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Royals Rumblings – News for April 18, 2025

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MLB: Kansas City Royals at Detroit Tigers
I dunno: what kind of image should I use at this point? | Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images

The offense is not ideal

At The Star, Jaylon Thompson talked to various members of the organization about Lucas Erceg’s fireman role:

The Royals dove deeply into Erceg’s analytics before acquiring him. They researched his trends and then decided the best approach for deploying him, if they were to get him.

“We’re looking for guys with not just power and stuff,” Royals vice president of research and development Daniel Mack explained, “but a good craft and the ability to locate into the areas where the pitches play the best.

Pete Grathoff notes: “Royals’ Vinnie Pasquantino has seen bat speed jump; He’s unsure that’s a good thing”:

While on the MLB Network earlier this week, one increase in Pasquantino’s metrics was discussed: his bat speed. Pasquantino’s average bat speed is 74.3 mph, an increase of 2.6 mph from the 2024 season. That’s the fourth largest jump in Major League Baseball this season. But Pasquantino isn’t necessarily sure that’s a positive.

“I got stronger in the offseason,” Pasquantino noted. “There wasn’t any concerted effort to just increase the bat speed. I’m trying to figure out if this is a good thing for me or not, because I’ve started to swing and miss a little bit more. I’ve started to chase a little bit more this year, and I’m wondering if I’m trying too hard.

“So there’s a piece of it where it’s like, ‘Am I over-swinging?’ It’s something we’re walking through right now of, ‘Where am I at my best?’ We’ve started to look at some bat speed models from the past few years of, ‘OK, where’s my honey hole.’ In a vacuum, swinging fast, great.”

It’s fun to listen to Vinnie talk shop.

Grathoff also writes about the Champions Gala coming up next month:

Forty-five players from the two teams will gather for what is being called a black-tie optional affair. There will be dinner and commemorative programming as part of the fundraiser for The Kansas City Royals Foundation.

Injury updates, courtesy of Anne Rogers:

Also from Anne Rogers, here’s a story about Michael Lorenzen and his workout app:

The idea was a fitness app called WorkMode. Now free for everyone who creates an account, the app was created by Lorenzen to help young players properly prepare their bodies with workout programs and exercises — all demonstrated by Lorenzen and sorted based on the user’s level (foundation, progression or master) and position (pitcher, catcher, corner infielder, middle infielder, outfielder or two-way player).

“It’s all of my workout programs, strength programs, throwing programs, some hitting stuff as well,” Lorenzen said. “It’s just a tool for kids who don’t know what to do. A tool for them to get more information from someone who has been through a lot. I’ve had a career where I’ve had to learn and adapt. It’s all of my knowledge in an app. That’s what I’d like for it to be.”

Listicle? MLB Pipeline lists a “potential impact callup for each organization”:

Royals: Noah Cameron, LHP (No. 5)

Hold onto those Jac Caglianone callup hopes for just a little bit longer. Cameron has dominated Triple-A batters since his arrival at Omaha last July, and he’s continued that success with a 1.65 ERA, 0.92 WHIP and 18 strikeouts through his first three starts (16 1/3 innings). He’s yet to give up a hit on his plus low-80s changeup and has generated a 45 percent whiff rate on the cambio. Now on the 40-man roster, he’s performing like the next starter up when Kansas City needs rotation help.

Blogs are officially concerned about Royals hitting. Who can blame them?

Leading off is The Royals Reporter, Kevin O’Brien, who penned an excellent article about how the Royals, how do I put this delicately… well, they suck at hitting fastballs (my words, not his). Go read it now! We’ll be here when you get back.

Talking with some people offline, there have been numerous theories about the Royals’ offensive struggles so far. Is it a talent issue? A coaching issue? A weather issue? A competition issue? That said, one topic that intrigued me was this: Are the Royals not a good team against fastballs? I wanted to see if there was any truth to this argument.

Thus, I dove into Savant to check the data from this year and years past when it came to Royals hitters against fastball pitches (four-seamers, sinkers, and cutters) and how they fared against the league and individually. Furthermore, I also checked the bat tracking data to see if it could explain any “skill” reasons why Royals hitters were (or were not) struggling against fastball pitches, both this year and in previous years (2023 and 2024).

Royals Data Dugout looks at other hitting numbers:

If KC continues pulling the ball in the air, I think the contact metrics are going to find their level. Basically the entire bottom half of the Royals lineup, plus Vinnie Pasquantino, are underperforming against their career EVs and hard-hit rates, including Michael Massey, MJ Melendez, Hunter Renfroe, Freddy Fermin, Cavan Biggio and Kyle Isbel. Only one of those names is past the age curve that might be cause for expected regression.

I can’t promise those guys are all going to get back to their career batted-ball norms. (Though I’m highly, highly confident Pasquantino is about to go on a tear.) I can’t promise the offense as a whole is going to take off.

Craig Brown wrote about the recently completed series in New York:

Leadoff hitter Jonathan India, who I have come to like watch ply his craft, went 0-4 on Wednesday, although he drove in a run on a groundout. It was the tying run and the second run of an inning. Almost a rally! Imagine if he could’ve gotten a base hit. India owns a .310 OBP and a wRC+ of 66. (A reminder that wRC+ is found at FanGraphs and stands for Weighted Runs Created Plus. It measures a player’s total offensive value and is scaled where 100 is league average. India, at a 66 wRC+, is producing at 34 percent below the average offensive performer this year.)

Vinnie Pasquantino has lost 2.5 mph off his average exit velocity from a year ago and is hitting .200/.284/.354 with a 77 wRC+. Granted, he has been hitting the ball with a bit more authority of late, but his overall expected batting average and slugging percentage are both poor. I’m officially concerned about the guy.

Blog roundup:

I started writing about a topic but then hesitated, wondering if I might seem a few bats short of a belfrey. Wait, is that a thing? (Diversion time.) I’ve heard of someone having “bats in their belfrey”. But can you phrase it in the same way as a “few bricks shy of a load” or “a few fries short of a Happy Meal”?

So I did what anyone would do: I Google’d it. Even if I couldn’t verify that particular use, maybe I could find another animal idiom. However, searching for something like that isn’t easy. I’m not even talking about how internet searches have been watered down in the last decade by a combination of SEO poisoning and their own intentional self-promoting sabotage. It’s more than searching for “a few X short of a Y” isn’t an ideal search format. You can’t plug variables into a search engine like that.

After falling down some internet rabbit holes, I found that there is a term for this sort of cliche’d phrase: a snowclone:

A snowclone is a clichéd phrase in which one or more words can be substituted to express a similar idea in a different context, often to humorous or sarcastic effect… The term snowclone was coined in 2004, derived from journalistic clichés that referred to the number of Eskimo words for snow.

It looks like this is the exact post where the term was coined and discussed in a post called “Snowclones: lexicographical dating to the second”, which is quite meta if you think about it for a few seconds (but not much longer). Ah, Usenet. Those were the days.

There’s an entire list of these compiled on a now-defunct website, but it has a couple of issues. First, many don’t fit the format. Second, I don’t see any animal ones I like, but we could go with “a few chickens short of a henhouse”, if you prefer. Time to step away from this linguistic edge and back to something much more rational…

Remember last month when I posted about our local birds?

We used to have a little feeder in the backyard and enjoyed watching it. We don’t have the northern problem that if I forget for a day, birds are going to starve, even in winter. But our neighbors cut down their tall greenery in the backyard and replaced it with smaller bushes. Our feeder population dwindled down to nothing and I eventually threw away the old tube feeder that had served us well, what few mechanisms it had, succumbed to the Houston sun.

In the last couple of weeks, I have replaced it with a feeder in the front yard. However, there have been difficulties with that. The HOA has some questionable rules around bird feeders and bird baths so I keep it hidden in our bushes. However, that makes it harder for the birds to find it and easier for the squirrels. Those darn squirrels (oh, hey, we’ll get back to kids books later on this year)! I shouldn’t complain too much, though, as it’s right outside the window in my home office and I get more of a chance to see them now.

How about an update? I’ve posted some here and some to Rock Chalk Talk – I can’t really keep it straight.

Here’s a missive I posted to RCT about a month ago:

I put up a bird feeder in my yard a couple of weeks ago. It’s hanging up on a shepherd’s hook in my bushes, right outside my office window. Naturally, the squirrels found it not long after. There’s been escalations on each side between them trying to get at it and me trying to prevent them.

Today has been funny. I wiped cooking spray all over the shepherd’s hook. So now when they try to go down the poll, they slide slowly down it. It has happened at least a half dozen times. My favorite was the one who tried to slide down and quickly jump to the feeder. But his hands were slick so he just fell straight off the feeder.

They will eventually win, but at least I’ll get some entertainment out of it before then.

I posted this a couple of weeks later:

Bird feeder update (because I know you were dying for one). There are at least 3 squirrels that keep it under constant assault. They really are acrobatic little devils. The vegetable oil on the shepherd’s hook has led to great entertainment. However, they’re just smarter than I am and constantly getting into it. I’ve cut away some of the branches near the hook and it’s made them work harder. However, it also makes the pole more visible to the HOA so I’m a little worried about that.

Since then, I’ve become a little concerned that one of the oak trees outside my yard is just 18 squirrels in a trench coat.

One morning, after dropping my son at school, I talked to a neighbor a few houses down. He has a pair of bird feeders in his oak trees, suspended about 20 feet off the ground. They’re the tall tube feeders that are supposed to be squirrel-proof with the little cages around them. However, I’ve often seen squirrels shimmy down the ropes, hang onto the cage with two little legs, and cram seed into their mouths with the other two.

These squirrels are too wily. He said that when one of them sees him refilling his feeders, a call must go out because they all start running down the street. They work together, too!

He used to have a different squirrel-proof feeder. It was one of those little house-shaped ones that slams shut if too much weight is on it. That way light birds can get seed but heavy squirrels cannot. My aunt has one like that and it works like a champ. When he hung that one up, they couldn’t get to it. But when the tube feeder ran out, they chewed through the rope that it hung by. Once on the ground, they were able to get at the seed.

He thought “huh, that was strange… it must have been an accident”. So he switched which feeder was on which tree. They did the same exact thing: finish off the tube feeder and then chew the rope holding up the squirrel-proof one. So he just went to two tube feeders and that at least lets some birds eat while he’s also feeding an entire metropolis of squirrels.

Me? There’s now a stick by the door that’s for throwing at squirrels. I haven’t hit one yet, but at least it annoys them enough so that they leave it alone for a few minutes, even when hungry.

I’ve also started a new tactic this week. I ran across this article from USA Today where the author is trying to solve his squirrel problem:

I was dumbfounded. A little investigation revealed the seed cylinders were the type that have a hint of hot pepper oil (capsaicin) to help shoo away the would-be squirrel invaders. As it turns out, birds have far fewer taste buds compared to humans, and bird taste buds don’t process capsaicin the same way. They don’t feel the burn! I pulled out my phone on the spot and ordered a feeder and box of capsaicin-laced seed cylinders that were sitting on the front steps when we returned home from our trip.

The results in our Louisville garden were remarkable. Between the pepper-laced seed cylinders and a suet feeder, we had loads of woodpeckers, sparrows, chickadees, cardinals, and more. We also have a large American holly in the backyard that provides an annual boatload of fruits for the local robins, wax wings, and a host of others, and a few seed-producing perennials that provide for the finches and last remaining warblers. And the best part — no squirrel problem.

I haven’t gone so far as to order pepper-laced seeds. However, this week, I started mixing cayenne pepper into the oil that I put on the pole. I have seen a significant reduction in squirrels and some angry barks as they try to wipe it away on their fur. I expect this to only be a temporary solution as they will outsmart me again.

Also, this topic will lead us to next week’s OT

Aside from squirrels, so far we’ve had a bunch of Carolina chickadees, house finches, and blue jays at the feeder. The jays don’t fit on the feeder, but they can get seed if they are nimble. Mourning and white-winged doves will bottom feed off the ground, as will the occasional robin. We’ve also had some duck drama with two male mallards fighting over a female mallard. Sadly, I have not seen the yellow rumped warbler in a couple of weeks, so it might have just been passing through.

And this is how I know that I will never beat the squirrels: