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If you missed yesterday’s Royals front office news, here’s Anne Rogers reporting:
The Royals are making two major promotions in their front office for 2022.
Kansas City is promoting general manager Dayton Moore to president of baseball operations and J.J. Picollo, currently the assistant general manager/player personnel, to general manager, Royals chairman/CEO John Sherman announced during a Tuesday press conference.
Several teams have promoted general managers to presidents. Operationally, there’s not expected to be a big change, with Moore still overseeing the organization. Picollo has been involved in much of the Royals’ decision making as Moore’s right-hand man, although now he will be more involved in the entire organization rather than focusing on the Minor League side of things.
At The Athletic, Alec Lewis takes a look at Brady Singer, Daniel Lynch, Jackson Kowar, Carlos Hernández and Kris Bubic in terms of Stuff+ and Location+ stats:
The Royals’ staff ranks below average in Stuff+ on each of its pitches beside the cutter, which only Jakob Junis and Wade Davis deploy. The staff also ranks below average in Location+ on each of its pitches other than the curveball. No wonder the Royals rank 21st in ERA (4.65) and 27th in WHIP (1.39).
Analyzing each pitcher individually would provide the most all-encompassing view of how the statistics are compiled. But because the aforementioned five young starters are most pivotal to the Royals’ future, here’s a breakdown of their specific arsenals, contextualized by advanced metrics.
At Into the Fountains, Craig Brown looks at the decline of Carlos Santana from his productive early season to the, well, less than that.
While July was his best month at tagging the baseball, Santana posted a frustrating .227 BABIP for the month, meaning he had little to show for a stretch where he was really making contact with pitches. So he became even more aggressive in August with predictable results.
It’s basically a hitting spiral of death. Santana assumes a more aggressive approach at the plate, but doesn’t see results despite stinging the baseball. So he becomes even more aggressive but now he’s not hitting the ball near as hard.
His drop in hard-hit rate is mirrored by an alarming increase in chase rate. Santana has seemingly grown frustrated and has decided the solution to his ails is to swing with greater frequency—at pitches both in and out of the strike zone.
Looks like Seattle will host the 2023 MLB All-Star game.
Ryan Braun...announced his retirement? Did we know he hadn’t retired?
The many benefits of jigsaw puzzles. (Any other puzzlers want to set up some kind of exchange this winter? Maybe that’s a terrible idea, but I’m throwing it out there anyway!)
A celebration of 20 great GameCube games in honor of the console’s 20th anniversary.
How much money you need to live on your own, in each state.
SOTD: Bad Religion - Stranger Than Fiction