Prior to yesterday’s game, I was 6th on the Royals in position player fWAR for 2025. And so were you!
Suddenly, the Royals are on a 4-game winning streak and only 2 games under .500. Huzzah!
Going back to Wednesday, Pete Grathoff talked about the rain delay the started well before the rain.
Roth was correct as the rain didn’t start for more than 90 minutes, which seemingly would have given the Royals and Rockies a chance to get a good chunk of the game played. In their 4-3 win Tuesday over the Rockies, the teams had completed six innings by 8 p.m. And the Royals’ 3-1 loss to the Tigers on Saturday took just 2 hours and 4 minutes.
Jaylon Thompson asked Royals about their favorite superheroes. There’s also some fun illustrations in the story.
Estévez, a known anime aficionado, shared his love for the hit classic “Dragon Ball Z” by mimicking beloved hero Goku’s finishing maneuver. Goku popularized the “kamehameha” to defeat opponents. The move is a beam of energy that immobilizes the intended target. And Estévez fell in love.
Estévez enjoys Goku, but he resonates more with his archrival Vegeta because of his similarities in baseball circles. “He resembles a lot to a baseball player,” Estévez said. “A lot of training, a lot of suffering and a lot of being away from family. He overcomes all of that and he is one of the strongest.”
He also wrote about Bobby Witt’s MLB-longest 16-game hitting streak.
And Ragans leaving early yesterday:
“After the first inning, I saw something weird,” Perez said. “His fastball was not kind of sharp today. The off-speed was kind of everywhere. I asked him if he was OK and if he was good. He told me yes, so I have to believe him. I think after the third inning, he felt something in his groin.”
Probably not great that stories about his injury made the front page of ESPN and AP.
Cool! I’m really hoping to go to a WBC game or two next year.
Ready to represent.
Seth Lugo has announced that he will pitch for Team Puerto Rico in the 2026 World Baseball Classic!
Hmm. Not sure what to make of this:
Down in Double-A, Jac Caglianone is starting in right field for the first time tonight.
— Anne Rogers (@anne__rogers) April 24, 2025
At MLBTR, Anthony Franco looks at upcoming club options for AL Central teams, including a major name for the Royals:
Salvador Perez, C ($13.5MM club option, $2MM buyout)
Perez is making $22MM in the final season of the four-year extension that he signed in March 2021. At the time, it was the largest contract in organizational history. (Bobby Witt Jr. has since shattered that record.) Perez is a franchise stalwart, of course, but it was still surprising to see the Royals guarantee him $82MM for his age 32-35 seasons — especially given the heavy workloads he’d taken throughout his career.
The nine-time All-Star has rewarded the team’s faith. He led the majors with 48 homers and 121 RBI in 2021, though he was already under contract for that season anyhow. He combined for a .261/.307/.447 slash over the first three seasons of the extension. Perez eclipsed 20 home runs in each, and he won the AL Silver Slugger Award behind the dish with a .271/.330/.456 showing during last year’s playoff season.
Not really Royals news, but definitely Kansas City news. Ryan Howard and San Diego Padres manager Mike Shildt were in town on Thursday, pitching a $30M expansion for the NLBM:
Interest in the Negro Leagues has spiked of late in large part because of its inclusion in the video game MLB The Show and when records for more than 2,300 players were incorporated last year into Major League Baseball statistics. The museum that was founded in a tiny, one-room office space in 1990 that attracts about 70,000 visitors each year — plus major leaguers who stop by during road trips — has outgrown its space at 18th and Vine.
Kendrick said the current space “wasn’t designed to handle large crowds at any one time.”
“In a perfect world, Kansas City will host the World Cup next year,” Kendrick said, “and we would love to follow the energy and excitement of the World Cup with a grand opening of the Negro Leagues Museum in 2027. That might be a little bit ambitious, but it’s doable.”
Blogs today include a couple of new ones for me.
Folks like David Lesky, Craig Brown, Kevin O’Brien, and Royals Data Dugout didn’t have entries today, which makes sense as we were treated to five hours of baseball instead.
How about Owen Riley and Maxfield Lane over at Down on the Farm? They asked “Do Strikeouts Really Increase Pitch Counts and Shorten Outings?”
We’ve now established that although strikeouts are less efficient on a per-batter basis, they are equally, if not slightly more, efficient on a per-out basis. But that still hasn’t quite answered the question we initially set out to answer: do strikeouts lead to shorter outings?
The answer is not just no, but actually appears to be the opposite. Strikeouts are associated with longer outings, no matter how you slice and dice the data. At the simplest level, a higher strikeout game correlates with more length out of the starter in that game, as the chart below shows.
At Powder Blue Nostalgia, Patrick Glancy writes about the new movie, The Diamond King, about artist Dick Perez. If you were around for the junk wax era, you’ll remember Donruss’s Diamond King cards.
Dick Perez was for 20 years the official artist of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and co-founder of the Perez-Steele Art Gallery. But I didn’t know any of that when I first started looking into his story. I knew his name as the artist behind the Donruss Diamond Kings baseball cards that were such an integral part of my childhood and early baseball card collecting days.
Blog Roundup:
- Darin Watson at U.L.’s Toothpick: This Date In Royals History—1985 Edition: April 24 – Toronto enjoys a big third inning and coasts to a win over the Royals
- Caleb Moody at KOK: Losing Cole Ragans would be a devastating blow to a KC Royals team on the rise
- Also, Caleb Moody at KOK: KC Royals finally get the Salvador Perez breakout they’ve been eagerly awaiting
- Daniel Schmidt at Athlon Sports: Three Potential Outfielders Who Could Boost the Royals Offensive Struggles
Wanting to get an early start on your summer reading list? Well, I probably can’t help you there. However, we’ve done kids books before in this space. It’s been a couple of years so it’s time to write a 4th edition. Just a refresher:
- Initial edition (2023 January 27) – These books were mostly years 0-3 with some board books and working our way up to Golden Books and Goodnight, Moon
- Second edition (2023 March 3) – Next, we were in the 3-5ish range with classics like Corduroy and Where the Wild Things Are next to modern popular books by Sherri Duskey Rinker and Mo Willems.
- Third edition (2023 May 12) – All Dr. Seuss all the time, from The Cat in the Hat to the Grinch. We also threw in some Theo LeSeig and Not All Beginner Books.
With each one of these editions, we’re getting into an older audience. Initially, I had the notes that this would be the “last one I have in this series” and “I hope you’ve had as much fun reading it and reminiscing as I’ve had writing it” but I think we have at least one more entry after this.
This eccentric list includes some that could have fit in the “second edition” in the 3-5 range, but others have older targets with more words and fewer pictures on the page. As my kid ages, the books in this series are getting older. These are ones that he’s past at this point, but I’m going to revisit them one last time.
Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin, illustrated by Daniel Salmieri – Our first four books are from Rubin and Salmieri. This one was popular enough that we had an image in our archive from the release of Dragons Love Tacos 2: The Sequel. Sure, dragons and tacos aren’t the most natural pairing. But both are very popular with kids (and adults) and maybe that explains how this book became a New York Times bestseller. Or maybe it’s the quirky drawings and quirky humor. I’ve heard the sequel wasn’t very good. That’s a shame as my kid loved this one. That said, I prefer…
Those Darn Squirrels, Those Darn Squirrels and the Cat Next Door, and Those Darn Squirrels Fly South by Adam Rubin, illustrated by Daniel Salmieri – These books are my favorite from today’s post as they have more heart. Cranky protagonist Old Man Fookwire loves to paint pictures of birds at his birdfeeders, but squirrels keep thwarting him (looping us back to last week). Of course, he comes around to like the squirrels and, subsequently, helps them in their own travails. “Now, not many people know this, but squirrels have a comprehensive understanding of aerodynamnic engineering”.
The Day the Crayons Quit and The Day the Crayons Came Home by Drew Daywalt, illustrated by Oliver Jeffers – My kid /loved/ these books. However, they were the books that I hoped he would pick when it was mom’s night to read. The core idea is interesting: each page is a postcard, written by a lost crayon, back to its owner, Duncan. For me, there’s something abrasive and off-putting about them – they’re more mean-spirited and gross than I want in a kids’ book. But, clearly, I’m in the minority of finding them long and dumb: “Entertainment Weekly referred to it as the longest running title to ever appear on The New York Times Best Seller list for children’s picture books, the book having held the weekly number-one spot on the list for over a year, and a total of 258 weeks on the list as of January 2019”.
I Need my Monster by Amanda Noll, illustrated by Howard McWilliam – I was going to use this as an example of a generic book, only it’s popular enough that it has its own Wikipedia page. Gabe’s regular monster is out for the night so he has to try out other monsters under his bed. We picked up a lot of books secondhand at library sales, used book stores, or in lots – you never quite are sure what you’re going to get. This one made it into our rotation, even if it felt kindof generic to me.
Escargot by Dashka Slater, illustrated by Sydney Hanson – This series about a snail borrows heavily from other interactive tales like The Monster at the End of This Book. We read the first couple books and they’re cute and fun with simple, but pretty, watercolor images. Parent bonus: you can use your worst French accent while reading it.
P Is for Pterodactyl: The Worst Alphabet Book Ever by Raj Haldar and Chris Carpenter, illustrated by Maria Tina Beddia – This book is exactly what it sounds like, which, admittedly, is pretty great. Easily misspelled words, silent letters, and bad puns make this one a treat to read. I didn’t realize there was also a sequel: “No Reading Allowed: The Worst Read-Aloud Book Ever (which uses word-play based on homophones, homonyms, and differences of punctuation)”.
I Can Read! readers by various authors and artists – Scholastic Book Fairs still exist and they’re filled with these level 1/2/3/4 books. This line from Harper Collins has a number of original books, but it’s also been hoovering up children’s series like Berenstain Bears, Little Critter, Paddington and Amelia Bedelia. Of the ones my kid read, I didn’t like Pete the Cat and was fine with Little Witch and Frog and Toad. Other series have adopted this leveling model and we even had a set of recently published “level 2” Dick and Jane books. Those were old when I was growing up!
Finally, I have a handful of graphic novels as that seems to be his jam now but I think I’m going to use those another time…
Song of the day? I didn’t really have anything related to the books above. But I am a bit tired writing this as I was stayed up too late on Wednesday night, trying to pre-order the new Nintendo Switch 2.
Matt! I know you’ve already seen this, but it bears repeating: F-Zero GX is coming to Switch 2!!!
Time to revisit this masterpiece with Thunder Road: