Royals Rumblings - News for June 8, 2023

Jordan Lyles kept Kansas City in the game, but the offense didn’t show up last night:

The Royals were swept in the three games by a hot Miami team that has won six straight.

In fairness to Lyles, he didn’t get much offensive support. Kansas City was limited to just three hits, two coming in the third inning off Edward Cabrera, who left the game after five innings due to a blister.

Maikel Garcia singled to open the inning, then scored on Nick Pratto’s RBI single. Pratto is on a six-game hit streak and has reached base safely in his past 10 games.

“Those are good arms,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said. “Every single one of those guys. Plus stuff. Plus fastballs with movement. They threw a ton of strikes. Cabrera has a good slider and a good changeup.”

Rustin Dodd and Jayson Jenks at The Athletic team up for ten Zack Greinke stories that make him one-of-a-kind ($):

Greinke has never stopped learning, never stopped tinkering and searching for something new. Even at 39 years old.

One day this winter, he was throwing in Kansas City. Brian Sweeney, the Royals’ first-time pitching coach, showed up to meet him. For most of the session, Sweeney, 48, stood silently. He just wanted to watch. Finally, Greinke turned to Sweeney, who had never spoken a word to the pitcher.

“Are you going to coach or what?” Greinke asked.

A few weeks later, Greinke and Sweeney were lost in a conversation about Greinke’s new “sweeper,” a type of pitch that didn’t exist when Greinke debuted. Was the sweeper more effective with eight inches of horizontal break or 18 inches? What did the data reveal? What did hitters see? What other pitches complemented the sweeper? Greinke engaged with all of it, eager for an edge. He looked at Sweeney again.

“Better job coaching this time,” he said. “You weren’t very good the first time.”

The Royals are partnering with Pure Spectrum, becoming the second MLB team to partner with a CBD company.

Our offense might be bad, but at least it’s not as bad as Cleveland’s.

Major league pitchers are more paranoid than ever about tipping their pitches.

Elly De La Cruz had quite the major league debut.

Looking back on a wild weekend of Regionals and ahead to Super Regionals in the NCAA Baseball Tournament.

A month after their head coach was fired due to gambling links, Alabama baseball is chugging along and will play in their first Super Regional since 2010.

The Denver Nuggets smoked the Miami Heat to take a 2-1 series lead in the NBA Finals.

Oklahoma is one win away from a three-peat in the Women’s College World Series.

The feud between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf will end as they agree to a merger. I have a lot of thoughts on this but I’ll keep it brief: this really sucks and the players that turned down 8+ figure deals from LIV to stay on the Tour got shafted.

Lionel Messi will reportedly sign with Inter Miami of MLS.

I’m not giving you any context, I just need you to read this article. This melted my brain and I’m only 25 - I’m too young to be out of touch with internet humor.

Researchers have at long last managed to extract rock samples from the Earth’s mantle.

Double-decker airplane seats may be in our future.

The creators of South Park have spent over $40 million renovating Casa Bonita, a Mexican restaurant that appeared in a 2003 episode of the show.

June 8 is World Ocean Day, which seems like as good a time as any to suggest reducing your consumption of single-use plastics.

Your song of the day is Oceans & Galaxies by Jauz & HALIENE.