Royals Rumblings - News for February 21, 2024

Bobby Witt, Jr. appeared on MLB Network as they announced him as the #20 overall player in the Majors:

At Sports Info Solutions, here’s what it would take for Bobby to be the #1 best in baseball, not just #20:

The primary reason I wrote this piece was I was looking for a way to justify a world in which the Royals are a playoff contender. FanGraphs currently projects them for 76 wins, Baseball Prospectus for 71.

Pushing Michael Wacha and Vinnie Pasquantino up a win in their projected WAR can only do so much. The Royals need a player to make the kind of jump that gives a team a jolt.

The easiest knob to turn to accelerate the Royals to playoff-caliber status is one in which Witt goes from being the Royals best player in 2023 to baseball’s best player in 2024. That could change their win total by a decent amount.

That’s asking a lot of someone so young who is trying to live up to a massive contract extension. But if the Royals are going to make the playoffs, they’re going to need something to be above and beyond expectations. Witt being the superduperstar we’ve written about here is that thing.

Maikel Garcia hopes to bring some energy from his electric winter league experience into the new season, writes Anne Rogers:

“He’s getting better at the same time,” Picollo added. “He’s growing in confidence, he’s going to continue to be a better hitter. I think his hard-hit rates are going to continue to go up. And that happens when you get a lot of at-bats by him playing all winter.”

Garcia is looking forward to attacking the “sophomore slump” head-on and helping the Royals play better in 2024. The 23-year-old didn’t make the team out of Spring Training last year, but he came up in May and never left, establishing himself as part of the core on the left side of the infield.

“I’m happy to be here again,” Garcia said. “Try to play better here, bring us to the playoffs. Bring the energy to Kansas City. We want to win.”

Zac Miller at Farm to Fountains identified some bounceback candidates we will see in Omaha this season:

There is no doubt that Will Klein has the pitch variability to make it to Kansas City as early as this season. He has a fastball that can hit triple digits, combined with a high-spinning curveball (2595 RPM) and cutter that generates a healthy number of whiffs (46%). He was selected to represent the Royals in the 2023 Futures Game during All-Star week. That all sounds amazing, but you might be wondering how he made this list. Despite the positives above, he managed only a 4.62 ERA and 1.66 WHIP between Double-A and Triple-A last season. He is working toward getting back to his dominant 2021 season and has already made quite a bit of progress compared to his 2022 season, one I am sure he wants to forget. If Klein can continue his progress into 2024, we should see him in Kansas City before the season’s end.

Former Royals reliever Kelvin Herrera is now the mayor of his hometown.

Hard to choose just one part of Amanda Mull’s piece at the Atlantic on the larger cultural issues that play into the current Nike/Fanatics fiasco. She’s tremendous at taking small topics and revealing bigger pictures:

Over time, more and more design elements of professional sports jerseys have bent themselves to this same logic of thinner, lighter, stretchier. Details that in the past might have been highly textured have been lightened considerably, and are even screen-printed or heat-pressed by some brands. Those changes reduce bulk and remove stitchwork that could impede the textile’s ability to stretch. These changes can also make production and maintenance of these uniforms cheaper and easier. The end result is a flatter, simpler-looking garment, but one that should, at least in theory, perform better under extreme conditions of human movement.

What makes for a good piece of performance gear, though, doesn’t necessarily make for a good piece of casual clothing. Jerseys are expensive, and for many of the people who buy them, they’ll be among the priciest garments they’ve ever owned. What signals quality in regular clothing is everything that performance brands have worked to strip out of athletic apparel: thick, weighty textiles; layers of added detail; textural variation; embroidery. Sports fans are also a nostalgic beast; the people with enough money to buy official jerseys en masse are likely at least approaching middle age, and for a lot of fans, how a jersey should look is however it looked when they first became a fan, back when jerseys were thicker and more embellished and had bigger, blockier proportions. This is not a strictly rational thought process, but sports fandom isn’t rational. This is true of the players, too, who were usually fans first. When Dansby Swanson calls up Nike to make sure that the team takes the field on opening day wearing actual “Cubbie blue,” it’s not because doing so will make him a better shortstop.

Practicality is only part of the explanation, however. Some of the changes made to the new uniforms—especially a lack of customization options in the fit of the pants—seem to be more about ease and cost of manufacturing rather than adhering to the on-field preferences of elite competitors. (Nike has sent tailors to address this issue to at least one team, the Cincinnati Reds, but according to the Cincinnati Enquirer, those tailors will only tweak waists and inseams, not overall fit.) Shrinking down players’ names, too, serves no discernible performance advantage and makes the real jerseys look like hastily drawn-up knockoffs.

Here’s an example of the cheap-looking jerseys and alarmingly see-through pants. The MLBPA is stepping in to see if the uniforms can be fixed before the season starts.

How to say you’re rebuilding without saying the word rebuilding: a guide for GMs, by Davy Andrews at FanGraphs.

JJ Redick had some harsh words for newish Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers: “never any accountability with that guy!”

Some rule change are coming to NCAA volleyball.

The lady who put $50,000 cash into a shoebox and handed it over to a scammer is part of $10 billion in total dollars Americans lost to scammers in 2023.

A list (non-slideshow!) of 14 documentaries to watch with your kids.

This Ask a Manager letter writer has a new employee who is policing coworkers’ clothes.

This is just a very good joke:

Apparently putting your phone in rice does not help it “dry out.” Here are some things to do instead. When I was 22 and had about 49 cents to my name, my strategy after dropping my phone in a bar toilet was “pretend it didn’t happen and hope it works tomorrow,” and it DID!

Former family vlogger Ruby Franke has been sentenced to a total of 60 years for child abuse.

I just learned that there is a little $5 doohickey that helps you make Uncrustables at home.

This Redditor needs help hanging a new bathroom mirror. This seems low stakes, but the photo is infuriating and I don’t know what I would do.

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