Who’s hotter than the Royals? No one!
Anne Rogers writes that Bobby Witt Jr. has played his 500th game with the Royals.
In the grand scheme of things, maybe 500 doesn’t seem like a huge number. After all, Witt didn’t even know about the milestone on Tuesday until Royals PR director Nick Kappel gave him a heads up that some reporters wanted to ask him about it pregame.
“I guess time flies when you’re having fun,” Witt said. “I just always want to be out there for the team. It’s just a number, but it’s a special number. And you want to keep adding them each and every day.”
And he’s only the 24th player since 1969 to have 1,000 total bases in his first 500 games.
David Lesky writes about Noah Cameron’s impressive MLB debut.
I would have loved to have seen more whiffs and I’d have loved to have seen him get more chases out of the zone. I will get to that. But first, I did love a lot about this outing. For one, he wasn’t afraid to come at Rays hitters, throwing 54.4 percent of his 79 pitches in the zone. Pitchers need to have a healthy fear of opposing hitters, but those that are afraid of the zone are the ones that fail. If you’re wondering where 54.4 percent ranks in the league, coming into play last night, the Rays were the only team to throw it in the zone more. Only three teams – the Rays, Pirates and Cubs – have starters who throw it in the zone more than Cameron did last night.
Craig Brown also heaps praise on the rookie.
Jaylon Thompson also writes about Cameron’s no-hit bid.
Cameron became the 14th MLB pitcher (since 1901) to throw 6 1/3 scoreless innings or more while allowing one hit or fewer in his debut. He now owns the longest no-hit bid by a Royal in an MLB debut.
“It’s everything and more,” Cameron said. “You know, it’s expected to be amazing and it always just outshines everything you can think of. It’s good to get it out of the way and kind of move forward from here. I’m never going to forget it.”
He also takes questions in a mailbag column with a question about the offense.
I do think that Drew Waters has shown real improvement. He has taken the opportunity afforded to him and run with it. Waters owns a .281 batting average in 17 games since arriving from Triple-A Omaha. Waters has talked about being selective at the plate. He is working counts and taking advantage of mistake pitches. Some guys take time to develop and Waters has a lot of tools that are slowly revealing themselves.
As for Kyle Isbel, he continues to perform well in his role. There are no concerns as he provides solid defense and can flip the lineup over.
In totality, the Royals need more from their offense. It’s more mix and match right now with several players trying to define a role. Until that happens, the Royals outfield will continue to be a talking point.
Kevin O’Brien at Royals Repoter looks at Michael Massey’s struggles.
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