Royals Rumblings - News for March 7, 2023

Kris Bubic is committed to adding a slider, writes Anne Rogers.

“I think I have a really good idea of what I want it to look like,” Bubic said. “It’s something I wanted to implement the past couple of years, but now, given the rest of my arsenal and how the pitches work with each other, I think I have a much better idea of what the shape needs to be, what the velocity needs to be and how it fits into my arsenal. Not that I didn’t know that before, but maybe you’re experimenting too much that you don’t settle on one thing.”

Pete Grathoff notes the Royals hitters have been on fire in Arizona.

Still, no player wants to carry spring-training struggles over to the regular season, and at this point that’s not a concern for the Royals. They’ve enjoyed great success at the plate.

This spring, the Royals are first in runs scored with 85 (Texas is second, 74), and they lead MLB in batting average (.323), on-base percentage (.388) and slugging percentage (.548).

The Royals are also first in doubles (30) and are tied for the lead with six triples. They are sixth this spring with 16 home runs.

Vahe Gregorian talks to Bobby Witt Jr. on trying to do too much last year.

“I definitely think that I put pressure on myself,” he said last month at the Royals Rally in Kansas City and reiterated at his locker in the spring training clubhouse last week.

It wasn’t that it was all too much for him.

It was that he sometimes wanted too much.

“I think that’s fair to say,” his father, Bobby Witt Sr., said by telephone on Sunday. “What I saw was (that) every game he wanted to do something big.”

He added, “Don’t try to go 3 for 4 before the game starts; I think that’s one of the biggest things” he had to learn.

David Lesky is hearing from scouts that are buzzing about Brad Keller.

The second was a breakdown of his pitching that I thought was very interesting. He said his fastball looked a whole lot more usable. His four-seamer wasn’t actually bad in terms of results, but this scout told me that he believes he can actually get swings and misses with it now. But nobody cares about the fastball when the talk is about the new curve and the sweeper. He didn’t get a real good look at the curve because I don’t think he threw a ton of it, but he said he couple of sweepers and basically echoed what I had heard before from another scout. He said that if Keller can control it enough, it’s a good enough pitch to, and yes, this is the exact quote, “change his career.”

Vinnie Pasquantino is bonding with his Team Italy teammates.

He also filmed a video alleging that a Taiwan team they were playing were throwing at Nicky Lopez.

The Royals will name their Heart and Hustle Award after Alex Gordon.

The club assigned pitcher Andres Nunez and injured outfielder Brewer Hicklen to minor league camp.

Kevin O’Brien at Royals Reporter writes about the hitters standing out in camp so far.

Albert Pujols is selling some things from his Kansas City-area estate.

The Rockies sign pitcher Brad Hand to a one-year deal.

Mets pitcher Jose Quintana has a stress fracture in his rib.

Chris Sale is just happy to be healthy again.

Boston’s Justin Turner is hospitalized after getting struck in the face with a pitch.

Who are the winners and losers from MLB’s rule changes?

Do shorter games lead to fewer concession sales?

Power-ranking World Baseball Classic teams.

Who is the best fit for Jurickson Profar?

The A’s are still looking for new stadiums in both Oakland and Las Vegas.

Calvin Ridley is reinstated by the NFL after a one-year ban for gambling on football.

Joe Lunardi at ESPN has Kansas as the top overall seed in the NCAA tournament.

The first chatbot predicted the pitfalls with AI fifty years ago.

Are there any good streaming boxes right now?

The Creed franchise has stepped out of the shadow of Rocky.

Your song of the day is Duran Duran with The Reflex.