Royals Rumblings - News for June 6, 2025
I know it was just a doubleheader split and the first game was a letdown, but it was really nice to take 2 of 3
After the games were over last night the Royals signed RHP Justin Dunn to a minor league deal, per Jaylon Thompson.
Thompson also wrote about the other (perplexing?) roster moves yesterday:
Cameron didn’t have to wait long. The Royals designated right-handed pitcher Thomas Hatch for assignment — he’d been recalled from Triple-A Omaha for the doubleheader — meaning Cameron remains in the majors...
It’s unlikely the Royals will employ a six-man pitching rotation, given the multiple off-days awaiting them this month. Yet there is a chance that Cameron will keep on getting regular starts.
Vahe Gregorian writes about Rusty Kuntz and his impressions of Jac Caglianone:
“He’s got a very high baseball IQ, so he can Rolodex through the information really, really quick,” Kuntz said in an interview with The Star on Tuesday in the visitor’s dugout at Busch Stadium.
Beyond that, Kuntz couldn’t resist adding, “the body type, the body size, the smile, all that kind of stuff, reminds me of Salvador Perez when he first got here. And (his ability) to take the information and adjust and adapt to it and apply it in the game is along the lines of an Alex Gordon.”
Pausing and smiling, he added, “Two pretty good guys.”
Anne Rogers talked to Jonathan India. Maybe just tossing a player (like, say, Jonathan India) anywhere on the field can have a detrimental impact on performance:
“The whole utility thing this year was tough to learn at such a fast pace,” India said. “I just wasn’t in a good spot physically. I thought I was in the spring. But everything changes in The Show.”
The Royals saw the toll it was taking on India and have begun to play him more consistently at second base. India’s defense hasn’t been where he has wanted it so far this year; he’s made 11 errors, with five coming at third base and four at second base. He’s recorded -3 Outs Above Average and -2 Defensive Runs Saved at second base this year.
But the Royals hope and believe that more consistent playing time at one position might help India on the field. His offense has been more like they envisioned, especially at the top of the lineup. India has a .244/.333/.307 slash line for the season entering Thursday, but in May he hit .266 with a .343 on-base percentage. Since May 3 and entering Thursday, India had reached base in 19 of 24 games, a stretch in which he slashed .284/.386/.368. That’s what the Royals need at the top of their lineup.
With the doubleheader, there weren’t any blog feature stories from yesterday, but we do have a blog roundup:
- Caleb Moody at KOK: Jac Caglianone made his first mark on the KC Royals in the only way he knew how
- Tremayne Person at KOK: Is this KC Royals outcast finally turning a corner in Triple-A?
- Darin Watson at U.L.’s Toothpick: This Date In Royals History—1985 Edition: June 5 - Milwaukee scores on the first pitch of the game and never looks back in a blowout win. At least the weather was miserable
- Patrick Glancy (last two weeks) at Powder Blue Nostalgia: The Greatest Postseason: Part 1 and The Greatest Postseason: Part 2
(I’m not saying today’s OT ramblings are incoherent, even by my low standards, but I’d like to remind the jury that the Switch 2 came out yesterday)
Traffic. Either you hate it or you live in a city without it.
Everyone also thinks their traffic is the worst. But every city has drivers who don’t pay attention. Or drive too fast. Or too slow. Or talk on the phone. Or don’t merge properly. Or whatever. And it’s not like this is a new problem. Decades ago, George Carlin famously opined: “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”
I think there’s more nuance than that. To borrow from Tolstoy, “each unhappy traffic city is unhappy in its own way.”
Below are some observations about cities I’ve driven in:
Let’s start with an easy example: When you’re not bogged down in traffic, Chicago is a fast city. Personally, I don’t mind driving in Chicago. I have a secret belief that when you become an Illinois resident, you get a card that says “the true speed limit is 15 MPH above posted speeds”. That said, it’s mostly orderly, as big cities go. If you can hit that gap at 90, it’s yours. They’re not going to passive-aggressively close the gap.
Speaking of which, we get to Kansas City. I drove more than 100K miles around the area in the 2000s, but I’ll admit my information could be a bit old. KC wasn’t too bad to drive in: it was generally orderly and people mostly go where you thought they were going to. There’s a bit of a disagreement on the zipper merge. However, the biggest problem I remember was with the turn signal. Some people see it as an indication that you want to move over. Other drivers in the lane next to you see it as a grievous attack on their manhood or womanhood and future generations. That gap will close ASAP.
There are definitely cultural differences between the corn belt (wheat belt? are those different?) and the rust belt. But I find that the drivers are fairly similar. The rust belt is a bit more aggressive and the belts further west are more laid back.
I lived in Indianapolis for a couple of years, and it was a good driving city. We can generously call it “crossroads of America” rather than “place lots of trucks pass through but isn’t a destination”. Because of all this truck traffic, there was an extra lane and a half more than traffic warranted (except during rush hour). The only complaint I had about driving there was the amount of ice that fell out of the sky and that the drivers were incurable rubberneckers. Again, like all of these traits - there are rubberneckers everywhere - but there it was a standard deviation or two above other places I’ve driven. Maybe they’re extra nosy or something.
Deeper into the rust belt, you get to Pittsburgh. If you enter via the Fort Pitt Tunnel, the view of Pittsburgh is absolutely breathtaking. That’s a lot of mountains and rivers and... if you miss a turn, it might be 3 miles before you can exit and another 20 minutes before you get back to where you were. Cincinnati is like a novice version of that.
I just got back from there and really didn’t like coming back to... Houston. I get that in the last decade or two, with the proliferation of cell phones, inattentive driving has skyrocketed. It’s particularly bad here in Texas when it’s mixed with the ethos of willful ignorance mixed with rugged individualism (read: moralized selfishness). There have always been people who drive with the idea that “I’ll do what I want and everyone else is paying attention so they’ll just move around me”. But it feels much higher here than anywhere else I’ve been.
You don’t pay attention in Chicago, you’re in danger from all the people whipping around you. You don’t pay attention in Cincinnati, you might end up across a river and in another state. But here, they can just point their car straight and drive for hours, blissfully unaware of everyone driving around them.
This also leads to other unintended consequences. You know those people who wait until he last minute to jump into the exit lane? You know, this guy. In the Midwest, unless you have out of state plates, everyone else will stay bumper to bumper to make sure that guy can’t cut in. They’d rather passive-aggressively run you into the pylon than let you break up the social order. But here? No, that requires paying attention.
Don’t get my wrong - I’m not trying to say that Houston is the worst city in the country to drive in. It’s not. But it has some frustrating foibles that I get to see on a regular basis.
As for other Texas cities, San Antonio is just slow and laid back. It’s easy to drive in but can be frustrating if you want to get somewhere. Meanwhile, Dallas boasts more Midwestern drivers and some of the worst highway interchanges in the country. I was trying to find a study, but, like everything on the internet these days - the first 20 results are one or two main sites and 18 copypasta’ing them onto their page.
As for some other places, here are some quick hitters. Atlanta is similar to Houston, sprawly with inattentive drivers. A lot of the southeast is like miniature versions of these two, but they just don’t have the concrete urban wasteland to compete with the two regional champions. There are parts of the Atlantic coast that are starting to feature some Northeast driving habits, but, again, are pale imitations.
The mountain west cities like Denver and Phoenix aren’t bad to drive in. Sure, Colorado has some really odd roads because of the mountains. But the cities themselves have very little of that. I haven’t been to either of the two major cities in the Pacific Northwest (though I will be going later this year). Also, I haven’t driven enough in Florida to describe driving there. I spent a couple of days in Miami and the Keys, but I didn’t feel like I got the full experience. By reputation, it has potential to be ranked highly (lowly?).
I’ve never tried to drive on Manhattan. Why would anyone who wasn’t a delivery truck or cab driver try to drive on Manhattan? That seems like a nightmare. The honking is kindof funny, though. If you took one hundred New York drivers and put them in Houston, they’d deafen people with their honking at the inattentive Houstonians. That said, the other areas around New York aren’t even the worst in the NE corridor. I think that goes to Boston. The urban core of San Francisco is a lot like Manhattan: why would you drive there when you have so many mass transit options?
However, there are two cities I have driven in that are head-and-shoulders above the rest for awful driving. Interestingly, they are bad for entirely different reasons.
Los Angeles has the highest volume of traffic of anywhere I’ve ever seen. On a Saturday afternoon, we drove the 17 miles from Santa Monica to Dodger Stadium to meet OMD at a game. It took more than 2 hours. You can get caught in a traffic snarl at midnight in Chicago or Houston. You /expect to/ in Los Angeles. It’s just another level of bad compared to anywhere else in the country and there’s only limited mass transit for relief.
That said, the city I hate driving in the most is Washington DC. I lived in Virginia for a couple of years and we would regularly visit DC. It’s a wonderful tourist area - there’s so much history and so many unique places to visit. But I grew to abhor driving around or inside the Beltway. Drivers there are hyper-aggressive in a way that I’ve never seen anywhere else. You have to actively be a jerk to get anywhere - no one will let you in or merge. Walking in non-tourist areas, it’s like that on the sidewalk, too. Then again, I used to joke that everyone thought they were fourth in the line of succession. “Let’s see, it’s the President, Vice President, Speaker of the House, and then... oh yeah: me!”* Fortunately, this is easily remedied by staying outside the Beltway and taking the Metro.
*I also loved how the Washington Wizards used to introduce the team as being from “the most powerful city in the world” as they were on their way to some godawful 20-win lottery-bound season
What cities do you think are the worst to drive in?
Back in the day, some folks may remember my OT space being only for video games and video game music. As mentioned above, the Nintendo Switch 2 came out yesterday and that may or may not have consumed part of my evening.
As for today’s song of the day, I would gladly slap another F-Zero GX track down here as an online version was released on the Switch 2(Matt!!!). However, I have a rule about only using a song from a game once per calendar year and I’ve already used an F-Zero GX track for this year.
Instead, we’re going to look back at (mostly) ageless Jayhawk and Big Slick participant, Paul Rudd (is he one of the dozens of people in the Royals ownership group?), clowning on his SNES ad from the 90s: