Royals Rumblings - News for August 21, 2024

The Royals are coming to a national TV audience.

Cole Ragans wasn’t at his sharpest last night, writes Jaylon Thompson.

“I had been going up and in all night,” Ragans said. “Threw it there the first time, fouled it off. Didn’t feel like he was on it and threw it there again. And, obviously, he was.”

Logan O’Hoppe, Anthony Rendon and Kevin Pillar drove in two runs apiece for the Angels.

“I didn’t execute well,” Ragans continued. “A lot of falling behind, a few walks and a hit-by-pitch.”

David Lesky notes some dropoff in velocity from Seth Lugo, but maybe by design?

Breaking down Lugo’s starts continues to be so fascinating to me because he truly practices the art of pitching. It’s not that he doesn’t have good stuff. But when he’s right, he locates so well that he gives himself the margin for error that some pitchers don’t have even though they have similar stuff metrics to Lugo. Some of that, too, is that hitters have such a difficult time knowing what’s coming. You can see above that he threw six different pitches with two strikes. He also threw all nine of his pitches on the first pitch. Just imagine walking to the plate and having to pick from among nine different pitches. I don’t know how anyone does it.

Craig Brown writes that the Royals are contenders.

It’s not just FanGraphs that’s bullish on the Royals’ chances. Baseball Prospectus has the Royals at a 75 percent chance to be playing into October. Their standings page has a seven-day delta where they show the Royals as gaining 29 percentage points over the last week.

This five game stretch, this singular turn through the rotation, has launched the Royals firmly amongst the elite teams in the league. Maybe their record against “winning” teams isn’t the best, but I’ve said all along, that doesn’t matter. Take care of business in a proper fashion (i.e. beat up on the Angels and Reds) and then hang tough against stronger competition. The Royals last lost three games in a row in early July. Their longest losing streak of the season is just four games. Newsflash: They’re a really good team.

Hunter Harvey had a setback with his injury, writes Anne Rogers.

Harvey was thought to be making good progress over the last week since he went on the 15-day injured list retroactively to Aug. 7, but his back “wasn’t loosening up” as much as he or the Royals would have liked by Monday and Tuesday, manager Matt Quatraro said. The reliever received a cortisone injection on Tuesday, which will shut him down from all activity for the next two-to-three days, but Quatraro said Harvey could be throwing again by the end of the week. But this pushes his timeline back at least until the Royals can see how the injection works and what the next steps can be.

Pete Grathoff writes that two Royals games in September are moving to national TV.

MLB Pipeline ranks Jac Caglianone among the top first base prospects.

Some fans come up with renderings of what a downtown ballpark might look like in Washington Square Park.

Preston Farr at Farm to Fountains writes about misleading stat lines for Royals prospects.

The Guardians strand 20 baserunners, but top the Yankees anyway.

The Braves sign third baseman Gio Urshela to fill in for Austin Riley.

The Cubs part ways with closer Hector Neris.

The Cardinals release Brandon Crawford and demote Jordan Walker.

The Red Sox are fading - was this inevitable?

Who are the front-runners for the all-MLB team?

The Brewers lost a lot of talent this off-season, but are contenders again.

Baseball America looks at how 2024 first-round picks are faring.

The Backyard Sports video game is returning.

Top-ranked tennis player Jannik Sinner won’t be penalized for testing positive twice for the steroid clostebol.

Oklahoma State football players will have QR codes on their helmets so fans can donate to NIL fundraising.

The Pentagon plans to defend Taiwan using tons of drones.

An ultra-rare Star Wars Boba Fett figure sells for record-breaking $1.34 million.

Disney gives up trying to use a Disney Plus account as justification to take a plaintiff to arbitration over a wrongful death.

Your song of the day is Tears for Fears with Everybody Wants to Rule the World.