Chris Higgins at the Star writes about the biggest unanswered questions from the downtown ballpark presentation.
Brooks Sherman, president of real estate and development for the Royals, said on Thursday that master planning for the ballpark district is getting started now as the team looks to hire a master planner. “Right now our focus is on the stadium,” he said.
Sherman said there have been no decisions about any demolitions in Crown Center and that there are great tenants already on site whom officials
look to keep and add to.
Jared Bush at Fox4 has more.
“That’s when we begin to look at the entirety of the rest of the district to understand what kind of buildings we would have, an entertainment venue, the retail, the food and beverage and so forth, so there have been no decisions about any destruction on any building.”
Sherman said there are a lot of great tenants at Crown Center, and they want to keep all of them. One of those, just north of 25th Street and the Hallmark-owned Kaleidoscope, is the Sea Life Aquarium. That entity told us to reach out to Hallmark about demolition.
“The development will reimagine Crown Center and revitalize the city’s original live-work-play neighborhood while strengthening our business community and creating new opportunities,” one of the spokespeople for Hallmark said. “We remain in the early phases of planning the district beyond the ballpark. We are committed to maintaining open communication with our tenants and business partners as plans progress.”
Philip Ruo at Royals Keep has thoughts on Randy Dobnak.
Dobnak excelled in limiting hitters to a 3.7% barrel rate and inducing ground balls at a 51.2% rate. While this is a good recipe for limiting home runs and extra-base hits, Dobnak struggled with striking out batters, and batters were too easily able to make contact off him. One of Dobnak’s biggest weaknesses was his inability to miss bats. Hitters made contact on 91% of their swings at pitches in the strike zone (league worst), leaving him heavily reliant on his defense to record outs. His 4.22 FIP, more than a run higher than his ERA, suggests his results could be difficult to sustain.
David Laurila at Fangraphs talks to Tyler Tolbert about his improving bat.
“I’m just continuing to get better,” said Tolbert, whose .246 batting average and .693 OPS while coming up through the Royals system didn’t exactly portend his recent level of success. “Each season you just try to find what works for you, and try to get into a groove. I’ve had good hitting years and I’ve had average hitting years. I don’t really chase numbers, though. I just trust my routine and my process. If you’re focusing on the process, the numbers are going to be the numbers.”
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