I know this isn’t the usual type of thing we start with, but it’s for a good cause:
Denny Matthews is getting married!
Matthews and three “best men” – his brothers Doug, Steve and Mike – will be in Royals jerseys with their names and favorite numbers on the back. Amy and her three best friends/bridesmaids will be as well.
“We didn’t want it to be black tie and formals and have everybody have to get tuxes and pretty dresses,” Matthews said. “If you’re coming to a ballgame, wear what you’d bring to the ballgame … Royals gear, your jersey, your sweatshirt, your T-shirt, whatever you want.”
The cuisine will be familiar, too. Ballpark food will be served as opposed to a [formal] dinner. “It’s a little different from a normal wedding,” Matthews said. “It’s going to be fun.”
There are no official stories today from any sources: MLB.com, KC Star, etc. But there are a couple MLB stories of note.
Of course, World Series Game Six is tonight at 7 pm Royals time.
The Washington Nationals hired the youngest manager since 1972, 33-year-old Blake Butera. Yes, I only posted this story so I could post this Tweet:
And this mane (how does his hair do that, even after being in a helmet?!?)
At The Athletic ($), Even Drellich is reporting that the MLBPA is banning “prominent player agent Jim Murray of WME Sports for multiple years and fined him for double-dealing with the commissioner’s office during sensitive labor negotiations in 2020”.
Apparently, this is not the first time Murray has done some questionable deeds:
In February 2024, an arbitrator ruled that Murray and another WME Sports agent, Michael Stival, flagrantly breached their contracts when they defected to the upstart WME from Excel, the firm where they made their names. Thirteen Excel players left for WME Sports with Murray and Stival, while several more left for other agencies. “This case is exceptionally egregious,” arbitrator Michael Gottesman wrote in a 70-page ruling obtained by The Athletic. “WME knew full well that Murray and Stival would be breaching their contracts.”
And there’s this:
One of Murray’s former players, Happ, was among the leaders of a mutiny inside the union in 2024, during which some players challenged MLBPA executive director Tony Clark and his second-in-command, deputy director Bruce Meyer.
Blogs?
I know Max posted this link yesterday about Kevin O’Brien ending The Royals Reporter and moving to Royals Keep, but I want to get my two cents in. Yes, I’ve misspelled his name several times (“ie” not “ei”). But there have been many days where he’s had one of the best blog posts and I’ve been happy to feature him here. I hope he continues the good work at his new site.
At Inside the Crown ($), David Lesky gets into the nuts and bolts of pitch selection and chase rate for the pitching staff and the splitter. It’s an interesting read. Here’s a teaser:
Royals pitching was, to put it kindly, a disaster before Brian Sweeney took over. In 2022, they posted a 4.72 ERA, a strikeout rate of 19.1 percent and a walk rate of 9.4 percent. It would be fair to wonder if Sweeney and his crew were worth it when they actually posted a worse ERA in 2023, but there were minimal signs, like the first-pitch strike rate rising from 58 percent to 60.7 percent. That coaching group entered spring with the mantra “raid the zone.” The idea was to throw the ball down the middle and let the movement take over, because not all pitches down the middle get hit, and that’s if the pitch stays in the middle. Their percentage of pitches in the zone, according to Sports Info Solutions, went all the way from 41.2 percent to…41.5 percent. Woof.
But things got better in 2024, as we know. They were in the zone 42.6 percent of the time. First-pitch strikes jumped to 61.6 percent. The numbers were obviously better. The ERA dipped almost a run and a half to 3.76 while strikeouts jumped to 22.3 percent and the walk rate plummeted to 7.9 percent. Progress! It obviously resulted in a trip to the postseason. Some of that was the personnel, but some of that was the philosophy finally seeping into the pitching staff. It was a welcome sight. One thing I noticed during the 2024 run, though, is that they just didn’t get much chase. The same SIS shows that their chase rate in 2024 was 30.5 percent. That was fourth-worst in baseball. It was the same 30.5 percent in 2025, and it was fifth-worst.
It’s not a death sentence for a pitching staff, obviously. The Royals have fared quite well the last two seasons. But I don’t think being able to succeed without getting chase is the norm, particularly because the Royals don’t fare particularly well in terms of “stuff” from their pitchers. Again, it’s worked, and it’s not a problem, but similar to a team that doesn’t hit the ball out of the park, you’re sort of living on the edge and it could blow up at any time. It’s sort of similar to how a strikeout is an out (almost) every time while a batted ball turns into an out about 70 percent of the time.
At U.L.‘s Toothpick, Darin Watson finished up his retropective on the 1985 Royals this week:
- This Date In Royals History–1985 Edition: October 27 – The Kansas City Royals are World Series champions
- This Date In Royals History–1985 Edition: October 28 – It’s parade time for the World Champions
- This Date In Royals History–1985 Edition: October 29 – A few news items from the World Series
Blog Roundup at Fansided:
- Caleb Moody at KOK: 3 key Royals from 2025 who enter the offseason with uncertain roles for 2026
- Jacob Milham at KOK: Royals fans may not have realized this former Opening Day starter recently retired (it’s Frank the Tank)
- Nick Villano at… I’m not sure which Fansided site: All-time Kansas City Royals starting lineup: Greatest players at every position
Last week was the Halloween rant so this isn’t quite as topical, but we’ve got some Halloween music later on.
I have a bookmark folder on Firefox entitled “Royals Review” where I stick stories that I think I could work into OT topics one day. Some of these are never getting made into stories and it’s time to clean them the folder out. Warning: some of them are old. Even if I copied them from here, no one will remember so they’ll be like new again!
Back in April 2017 (yes, some of these links are old enough to be in 3rd grade), ESPN laid off about 100 employees. Seven months later, The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis tracked down some of these employees to see what had happened to them since. Some, like Jayson Stark, are still visible today. I’d be curious where others are now. This, well, this feels even more like the modern internet than it did then:
Last Wednesday, the Tennessee Titans writer Paul Kuharsky was sitting in a sports bar outside Nashville. Two bottles of craft vodka were arranged on either side of him. When Kuharsky started a Periscope Q&A, he made sure to mention the name of the bar. These native ads are hallmarks of Kuharsky’s new gig: The vodka company sponsors his website and the bar is paying him to broadcast there.
(It’s going to be a little weird to start with that and then use 3 stories from ESPN)
Football more your speed? This Jake Trotter story from 2018 details the time that Mike Leach, well, did something you’d kindof expect him to do (I think they did something similar in an episode of Coach):
During pregame warm-ups of that year’s Red River Showdown, an underhanded script outlining OU’s opening offensive plays was spotted on the field by one of Texas’ student assistants, who scooped it up and took it to Longhorns defensive coordinator Carl Reese. To the heavily favored Longhorns, it seemed as if they’d caught an enormous break.
“We were trying to figure out if it was authentic,” Reese said. “We were in this state of, ‘Can we believe this?'”
They shouldn’t have. It was a fake, part of a plot hatched by Leach, the Sooners’ offensive coordinator, and consulted by the Longhorns, who quickly fell behind 17-0 before realizing they’d been duped.
Nerd prank? Kyle Bonagura tells the story about “The day MIT won the Harvard-Yale game”:
There was only one reason he could have received such a strange call: After four years, plans for an elaborate prank he helped design as part of a group of MIT students — to this day willing to identify themselves publicly only as the Sudbury Four — had been put into motion.
The mission: to bury a weather balloon beneath the grass at Harvard Stadium and then inflate it during the middle of the game.
By the time the game was over, he was the one drinking for free.
Back to baseball! In 2021, Ryan Hockensmith wrote about “The incredible story of Ray Caldwell, the MLB pitcher who survived a lightning strike to finish a game”:
Just as he gets set, a flash from the sky explodes down into the middle of the field. Shortstop Ray Chapman feels a surge of electricity go down his leg, and the violence of the lightning strike causes players to dive for the ground. “I took off my mask and threw it as far as I could,” Cleveland catcher Steve O’Neill says later of his metal mask. “I didn’t want it to attract any bolts toward me.”
Five seconds after the bolt hits the ground, everybody looks around. The eight Indians position players are OK, but their newest teammate is not. Caldwell is on his back, arms spread wide, out cold on the mound. The lightning strike had hit him directly.
Without looking: Guess the last time there was a forfeit in an MLB game. Anthony Castrovince wrote about it. I’ll just post the link so there are no spoilers before you make your guess.
Anyone remember the time Steph Curry joked(?) about the moon landing being faked? NASA offered him a chance to visit:
“We’d love for Mr. Curry to tour the lunar lab … perhaps the next time the Warriors are in town to play the Rockets,” NASA spokesman Allard Beutel told the Times. “We have hundreds of pounds of moon rocks stored there, and the Apollo mission control. During his visit, he can see firsthand what we did 50 years ago, as well as what we’re doing now to go back to the moon in the coming years, but this time to stay.”
Finally, I have links to 2 Royals games on Baseball-Reference. Only, I have no idea why. I didn’t go to either game and I’m not sure what’s special about them. Any ideas?
- May 2, 2000 – The 13-14 Royals beat the 13-14 Athletics in the 10th inning; the A’s score 2 in the top of the inning but a Mark Quinn homer and Carlos Febles walkoff single carry the day
- May 11, 2005 – The Royals fall to 8-26 after Ambiorix Burgos up 5 in the bottom of the 8th; the Royals had rallied to take a 9-7 lead on home runs by Matt Stairs and Emil Brown in the 7th but could not hold on
Hey! That was fun and cleansing. Maybe we’ll do that again another day.
I’m sure someone has used this as SotD on this site before. But I doubt anyone has done the Guitar Hero (3) version:
