Royals Rumblings - News for January 31, 2025

Superb Owls, one week early

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Raising Royals, the Royals player development account, put out two videos with highlights packages for the international signing class:

At The Star, Pete Grathoff gives the details about the Royals paying for NLBM admission.

The Royals got a shout-out from a “CBS Mornings” anchor on Wednesday for their support of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

In the month of February, the Royals and their charitable foundation will cover the cost of admission for anyone who wants to visit the museum. That’s in honor of Black History Month.

This will be the fourth straight year the Royals are offering that deal. The team said more than 16,000 people visited the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City last February, and the Royals Foundation contributed more than $135,000 for those admissions.

At Fangraphs, Ben Clemens examined the Carlos Estevez deal:

Between that and the club option – $11 million after accounting for the buyout – the Royals are getting a lot of flexibility out of this deal. In a vacuum, I wouldn’t love guaranteeing a two-year deal to a 32-year-old reliever coming off of his best season. But between the park synergy, the roster synergy, and the fact that the Royals are right on the cusp of the playoffs and every win counts, he fits their needs like a glove. Take note, Pirates: The Royals are a great example of how small-market teams can supplement a homegrown superstar through their judicious use of free agency.

Keith Law released his annual farm system rankings at The Athletic ($). The Royals are at the top of Tier 6, ranked #22.

Right next to that story at The Athletic ($) is Larry Holder’s about the top baseball cards for prospects:

60. Jac Caglianone

2024 Bowman 1st base auto PSA 10 (only two sold): $583.35

He’s 35 spots lower than Bazzana, but currently carries higher card price comparisons. This could easily fluctuate as we near spring training and yet the hype doesn’t seem to be slowing down for the Royals first baseman. Already there’s been 12 card sales of at least $6,000 and three reaching five figures. His Bowman 1st Sapphire red auto card (numbered to five) ungraded sold for $15,000 on Jan. 19.

Blogward!

David Lesky ($) talks about the Estevez signing:

Look, the results were there in 2024 for him, so maybe they don’t do a thing, but Royals pitchers got a collective whiff rate of 31.8 percent on their sliders while Estevez was at “just” 26.8 percent. He only allowed a .196 average and .370 SLG, and it wasn’t hit hard, but I wonder if Brian Sweeney and his team can do what they’ve done for a few pitchers and boost their slider. I also could see them asking him to use it a bit more. While his fastball is obviously good enough (.198 BAA, .313 SLG allowed), the slider has a chance to be deadly for him. He threw it 28.1 percent of the time. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if you start to see him throw it more like 35 percent of the time in 2025. The Angels upped his usage upon acquisition in 2023 and I could see the Royals taking it a step farther.

At Farm to Fountains, Preston Farr plays matchmaker, trying to send off Angel Zerpa plus for a bat:

Trading Zerpa alone likely wouldn’t be enough to make an impactful trade happen. However, pairing him with MJ Melendez or Maikel Garcia could make sense. The farm system factors in as well. Pairing Zerpa with some mixture of Ben Kudrna, Carter Jensen, Chandler Champlain, or others could be a path forward. Losing any of those three wouldn’t be an easy trade to stomach, but if it means adding a true impact bat, the Royals should certainly consider it. Who might make sense?

Blog Roundup:

• Jacob Milham at KOK: KC Royals’ latest signing flies in the face of team’s current strengths
• Rachael Millanta at KOK: KC Royals rival building even scarier bullpen after signing former closer
• Mike Gillespie at KOK: Big KC Royals event gives fans a chance to meet newcomers and team stars
• Patrick Glancy at Powder Blue Nostalgia: A Day (or Days) at the Ballpark; Every game I attended in 2024.

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We have a small MLB section today

Max Scherzer signed a one year deal with the Blue Jays (1/$15.5M).

Over at Bleed Cubbie Blue, Al Yellon tallies up what is known about all of the local TV broadcast deals for 2025:

Royals: In December the Royals re-upped with Diamond Sports. For now, it’s a one-year deal. They made $45 million in local TV revenues in 2024, but the first link above says the Royals will have “less” revenue this year, though it’s not clear how much less.

FYI: The Dodgers made almost $200M last year.

At the Tampa Bay Times, Colleen Wright states: Orlando group wants a baseball team. Could it be the Rays?

For a decade, groups in Orlando have started and stopped pushes to get a Major League Baseball team in a state where its two franchises have struggled with attendance and revenue. That effort got more attention Wednesday with the announcement of a new front man: Hall of Fame shortstop Barry Larkin, who held a press conference in Orlando next to renderings of a $1.7 billion ballpark that would be built near SeaWorld.

Larkin said his group, known as the Orlando Dreamers, is open to either getting a new team in the next Major League expansion round or having a team relocate to the area. That includes becoming the new home of the Tampa Bay Rays. Larkin said he spoke with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred who stressed to him that the league is “looking for some stability in baseball.” Larkin mentioned “the Tampa Bay situation” and the Oakland A’s fraught move to Las Vegas.

Here’s an MLB Pipeline listicle. One prospect who missed the Top 100 list for each team:

Royals: Ben Kudrna, RHP

Kansas City’s Top 100 contingent is full of hitters, but there are a few pitchers lurking in that next tier, including 2021 second-rounder Kudrna. The K.C.-area native sat 93-94 mph last year in a second-half assignment to Double-A Northwest Arkansas but stuck more for his 85-87 mph changeup and 86-89 mph slider, both of which had whiff rates of 46 percent in the Texas League. Kudrna could be a second-half Major League option in his age-22 season if his secondaries keep playing to that level.

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Ed Note: I know this is a week early. But I didn’t get done what I wanted to this week so that’s going to run next week instead. It was either swap them or dump another batch of movie reviews and I didn’t think that was a good idea as we’ve already done one set this month.

The last couple of years, I’ve done Superb Owl facts around this time of year. For a refresher, here are links to the ones from 2023 and 2024.

Rather than hitting you with a bunch of random owl facts, we’re going to start by talking (mainly) about one specific owl this year, the Eurasian eagle-owl.

I was thinking about this specific one because we saw one at the Texas Renaissance Festival this past year along with a great horned owl and a tiny Eastern(?) screech owl in the Birds of Prey show.

Somehow I had never heard of it before. Sure, I had probably seen it in a previous show, but it had never stuck with me. While it’s not the most abundant owl - the Guinness Book of World Records tell me that’s the Athene noctua - they are numerous, with an estimated 100,000 to 500,000 in the world. Their range is amazing! Look at that map on the wikipedia link! They range from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Portugal to China.

As an aside: I downloaded Kiwix this week and now have an entire offline version of wikipedia on my computer. It takes about 100 GB of hard drive space. Here’s some more detailed instructions, if you want to play around with it. It’s quite easy, though there are some little quirks I haven’t had time to iron out. If you have any moral reservations, this is endorsed by Wikipedia - the instructions are right on the wikipedia website.

Another striking thing about them is that they are /big/: you can see from the picture above. They can grow to have a wingspan of over 6 feet!

They live up to 20 years in the wild and have lived almost 70(!) years in captivity.

The secret to their success, along with their size, is their ability to eat just about anything:

The Eurasian eagle-owl (Bubo bubo) may well be the most powerful extant species of owl, able to attack and kill large prey far beyond the capacities of most other living owls. However, the species is even more marked for its ability to live on more diverse prey than possibly any other comparably sized raptorial bird, which, given its considerable size, is almost fully restricted to eagles. This species can adapt to surprisingly small prey where it is the only kind available and to large prey where it is abundant.

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Your song of the day is “Who Are You” by The Who. You’ll have to take my word for it, but my wife says I was making dad jokes long before I was a dad. I learned from the best: my dad, of course.