Royals Rumblings - News for September 14, 2021

Royals Rumblings - News for September 14, 2021

Andrew Benintendi was named American League Player of the Week.

David Lesky at Inside the Crown considers what the Royals may do with Benintendi this winter.

The Royals have a decision to make with Benintendi and they have three options.

They can go to arbitration with him and pay him probably somewhere around $9 million.

They can work to extend him and give him something like a three-year deal worth $25 million or so.

They can non-tender him because they don’t think he’s worth either.

I’m almost 100 percent confident they don’t do the latter and the last week had helped. Personally, I’d probably hope for him to continue this stretch over the rest of the season, just worry about the final year of his team control and see what happens into next season. Guys don’t tend to give up free agency when they’re that close, but if he can look like the guy who was getting it going before his injury and the guy from the past week and he likes it in Kansas City, they can get a deal done then.

Craig Brown at Into the Fountains writes about Brady Singer’s last start.

It sounds simplistic to write this, but I do think that we saw regression rear its ugly head in a large way on Saturday. Singer has proven himself to be adept at using that sinker/slider combo to generate some ground balls, so his overall home run rate should probably hover around 1 HR/9. It’s the HR/FB rate that was far too low given the pitches that he’s been serving. With his stuff, it seems that he should be right around league average on the HR/FB%. And now, that’s where he is. League average is currently 13.7% HR/FB%.

Besides, it was bound to happen at some point. Saturday, it was a start where Singer just wasn’t firing on his slider. He had only three whiffs on 22 swings against the pitch. He left far too many in the zone for it to be effective. Again…this is where having just two pitches is going to hurt Singer as long as he’s in the rotation. If the slider (or sinker, take your pick) isn’t going to work, he’s going to have to come up with something else, or there’s just no way he’s going to survive five innings.

The Royals activated Joel Payamps from the Injured List and sent Scott Blewett back down.

Former Royals shortstop Alcides Escobar is playing so well for the Nationals, he might be their shortstop next season.

Jacob Milham at Inside the Royals thinks the club should stay the course with Edward Olivares.

The Yankees are moving Gleyber Torres from shortstop to second base.

The Blue Jays are now in the driver’s seat for a Wild Card spot.

Is the American League Cy Young race a bit underwhelming?

Who will be the next pitcher to join the 3,000 strikeout club?

Why minor league baseball is ripe for exploitation.

A look back at Robin Yount’s brother Larry, who had the shortest MLB career.

Team Israel wins its first two games in the European Baseball Championship and has a shot at the quarterfinals.

USC fires coach Clay Helton after two games.

Why PSG and Premier League clubs are set to dominate the Champions League.

Why its so hard to predict where the pandemic is going next.

A live-action She-Ra show is coming to Amazon Prime.

Jason Sudeikis will get $1 million per episode for Season 3 of Ted Lasso.

Your song of the day is The Rapture with Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks.