Daily Clips
April 19, 2018
LOCAL
Royals unable to keep pace with Jays' bats
April 18, 2018By Keegan Matheson/MLB.com
Ned Yost believed in his bullpen, but it keeps getting worse after Jays sweep Royals
April 18, 2018By Maria Torres/KC Star
Jeremy Guthrie on why Royals' World Series loss made their 2015 title even sweeter
April 18, 2018By Pete Grathoff/KC Star
A Royal Mess: Can Kansas City's abysmal 3-13 start serve them well in the future?
April 19, 2018By Rustin Dodd/The Athletic
MINORS
Born in Delaware, young Blue Rock among Carolina League's offensive leaders
April 18, 2018By Kevin Tresolini/Delaware News Journal
Kansas City Royals All-Star Salvador Perez joining Omaha Storm Chasers on rehab assignment
April 18, 2018By Omaha World-Herald
Second Straight Ninth Inning Rally Comes Up Short
Rocks Attempt Comeback Bid Again in Series Finale
April 18, 2018By Wilmington Blue Rocks
Legends Swept by Crawdads Before Return to Lexington
April 18, 2018By Lexington Legends
NATIONAL
Albies dazzles for the Braves, Pujols and Moustakas are rejuvenated, and more notes from around MLB
April 18, 2018By Ken Rosenthal/The Athletic
Cincinnati Reds fire manager Bryan Price, name Jim Riggleman interim manager
April 19, 2018By John Fay/The Cincinnati Enquirer
Walker to undergo Tommy John surgery
April 18, 2018By Justin Toscano/MLB.com
MLB TRANSACTIONS
April 19, 2018 •.CBSSports.com
LOCAL
Royals unable to keep pace with Jays' bats
April 18, 2018By Keegan Matheson/MLB.com
Wednesday's 15-5 loss to the Blue Jays was the eighth consecutive defeat for the Royals, who get a much-needed off-day Thursday before opening a four-game weekend series in Detroit with a doubleheader on Friday.
Starter Ian Kennedy was off to a hot start in 2018, but he had to battle through his five innings on 106 pitches Wednesday. Kennedy allowed six runs (four earned) on eight hits and three walks while striking out six.
"I was under 80 or 90 percent of my pitches tonight," Kennedy said. "Especially later in the game."
Mike Moustakas got the Royals on the board in the third with an opposite-field double that scored a pair. That extended Moustakas' hitting streak to 10 games, and he continues to be a bright spot in Kansas City' lineup. Over the past 10 games, Moustakas has gone 19-for-43 (.442) with four doubles, four home runs and 11 RBIs.
"He's swinging the bat really well," said manager Ned Yost, "really playing well. I think he's playing great defense, I think he's swinging the bat really well. He's just smoking the ball to all fields, down the third-base line, in the gaps."
The Royals also allowed the Blue Jays to extend their lead in the later innings, something that has plagued their bullpen of late. After giving up a pair of hits on Tuesday, Kevin McCarthy allowed three runs in 1 2/3 innings after taking over for Kennedy.
Justin Grimm then allowed six runs on four hits, including a grand slam to Curtis Granderson. This was the fourth consecutive appearance in which Grimm has allowed multiple runs, and his ERA now sits at 18.90.
"We always like to try to get through the first month before we start making some changes," Yost said. "It definitely hasn't been very pretty."
MOMENTS THAT MATTERED
Costly error: Paulo Orlando was charged with an error on Toronto's go-ahead run in the bottom of the fifth. Randal Grichuk connected on a hard liner to left that got Orlando twisted around as he moved back toward the wall, but the catchable ball bounced off his glove and allowed Yangervis Solarte to score from second base. It also kept the inning alive for Luke Maile, who singled home another unearned run.
Whit and run: Whit Merrifield hit his first home run of the season in the fifth inning, which brought the Royals back to a tie at 4 at the time. Jon Jay singled to right field before Merrifield connected on the 399-foot blast that Statcast™ measured at 103.9 mph off the bat.
"Whit's Whit," Yost said. "Whit's always going to give you a great at-bat."
SOUND SMART
Kansas City's eight-game losing streak is its longest since last April, when the Royals lost nine in a row. They've allowed at least four runs in each of the losses.
HE SAID IT
"Pretty discouraged. When you lose a doubleheader, lose the way we did against the Angels, it's kind of discouraging. We all feel that way. It's not the start we all want." -- Kennedy
UP NEXT
Kansas City will play its second doubleheader of the week on Friday in Detroit, beginning at 12:10 p.m. CT. With four postponements already this season, Yost says that his team is still looking for "traction." Jason Hammel (pitching first and facing Michael Fulmer) and Jakob Junis (facing Daniel Norris) will both look to continue their strong starts in 2018.
Ned Yost believed in his bullpen, but it keeps getting worse after Jays sweep Royals
April 18, 2018By Maria Torres/KC Star
When the Royals opened this thus-far bleak 2018 season on an equally dreary afternoon three weeks ago in Kansas City, one of the many things manager Ned Yost felt hopeful about was his bullpen.
It was a rather rag-tag bunch. A far cry from the days of Greg Holland, Wade Davis and Kelvin Herrera. The group barely even resembled last year’s bullpen, which featured career renaissances from Peter Moylan and Mike Minor and a sharp Scott Alexander. None but Herrera remain.
Yet there were encouraging signs.
During spring training, Rule 5 acquisitions Brad Keller and Burch Smith impressed with powerful fastballs, fellow rookie Tim Hill wielded his submarine delivery in dominating fashion, and late spring addition Justin Grimm provided intrigue with a prodigious curveball.
Yet as Yost sat in his office at the Rogers Centre on early Wednesday afternoon, hours before the Royals were swept out of Toronto by virtue of a 15-5 clobbering by the Blue Jays, that novelty had begun to wear away.
Yost’s relief corps had posted a major-league worst 6.75 ERA in 15 games and squandered sterling performances from the Royals’ starting rotation on five occasions. They also turned manageable deficits into blowout losses to the White Sox, Mariners, Angels and Jays.
“I expected the bullpen to be better,” he said. “That surprised me a little bit, that they’ve struggled to the extent that they’ve struggled.”
He and the Royals tried to remedy part of the situation, shipping Brandon Maurer to Class AAA Omaha in an effort to help the right-hander, who they view as a viable setup arm, regain confidence.
But in the games since that move on April 15, the Royals bullpen has come no closer to a resolution. Keller has fallen into a rut, allowing four hits and six inherited runners to score in his last two outings. Grimm has continued a string of poor outings, during which he’s allowed 11 earned runs. Veteran Blaine Boyer saw his season ERA climb to 25.20 (14 earned runs in five innings).
On Wednesday, they couldn’t take all the blame.
Kennedy, a 33-year-old right-hander in his third year with the Royals, had only allowed two runs in 18 innings spanning his first three starts. He had earned one of the Royals’ precious few victories to begin this 2018 campaign. He was off to his best start since joining the Royals in 2016.
Kennedy fell into an early 1-0 hole against the Blue Jays and never climbed his way out. He wound up being charged with six runs (four earned) in five innings, during which he gave up season highs of eight hits and three walks.
“Just wasn’t sharp,” Kennedy said. “That can sum up everything.”
And the bullpen only exacerbated Kennedy’s situation.
Kevin McCarthy, who was recalled last week in Maurer’s stead, allowed three runs in 1 2/3 innings. Two of them scored when Keller, who was credited a blown save in Game 1 of Tuesday’s doubleheader, allowed a two-out, bases-clearing triple in the seventh inning.
And Grimm recent misfortune reached a climax in the eighth inning. He gave up six runs, including four when Curtis Granderson crushed a hanging curveball for a grand slam.
“He just didn’t have a good outing,” Yost said.
The Royals’ offense, which had only provided four runs of support in his previous outings, tried to get Kennedy back into the game. A two-run double from Mike Moustakas in the third gave the Royals a 2-1 lead, and later Whit Merrifield dumped a two-run homer beyond the wall in left-center field that tied the score at 4-4 in the fifth.
No matter how desperately the Royals tried to claw back into the game, they couldn't. A Jorge Soler home run in the eighth — his first of the year and first since July 1 of last season — went for naught.
“As a whole, we haven’t done a very good job of situational hitting,” Merrifield said. “And that’s something we have to improve on and improve on quickly. I feel like guys are starting to make strides and the at-bats are getting better, so that’s encouraging.
“I think we’re going in the right direction. We’d like to get there sooner than later.”
In the meantime, the Royals coaching staff has invested itself in trying to piece the bullpen back together. Yost suggested, perhaps off the cuff, that pitching coach Cal Eldred was racking up overtime with the amount of work he has done mining video clips for solutions.
For now, this was the end result: A somber clubhouse and players and staff packing up for a trip to Detroit. Mired in an eight-game losing streak that started a week ago in Kauffman Stadium, the Royals (3-13) will head to Comerica Park for four games against the Tigers beginning with a doubleheader Friday.
When they arrive at Comerica Park, they’ll have a 26th man on their roster again, per major-league rules pertaining to doubleheaders. It could feasibly be a bullpen arm — one that might just stick around if the Royals can’t figure out their relievers soon.
“I think Dayton (Moore) and I are always looking, we’re always evaluating,” Yost said. “We always like to try to get through the first month before we start making some changes. It definitely hasn’t been very pretty.
“In terms of making some changes, I don’t know about that.”
Jeremy Guthrie on why Royals' World Series loss made their 2015 title even sweeter
April 18, 2018By Pete Grathoff/KC Star
With his playing days in the rear-view mirror, Jeremy Guthrie has had many speaking engagements.
Guthrie, the former Royals pitcher, usually brings two props with him: the rings he received for being on the 2014 American League championship squad and the 2015 World Series title team.
“I get a chance to speak to a number of youth and kids from our church groups, and inevitably, they ask about the ring, so I usually just bring it and if someone asks, I bring it out for them,” Guthrie said.
“I show them first what you get for being a second-place winner, and they’re pretty in awe of that, and then I can show them for being in first place. It always gets a big rise out of anybody. Baseball fans or not, they’re usually very, very impressed with the amount of bling that comes with winning the World Series.”
That there are two rings is special for Guthrie, but it goes beyond the obvious happiness of owning the jewelry.
The Royals nearly won the World Series in 2014, leaving the tying run 90 feet away in the ninth inning of their Game 7 loss to the Giants. That their dreams were dashed only emboldened the Royals and made the 2015 championship sweeter, Guthrie said.
“The fact that we lost, I think added even more to the experience, to what it meant,” he said. “To get so close and nearly achieve an impossible dream and then against many people’s predictions and thoughts, to do it all over again and get to the top. That for me, I think, adds even to the memory of it all.
"Being able to fight through that and believe in each other, and that’s really what it takes. But not too often do you get to see a team come out of nowhere, get so close and then come right back and do it again. That’s really what I’ll remember most about the group of guys I was fortunate enough to share the field with.”
Guthrie, who will be making his broadcasting debut for the Royals' game Wednesday in Toronto, was also happy that Kansas City was taken on such a fun ride during those two trips to the Fall Classic.
“Being able to show our community that if you keep fighting and you don’t ever give in and even if you come close, you don’t get satisfied. You keep going for the ultimate goal and that’s what we were able to do together.
“The entire experience is one that is unparalleled in many ways for the Royals, especially those who were there an even longer time. ... All those players who came up Royals and were really drafted to an organization that from the outside was struggling and may have appeared to be a long way away from winning. Then to see the transformation occur, not only on a teamwide level, but an organizational level and the community and citywide and regionally, really, just to see that huge transformation happen, I don’t know that anybody can ever forget what those two years felt like and the satisfaction that came in the way we did it.”
A Royal Mess: Can Kansas City's abysmal 3-13 start serve them well in the future?
April 19, 2018By Rustin Dodd/The Athletic
They did not plan this. The baseball men who built the 2018 Royals did not expect their All-Star catcher to hurt himself carrying luggage or the veteran bullpen additions to face-plant in April or the offense to be among the worst in baseball.
They did not anticipate this kind of start or this miserable run of cruel weather or relief collapses or 13 losses in 16 games. Yet if you take a step back, away from the eight-game losing streak and the emotions of today, you’ll notice something strange: The Royals’ season may be playing out in a way that can only help matters.
Some of the club’s most appealing trade assets are off to terrific starts. The most acute struggles have been confined to a small collection of relievers. The on-field results — a 3-13 record after a 15-5 loss (below) to the Blue Jays on Wednesday — could hasten the selling of spare parts and ensure a high pick in the 2019 draft.
This doesn’t help the mood in the clubhouse at the moment, of course. No team aspires to be in last place. The losses take their toll. After Wednesday ‘s loss, a somber clubhouse packed for a four-game series in Detroit, with a day off on Thursday.
“It’s kind of discouraging,” said starter Ian Kennedy (1-2), who yielded four earned runs in five innings. “We all feel that way. It’s not the start we all want.”
It was always going to be difficult. No one disputed that. The club watched Eric Hosmer and Lorenzo Cain walk right before spring training. The front office traded away two of the team’s best relievers (Brooks Pounders and Wade Davis) in December in moves designed to shed salary and bolster the farm system. When spring training began, Royals general manager Dayton Moore said it was hard to envision a .500 record this year.
The club still sought competence, even as it shifted its focus to the future and as it avoided multi-year deals for free agents and counted every dollar of payroll.
They did not envision a 130-loss pace. But then again, they did not envision Salvador Perez missing more than three weeks because of luggage. And they did not think Blaine Boyer, Justin Grimm and Brandon Maurer would all have ERAs that resembled restaurant checks.
They will not be this bad forever, of course, because no team will forever be this bad. But if this year’s goal was to compete at the major-league level while rebuilding the farm system — as Moore said it was this offseason — then at least part of that mission is being served.
Third baseman Mike Moustakas is raking, squashing doubts about his strength and conditioning, and taunting teams that passed on him in free agency. He finished Wednesday’s game batting .348 with four home runs in 16 games. He is owed just $6.5 million on his contract, plus performance bonuses, which could make him among the most coveted position players at the trade deadline.
“He’s just smoking the ball to all fields, down the third-base line, in the gaps,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “He’s just playing really, really well.