Around the Kingdom: Yordano Ventura, Butler, Charles, Commings
By John Viril
The Royals won their 3rd straight game in a 14-inning marathon against the Cleveland Indians that KC won 2-1 on Nori Aoki‘s RBI single to right. After losing 20 of their first 30 1-run games, the Royals have won 2 1-run games in a row.
While the 3-game winning streak is nice, the offense still needs to step up if they expect to sustain a 2nd half run.
Ultimately, the Royals need to add a bat to really expect to change their offensive performance.
Training camp opened Thursday for the Kansas City Chiefs. Both Jamaal Charles, who just inked a new contract, and potential holdout Justin Houston showed up for work. That is certainly good news, but the Chiefs still need to resolve Houston and Smith’s contract situations.
The long-rumored signing of Andrew Wiggins occurred yesterday, the contact will pay him $5.5 million next season. Cleveland will have to wait 30 days to deal Wiggins by league rule.
- Kings of Kauffman – Hunter Samuels wonders why Yordano Ventura isn’t piling up strikeouts
- Royals Review – What happened to Billy Butler‘s plate discipline:
"Over the 2014 season, Butler has seen 3.65 pitches per PA. The average AL hitter sees around 3.86 pitches per PA in 2014. Butler has seen about 82 fewer pitches over 402 PA than the aveSo on Wednesday night, the Tigers did what contending teams with bullpen issues do; they paid through the nose — giving up Double-A starter Jake Thomspon and rookie reliever Corey Knebel — to get an experienced, high-quality closer, acquiring Joakim Soria from the Rangers.rage AL hitter. From 2009 to 2013, Butler saw 3.8 pitches per PA. So Butler has seen 63 fewer pitches overall than he would have under 09-13 rates of patience."
- Fangraphs.com – Tigers acquire ex-Royal Joakim Soria:
"So, yes, Soria might only throw a handful of postseason innings, and reliever performance is volatile enough that perhaps he won’t end up making significant difference for the Tigers. In that case, they’ll have just punted one of their best pitching prospects and a power arm who might have been a useful reliever himself. Certainly, this is the kind of deal that could easily backfire, and the Tigers may very well regret this deal in the long run.But they made this because of the potential for an Uehara-style impact. Uehara’s dominance over a very large workload was one of the primary reasons the Red Sox won the World Series last year, and despite their diminished importance in the regular season, relievers can matter an awful lot in the postseason."
- Arrowhead Pride – Sanders Commings, a player many have speculated could be a solution at safety, sits out first practice:
"Reid calls just about everything a “strain” or a “contusion” so we have no idea what this injury really is. Commings did not play last year (outside of a few snaps in one game) and the Chiefs are counting on him to play this year so any missed time has to be frustrating, especially since the Chiefs already have a new possible starter at safety in Husain Abdullah."
- Arrowhead Addict – Jamaal Charles says he wants to make the Hall of Fame:
"What makes it great is Charles can back it up. No other running back in NFL history has rushed for more yards per carry than Jamaal Charles give his workload. The only running back close to his production is Jim Brown, who is almost a full half-yard behind Charles in his average yards per carry."
- SportingKC.com – 2014 CONCACAF Women’s Championship coming to Sporting Park:
"Sporting Park will host the opening four matches in the 2014 CONCACAF Women’s Championship on Oct. 15 and 16, U.S. Soccer announced on Thursday.“This tournament provides fans with another opportunity to see some of the best women’s soccer players in the world compete on the international level,” said U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati"
There you have it KC fans—the news Around the Kingdom.