At The Star, Jaylon Thompson writes that the Royals could have 4 infield Gold Glove finalists
:This season, the Royals have four infielders with a top-3 SDI rating — according to the latest August update.
Vinnie Pasquantino (3.7 SDI rating) is third among AL first basemen. He sits behind Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (4.6) and Christian Walker (4.5).
Michael Massey (2.8 SDI rating) is also third among AL second basemen. He trails Cole Young (3.8) and Zach McKinstry (2.9).
At shortstop, Bobby Witt Jr. leads
all eligible AL players. He owns an 8.4 SDI rating and is ahead of Taylor Walls (6.7) and José Caballero (5.3).
Lastly, Nick Loftin (3.0 SDI) is a distinct second behind Caleb Durbin (8.8) at third base. He still has a good chance to be Gold Glove finalist based on his play and eligibility.
The Royals with a flurry of minor roster moves yesterday:
At Yahoo, Carter Jensen is quoted in a Yahoo story by Russell Dorsey about teams calling pitches from the dugout:
“I think there’s a trust factor that comes with calling a game,” Kansas City Royals catcher Carter Jensen said. “As a catcher, you try to gain the trust of your manager, the pitching coaches and then, obviously, the trust of the pitching staff.”
Listicle? ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel updated his farm system rankings:
- Kansas City Royals: $312.7 million
Quality depth rank: T-17
Previous rank: 24Carter Jensen is the notable graduate, and of the top 13 prospects in the system that’s Justin Lamkin, a 2025 draftee, is the only one in the upper minors. The last wave of prospects either stalled out or reached the big leagues, and now the next group is made up mostly of players from the past two drafts and international signing classes.
It’s a dead heat between Angeibel Gomez, Josh Hammond and Kendry Chourio as the biggest potential impact types from this group. Keep an eye on 2026 second-rounder Jack Slightom, a spring popup arm with midrotation upside.
Blog Time!
At Royals Keep, Kevin O’Brien asks “Should Randy Dobnak Be Part of the Royals’ Plans in 2027?”
The 31-year-old righty has definitely benefited from a high LOB%, which explains why his xERA of 4.92 is so much higher than his actual 2.29 ERA. That said, he’s struck out more batters than Noah Cameron (6.83 K/9), Lugo (6.75 K/9), and Wacha (5.55 K/9) this month, and his 54% GB% also leads the five-pitcher sample from above.
When looking at his Statcast percentile, Dobank ranks below average in many categories, which dampens his overall profile. However, he’s been effective in three important categories: O-Swing% (chase), barrel%, and GB% (groundball percentage).
The Statcast profile may underwhelm those who haven’t been paying attention to Dobnak or the Royals in general this season. However, Dobnak arguably has a better Statcast profile than veteran Lugo, who lags behind Dobnak this year in barrel%, O-Swing%, and GB%.
Also at Royals Keep, Yirsandy Rodriguez looks at Jac’s improvement this season:
Caglianone is being more aggressive against pitches inside and outside the strike zone, and the results have been revealing: that extreme aggressiveness is accompanied by much more contact in this second half of the season. As you can see, his swing rate in the zone had already increased in the first half of this season compared to his 2025 metrics. The difference was contact, with a similar loss both inside and outside the zone. What comes next is even more absurd, as Caglianone has solved that reduction in contact with much more aggressiveness instead of trying to be more selective. This, obviously, is the starting point for getting to the best part of the adjustment. As you would expect, a more expansive swing is going to put many more balls in play. But, at the same time, aggressive hitters also end up reducing a large part of their quality of contact.
Blog Roundup (including some older stories that I don’t think have been linked to):
- Darin Watson at U.L.’s Toothpick: This Date In Royals History–1976 Edition: August 27 – The Royals again fall behind early, but this time they keep falling further behind
- Caleb Moody at KOK: Tony Gonsolin just made perfect first impression in bid for MLB comeback with Royals
- Jacob Milham at KOK: Why Royals’ Jac Caglianone should crash the AL Silver Slugger conversation ahead of schedule
- Preston Farr at Eight One Six: The Most Underrated Pitching Season in the Minors?
- Patrick Glancy at Powder Blue Nostalgia: The Stretch Run
- Jeff Wayman at The Diamond Chronicles: Break up the Royals
- Brian Sparks at Kansas City Royals on SI: Randy Dobnak Is Giving the Royals Something to Think About for 2027
With Royals news a little scant, how about a couple of MLB stories from around the league?
At Fangraphs, Ben Clemens waxes poetic about 12-6 curvesand has a gif of Drew Anderson making Jac look foolish with one.
We’ve talked a lot about the Royals stadium, of course. Yesterday, the Tampa City Council voted 4-3 to approve money for the Rays:
City officials on Thursday approved a $2.3 billion deal for a new Tampa Bay Rays ballpark funded by public and private money. The 4-3 vote by the Tampa City Council came three months after a tentative agreement was reached for a stadium, which would include $967 million in tax money.
(Ed note: Forgive me if this has been linked to – this story is a week old but I didn’t see it on here yet) I’ve written a bit on this site about baseball cards. Bradford, of course, has written much, much, much, much, much more (and this is not even a full listing). I found this article by David Schoenfield an interesting visualization of the current state of the industry and Shohei Ohtani cards. It really is taking on a gambling-esque quality, like so many other walks of life. Sadly, that means it’s most approachable to speculators and not kids you’re trying to draw into the sport.
Speaking of the Dodgers: Hey, everyone! Feel sorry for Los Angeles and their strategy of signing 10 pitchers with injury troubles when a number of their pitchers have injury troubles. If they wanted to sign 5 pitchers with injury risk/high upside and try to get lucky and roll that into the playoffs, great. But a team like the Royals can’t just go bulk injury risk/high upside – they don’t have enough money to take that risk. Whereas the Dodgers look “smart” for doing that. But it’s not really “smart” so much as being able to leverage massive resources that most other teams can’t.
MLB put out another labor proposal yesterday. It’s amusing how the headlines are representative of their respective outlets:
- Jesse Rogers at ESPN: MLB pitches free agent frenzy period similar to NFL, NBA
- Ronald Blum at AP: MLB proposes limiting free agent signings to a few weeks in December and then from February on
- Karl Anderson at Yahoo: MLB reportedly proposing plan to shorten offseason free agency window to 2-3 weeks; MLBPA says proposal would ‘eliminate player rights’
- Bob Nightengale at USA Today: MLB makes radical proposal on free agency as lockout looms
- Mark Feinsand at MLB: MLB’s latest CBA proposal aims to create more roster stability
If you want to burn a lot of time on a not-entirely-realistic-but-fun lockout simulator, I definitely spent too much time playing lockout2027 yesterday and not enough time writing Rumblings.
Finally, we’ll end with a fun behind-the-scenes video posted yesterday (h/t to Minda):
My birthday was in the last couple of weeks and I’ve always loved this Simpsons clip:
I used to love doing this, though it feels a lot more difficult than in the past. I originally had the line “If you read the rest of this in Lewis Black’s voice, I can’t blame you”. But I’m not trying to make this some Lewis Black-esque old-man-yells-at-cloud. When he does it, it’s funny. When I do it, I imagine it gets tired fast. I’m aiming more for nostalgia and a retrospective than anything, though it will also be snarky.
Let’s take a look at my email birthday wishes this year.
Dentist – Happy Birthday greetings. Sure, we’re collecting data, but it’s PHI and protected by HIPAA (not HIPPA). In the past, I’ve gotten things like “Don’t eat too many sugary sweets” or “Have you scheduled your appointment?”. This seems perfectly benign and welcome. My current Eye Doctor sent the same thing.
(Former) Eye Doctor – Even though I’ve tried to unsubscribe many times, they still email me incessantly. They offered me $25 off glasses. Considering I have always had Transitions, added blue light filters a few years ago, and now am progressive-lens-years-old, $25 doesn’t move the needle a lot. I don’t think I have paid under $200 for glasses in years at an eye doctor. Of course, there’s a reason for that. Well, except when I get glasses from Zenni (mercifully).
Club Nintendo gave me 300 free points. That’s about halfway towards a physical reward, so it’s welcome. We’ll see more from Nintendo below as we go back in my email history.
Team USA Soccer gave me 200 points, too. I don’t remember signing up for them. Probably part of all the World Cup mailing lists. Let’s see what I can do with those. Maybe I can use the FIFA app. Um… uh… time to go find my login that I haven’t used since the World Cup. and… nope. Must be Team USA Soccer app. Nuts to that.
Oh well – this was going to come up eventually. It goes without saying that everyone wants an app. It’s not just enough to give you a coupon to get you into the store so you appreciate the product in an attempt for you to buy more. Now, every company wants way too much data and a way to monetize you. It feels a bit less honest and a bit more one-sided. Before, it was “here’s a freebie and if you like it, you’ll come back for more”. Now it’s “give us all your information and it might be worth it to you”.
Sports – I got a lot of these coupons:
- The Royals sent me a 50% off tickets offer for up to 8 people off regular priced Sunday through Thursday games – that’s a decent deal!
- The Astros sent me a $10 off team store coupon… but there was a $30 minimum purchase
- A couple of other teams just sent me a “it’s your birthday month – buy some tickets”. No discount or anything – just “treat yourself by paying us some money”
- The LA28 Olympics sent me 20% off (most things in) the team store
- Nike gave me 10% off… $100.
Here’s one I didn’t expect: Caesar’s Rewards. I signed up because I stayed at a Caesar’s hotel in Las Vegas last month for NBA Summer League. They gave me a link to make a restaurant reservation. No coupon or nothing – just a “Happy Birthday – buy our stuff!” Same thing with another large hotel chain. Boo.
National Car Rental is kindof fun. They do a little “find they keyfob” game that’s like the “find the baseball” game between innings. No coupon, but it got me 30 seconds of fun. A couple of years ago, they “curated a special selection of birthday music”. It’s not free stuff or a coupon, but it’s better than nothing.
In the end, I took advantage of none of these.
* * * * *
Looking back through old emails – I feel like it just used to be better. But maybe that’s the whole Super Bowl commercials/halftime show phenomenon where we remember the greatest hits of years past but not the other forgettable ones or slogs.
One of my email addresses is old enough to drink (it’s an old Geocities account – kids, ask your parents). Let’s step back through the years and see some highlights and changes through the years.
- 2024: Coldstone gave me a B1G1 coupon; La Madeleine gave me a free bakery treat
- 2023: Coldstone had the B1G1, Benihana hit me with $30 off; Disney Movie Insiders (RIP) gave free points; and Nintendo had a 15% off coupon, but the fine print said it was only for the “Nintendo birthday” section, which was probably a limited selection
- 2022: The Coldstone coupon makes another appearance and… say, whatever happened to that. Now you have to sign up and have an app. That used to be one of my fun birthday treats. One of the nights on my birthday week, we’d go get a couple of ice creams there. I guess I was willing to throw them an old email account but I’m not willing to give them more data and install an app on my phone that will incessantly bug me with notifications. Less business for them, I guess.
- 2021: Dairy Queen also used to give B1G1 coupons and discounts on cake
- 2020 really feels like the dividing line, where enshittification really sped up (in a lot of aspects of life)
- 2019: Free bundt from Nothing Bundt Cakes; free milkshake from Steak ‘n Shake; free tres leches from a local Tex Mex place; 30% off select Nintendo games; Fogo de Chao for $39 and a free dessert
- 2018: Free scoop from Baskin-Robbins; Marble Slab had $5 off a birthday cake; most of the stuff from 2019 was also here
- 2016: “Your baby is almost 1 year old” Similac coupon – yeah, different life stage
- 2015: Included some birthday greatest hits: a $5 Best Buy reward certificate and, oh, man, I remember when StubHub used to give coupons – Yeah, that’s long dead
I could go back further, but you get the idea.
In the past, my wife and I have always tried to stretch out our birthday into a birthday week. We’d get little treats for ourselves. It’d be something like Monday for Baskin Robbins, Tuesday for a bundt cake, Wendesday for a cookie, Thursday for ColdStone, Friday for something else, and then on the weekend, we’d do the official FEAST OF OUR BIRTH. We just haven’t done that as much the last couple of years. Sure, the metabolism is slowing down some. But so are the coupons and, with them, the excuses to go treat ourselves a little bit more than we normally would.
Let’s revisit Scribblenauts for our sotd (2025 for list). Today’s entry is Casual 1:
