Royals Rumblings - News for November 22, 2023
At Defector ($), David Roth wonders if the Royals know something about shoulders, following the acquisitions of Kyle Wright and Nick Anderson, who are both recovering from shoulder injuries:
As Michael Baumann writes at FanGraphs, there’s an equally legible subtext to the two most notable transactions of the offseason so far—Milwaukee’s decision to non-tender injured co-ace Brandon Woodruff and Atlanta flipping Kyle Wright, who won 21 games in 2022 and got downballot Cy Young support, to Kansas City. Legible, and ominous. Woodruff and Wright have both been very successful big league pitchers, although Woodruff’s c.v. is notably longer and stronger, but they also are both recovering from shoulder capsule surgeries that they underwent in October. This is a relatively new surgery, and one whose early track record in terms of recovery time suggests 1) that neither pitcher is likely to pitch in 2024 or 2) necessarily a lock for 2025, either. Wright, who has three years of team control, might yet deliver something to the Royals during that time frame, which was enough for the Braves to get a defective former first-round pick from Kansas City in the deal. (Again, the Braves are betting that they can take Jackson Kowar’s extremely fast fastball, which has been treated very rudely in the bigs, and build a workable pitcher around it in a way that their counter-party couldn’t.)
Our friend Preston Farr checks out infielder Travis Bazzana as a possible 2024 Royals draftee. Preston is hiring contributors for his excellent new site, Farm to Fountains!
The wedding of former Royal Nicky Lopez was featured in People Magazine. Lopez was traded from the Braves to the White Sox during the wedding weekend.
Also this past weekend in Royals weddings, congrats to Nick and Hannah Pratto on their nuptials! Their wedding was officiated by former Royals outfielder Brewer Hicklen.
The Padres are going with Mike Shildt as their new skipper.
Righty Kyle Gibson signed with the Cardinals for one year at $12 million.
Shortstop Paul DeJong is headed to the White Sox.
Former Angels manager Brad Ausmus will join the Yankees as a bench coach.
The Royals were not on this list of a dozen potential teams for a Tyler Glasnow trade.
I have to admit, I didn’t know about very many of these 9 Google Docs hacks before. I also have to admit that the first time I tried to type that sentence, I typed “Google Dogs.”
Some light reading from Ask a Manager: 12 stories of weird workplace food incidents, and a collection of classic holiday stories from the site’s archives.
Apparently safe deposit boxes aren’t all that secure.
This past week I learned about an attempted shootdown of a cargo plane in Baghdad in 2003. The pilots managed to fly back to the airport and land the plane despite all of the aircraft’s hydraulic systems being depressurized. That left them with just the throttle and varying power between the right and left engines to steer and control the speed. Two previous instances of hydraulic failure led to tragedy in Japan and Iowa.
Today is the 60th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Who do you think was responsible?
SOTD: Alex Melton’s cover of ‘Mirrorball’ by Taylor Swift