heads up if you’re eating Italian-style meats. Salmonella is a possibility!

For the SOTD, I’m going to borrow a sentiment from scifi author John Scalzi, in memory of Charlie Watts:

And while there are any number of performances of his to list as the best, here’s my personal favorite, from “Start Me Up,” where the initial snare hit is as iconic as the opening guitar riff. It all works exactly as it should, and Watts makes a magnificently on-point drum performance look like no big deal. It’s a big deal, folks. Behind the preening of Jagger in the video is Watts’ rock-solid beat. You couldn’t have the first without the second.