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Royals Rumblings – News for June 13, 2025

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MLB: APR 21 Rays at Royals
Mentioned in the first story | Photo by Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

That series was disheartening

At The Star, Jaylon Thompson writes about the Royals bullpen and their Hello Kitty backpack:

“It’s just fun and games, at the end of the day,” KC reliever Jonathan Bowlan said. “It’s usually to the youngest guy in the bullpen. I wore it last year and the year before a little bit. It’s one of the things we like to do. It has all the things we kind of need down there.”

The Hello Kitty backpack travels everywhere with the Royals. Whoever has possession of the bag is responsible for supplying snacks, essentials and anything else a teammate might need in the bullpen.

It serves an important purpose: Relievers can’t typically shuttle back and forth from the bullpen to the dugout for supplies during games. The Hello Kitty backpack usually contains things players might need, such as ibuprofen, wet wipes and ointments to relieve sore muscles.

Vahe Gregorian writes about how, after their 16-2 stretch, the Royals have struggled:

Despite making significant changes, including releasing Hunter Renfroe, demoting MJ Melendez and calling up promising slugger Jac Caglianone last week, the Royals ranked last in the American League in runs scored through Wednesday night, with 230 in 68 games (3.38 runs a game).

All of a sudden, they haven’t so much as won back-to-back outings in nearly a month (May 18-May 19) and are 10-18 since that surge short-circuited.

At MLB.com, Anne Rogers writes a Father’s Day piece about Jac Caglianone and his dad:

“He’s the reason why I play,” Caglianone said. “He taught me the game. We’d wake up every morning before school and watch ‘Quick Pitch’ on TV.”

With Father’s Day coming up on Sunday, Caglianone is extra grateful for his dad’s steadiness and support, which has never wavered as Caglianone kept climbing through college, the MLB Draft and now the big leagues.

“He’s definitely the person I’m closest with,” Caglianone said. “He keeps me level-headed with everything.”

At Fox4KC, Jonathan Ketz talked with Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, as he sells a plan to keep the teams in Missouri:

The interview with Lucas comes just a day after the Missouri legislature passed the bill aimed at keeping the teams in the Show-Me State. Thursday, Lucas was in Germany leading a trade delegation with business and government leaders in the metro.

Lucas believes the package Missouri’s offering the teams is a better one than the one Kansas is offering. Part of that is because 50% of the stadium’s construction costs would be tied to existing bonds as opposed to what he called ‘speculative bonds.’ Later in the conversation, he talked about Kansas’ offer.

“Maybe one believes it’s very easy to sell billions of dollars of bonds that have no government backing,” Lucas said. “I don’t actually think that’s the case, and most of us who work in state and local government don’t believe that necessarily to be nearly as easy as has been suggested, but I understand that’s what the rhetoric is.”

At The Athletic ($), the Royals rank second on their trade deadline Urgency Index for bats:

2. Kansas City Royals

Sometimes a need arises out of the blue because of injury or unexpected underperformance. And sometimes a team enters the season with questions about its outfield’s ability to produce, and it spends the first few months of the season justifying that skepticism.

To the Royals’ credit, they’re very much in the postseason hunt in the American League, despite receiving the worst outfield production in the majors in 2025. Think of it this way: The Dodgers’ Michael Conforto has been one of the most disappointing hitters in baseball all season, and he still owns a better wRC+ than Kansas City’s collective outfield. (On the other hand, Toronto’s Anthony Santander, whom KC pursued in free agency, would have actually made the outfield worse to this point.)

The Royals have already optioned MJ Melendez and released Hunter Renfroe. They’ve called up Jac Caglianone and tried out Maikel Garcia in center last week. They’re trying. But the answer here should come from outside the organization. Get at least one more solid outfielder — and it doesn’t have to be a superstar to be a marked improvement — and the Royals can compete in an American League without runaway wild-card contenders.

Blog time!

The Royals Reporter, Kevin O’Brien, lists some trade targets and some players they could trade:

The Rockies are in desperate need of pitching, and a possible option could be Daniel Lynch IV, whose value matches quite closely to Moniak’s on Baseball Trade Values.

Now, some Royals fans may be hesitant to trade Lynch, especially since he’s been one of the better lefty relievers in the bullpen over the past two years. While his ERA is 1.97, his FIP is 4.55, and his K-BB% is paltry at 2.5%. Furthermore, his arsenal doesn’t profile well on a stuff-end as well, as evidenced in his TJ Stats summary card.

I don’t see Lynch as a long-term, high-leverage reliever for this club, and one could argue that Angel Zerpa is starting to gain ground on him for that role. Furthermore, Evan Sisk has shown flashes of promise, even if the command and control have been somewhat inconsistent at the MLB level.

David Lesky ($), while writing about Wednesday’s game, also looked at the offense as a whole:

It’s interesting that the whole narrative for the first month and a half of the season was that the Royals offensive issues were largely due to the 3-4-5 not hitting. Since and including May 17 (the last game of the Giants series), Perez has hit what I mentioned above, which is a 124 wRC+. Pasquzntino has hit .420/.487/.536, which is a 193 wRC+ and Maikel Garcia has hit .299/.60/.4563, which is a 128 wRC+. Add in that the leadoff hitter, Jonathan India, has hit .302/.366/.429 for a 122 wRC+ and you’d think that all the problems are solved. They’ve averaged 3.7 runs per game.

Part of that is Bobby Witt Jr. has an 87 wRC+ in that time, but it’s also the rest of the supporting cast. Drew Waters has come back to earth in a big and predictable way. Kyle Isbel hasn’t done much. Michael Massey has continued to struggle (and now he’s hurt…or maybe “hurt”). John Rave hasn’t been good. Jac Caglianone is stinging the ball, but he hasn’t made much of a difference yet outside of a great game on Sunday. Witt and Caglianone will be fine, I think, but the supporting cast still needs to get better.

Blog roundup:

To make up for the lack of blogs, I have a little non-Royals section today.

I like the headline “The White Sox are no longer godforsaken, thanks to Pope Leo”.

At Fangraphs, Ben Clemens looks at how “not all foul balls are created equal”:

You probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Luis Arraez, Nick Allen, and Brice Turang are among the leaders in early-count foul ball rate (foul balls per swing). They swing a lot, make a lot of contact, and spray their contact to all fields, including foul territory in every direction. On the other side of the coin, you’ve got sluggers like Bryce Harper, Aaron Judge, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and yes, Springer. These guys don’t swing as often, which means a few things. First, they swing at better pitches on average, which leads to better contact. Second, they make less contact on average, and less contact means fewer fouls, even for the same rate of fouls-per-contact.

I’d rather be in the second camp than the first there. Early-count foul balls are a waste, literally the same as a swinging strike. They might be worse, even – baserunners can’t steal, catchers can’t block poorly and allow a passed ball. A full 46% of Arraez’s swings – 48% for league leader Wilyer Abreu – end up as foul balls. Sure, contact is great, but when half of it counts as a strike, it’s a lot less enticing.

Topps has created the first trading cards for the Athletes Unlimited Softball League. The first-year professional softball league, which has financial backing from MLB, has games in Wichita next week.

For today’s OT, we’re going with the old standard of some quick movie reviews. Unless you count the multimedia Wonka conversation in April, we haven’t done a set of proper movie reviews in months and they’re starting to back up on my hard drive. It’s time to hit up some of those today.

Moana (2016) – We already touched on this one a couple of years ago, so I’m not going to go long here. It’s an odd couple redemption/coming-of-age story featuring decent comedy, memorable songs, and a unique-ish plot. The first act is excellent and the third act is solid but I don’t care for the middle act as I don’t care for the Shiny song or how quickly Maui loses. It’s one of Disney’s modern classics.

Moana 2 (2024) – The real motivation for re-watching Moana was that Moana 2 hit Disney+ last month. The original was self-contained and wasn’t asking for a sequel, but to build the IP, we get an ancestor quest with lore and world building that doesn’t feel as natural as the original story. Hey, this is starting to sound a lot like Frozen 2. What did I write in that link above? “It has to expand the universe to seem ‘fresh’ but there was no natural place to take it after the original. The characters feel a bit like caricatures of their originals, the foreshadowing is heavy-handed and assumes the audience is dumb, it sags a lot in the second act…” Yes to almost all of that. Instead of foreshadowing, more underexplained bits are clearly setting up for Moana 3 and the music is not as good with Lin-Manuel Miranda gone. There are good emotional notes hit toward the end of act 2, but they hit way too fast. There’s no chance to breathe, so it’s just emotional whiplash, and you don’t really buy it. It’s not a bad movie, just not nearly as good as the first.

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Captain America: Brave New World (2025) – Our next films are the two most recent MCU films, which are an interesting contrast. They feel like they’re from different eras, despite being released a couple of months apart. Weirdly, it’s one of Marvel’s smaller and more intimate outings. For continuity, it only ties heavily into The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (which I liked more than most) and The Incredible Hulk (but spoonfeeds the necessary exposition from there to those of us who have forgotten). Giancarlo Esposito is underutilized (underwritten), but Anthony Mackie and Harrison Ford do yeoman’s work in a political thriller that feels like a 90s throwback. While it’s heavy on the action and light on the politics, it feels like a movie out of time, made with themes that feel very “three years ago” instead of today and it makes it oddly pollyanna-ish. I had been looking forward to both of these movies when they were announced a couple of years ago and both gave me what I wanted. This one was a nice, “low stakes” stand-alone movie to introduce us to the new Captain America.

Thunderbolts (2025) – While audiences were mostly negative on the last movie, this was well-received everywhere except at the box office. First off, I don’t like the lazy reading that Thunderbolts is basically Suicide Squad. Suicide Squad is about anti-heroes being coerced into doing something good whereas Thunderbolts is about flawed heroes, heroes who aren’t good enough, getting their chance to be real heroes. This one required homework to get the full effect as it builds on plots from Black Widow, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Ant-Man and the Wasp. The upshot is that the movie doesn’t have to waste time introducing U.S. Agent or Ghost or Red Guardian and it allows Sebastian Stan and, especially, Florence Pugh to shine. The only major complaint I have is that I don’t care for how it ended.

The MCU will never again reach its highs of Phase 3, but Phase 4 had some read duds. Thunderbolts was a fitting end to the underrated Phase 5 of the MCU. It started out horribly as Quantumania was a misstep that turned into a disaster after Jonathan Majors was fired. But then Guardians 3 was a well-received tentpole and end of the trilogy. As I posted last year, Marvels received undue hate and was, at worst, forgettable. Deadpool & Wolverine was easily the best of that trilogy and, again, a well-received tentpole. And, as stated above, I got what I wanted out of both of this year’s movies. Disney is banking a lot on Phase 6, but they’re not in the best spot right now with fan reception. We’ll see how things go with Fantastic Four, Spider-Man 4, Doomsday, Secret Wars, and whatever they stick in between.

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IF (2024) – Lastly, not Disney, and I don’t have anything to pair this with, but I need to review it somewhere. I have asked myself: Who is the target of this movie? It’s a heartfelt tearjerker for parents, but it’s definitely a kids’ movie that can be a narrative mess at times. Meanwhile, my kid laughed at the slapstick comedy but there were bits that were beyond him and he got bored. It’s stuck in this middle area where it’s too kiddy to be a serious drama but too serious to be a wholly kids movie. I’m happy to see a new IP and an imaginative idea that can stand on its own. One odd note: it has a budget of $110M and looks like about that, but I hope there wasn’t a ton of it spent on voice acting. Look at the cast! Only Louis Gossett Jr, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Steve Carrell get to show off their voice acting. Awkwafina, Blunt, Clooney, Cooper, et al, don’t really add much so I hope they didn’t cost much. Ryan Reynolds and John Krasinski play Ryan Reynolds and John Krasinski, which works for their parts. But the real star is Cailey Fleming, who seamlessly floats between wanting to grow up and needing to be a kid. Her emotional range is beyond her years and beyond what you see in most kids’ movies. I’ve watched it twice on an airplane, once with my wife and then with my son, and enjoyed it both times. Of course, then I get home and see it’s only 50% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Don’t have anything new or exciting today as we’re already over 2500 words, but we haven’t revisited Monster Hunter in a while.

Below is our history of Monster Hunter songs:

It looks like I even accidentally broke my rule and played a song from a game twice in one year. However, technically, Seregios and Shagaru Magala are from different games in the series, so I guess I didn’t.

We’ll go with Golden Reminiscence, the theme for the Kechawacha.