Royals Rumblings - News for September 21, 2021

Royals Rumblings - News for September 21, 2021

Salvador Perez was humble after hitting his 46th home run, passing Johnny Bench for the most in a season by a player who primarily played catcher.

“When you see a guy, a Hall of Fame catcher, you just try to be like him,” Perez said. “[I’m] going to compete and prepare myself. I don’t know what’s going to happen ... but I’m going to try my best to be one of those guys.”

Brady Singer tossed the first complete game of his career, a seven-inning win over Cleveland.

“I think later in the game I just started getting ahead early,” Singer said. “I started seeing that they were getting aggressive throughout the game. I think that first pitch was super important and just pounding the strike zone. I think them knowing that I was going to attack the zone got them to swing a little bit earlier and got a lot of ground ball outs.”

Dylan Coleman is excited for the call up to the big leagues.

“I don’t think it’s truly hit me yet, like, ‘What’s going on?’ But pulling up to K.C. yesterday, seeing the stadium, and then walking out here earlier, it’s starting to get there,” Coleman said. “Starting to get some jitters and nerves, but I think it’s part of it.”

Alec Lewis profiles Mike Swanson, the Royals VP of Communications who is retiring.

“It’s really hard to articulate what’s going on in my life right now,” he says. “I just showed up every day for work for 43 years. And I watched a ton of baseball games. Somewhere over 7,000 if you count exhibitions and the postseasons. But I just did it because it’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. I didn’t think anything. I just did the job.”

David Lesky still sees promise in the struggling Jackson Kowar.

Look within the division and you don’t have to go very far to find a guy who throws a fastball, very good changeup and slider who struggled mightily before figuring it out. Kowar isn’t built as sturdily as Lucas Giolito, but they’re both tall pitchers who got hit around and struggled with their fastball. It’s not a one-to-one comparison because Giolito had a sinker that he went away from, but he’s upped his whiff rate on his fastball adding a fair amount of spin and extension and that made his already good secondary pitches even better.

Can Kowar become Giolito? Obviously there’s no way to know, but that would be a pitcher I’d look to if I was Kowar this offseason as he tries to find a way to be a viable big league arm.

Craig Brown at Into the Fountain notices the Royals have had a lot of shoulder injuries this season.

Obviously, that has accelerated over the last month of the season. It’s difficult to spot any kind of trend, other than there have been a lot of shoulder injuries in the last 30 or so days, mostly of the impingement syndrome variety. It’s a mix of pitchers…veterans and young, starters and relievers. Although looking at the list, only Brady Singer and Jake Brentz are two you would pinpoint as having any kind of future with the club where you would count on some kind of results. It does skew a bit more to the veteran reliever side with Jesse Hahn, Greg Holland and Wade Davis on the shoulder injury list.

At Royals Academy, Clint Scoles looks at the best and worst of the minors.

Kevin O’Brien at Royals Reporter wonders if a platoon of Kyle Isbel and Edward Olivares can work.

Jared Perkins at Royals Farm Report writes about pitching prospect Drew Parrish.

Mike Gillespie at Kings of Kauffman wonders what the Royals will do with Carlos Santana.

Outfielder-turned-pitcher Anthony Gose was called up by Cleveland and threw 100 mph on the mound.

The Rays call up top pitching prospect Shane Baz.

Marlins outfielder Jesús Sánchez makes a bare-handed catch.

Why the Padres have crashed out of a playoff spot.

How Freddie Freeman pushes his teammates to play every game.

What a rebuild in Oakland could look like.

The Rays had the best winning percentage for their minor league teams, with the Royals coming in 14th.

MLB will require vaccinations for players participating in the Arizona Fall League.

There are two storms brewing in the Atlantic that have a baseball connection - Peter and Rose.

The Netherlands tops Israel in the European Baseball Championship.

The Kansas City NWSL soccer club will build a $15 million training facility in Riverside.

The Houston Texans coach regrets punting when he could have had a third down.

The Russian government successfully pressured Apple to shut down an app that helped the opposition party.

A new study shows that artificial intelligence has hit an inflection point, and we should consider its negative effects.

Will gaming ever become a cornerstone of the MCU?

Your song of the day is Janet Jackson with Escapade.