Royals Improve in Standings Despite Uneven Week

Intro Welcome back to Royals Weekly, I am your host Marcus Meade and joining me as always, part -time doorman at the Pink Pony Club, my brother Mike! The old pink pony club, I don't I don't get the reference is that is that a specific no, okay. Hi All of our listeners understand this reference because they're not stuck in their own little bubble. Pink Pony Club is the title of a song from Chapel Rowan that's blown up over the course of the last few months. No? Okay. Yeah, exactly. What's funny, Chapel Rowan is like the biggest pop star in the world right now. And she's from, she's from Missouri, right? Yeah. And you have no clue who this is. That's what I find hilarious. it. I got to get on something that I got to figure it out. I live with Riggs. And so that's how I know who she is, right? Like Riggs is on top of the new fangled music. I mean, she is, I'm talking like biggest new thing, like the biggest new thing, you know? But anyway, for all of you who know, you know that Chappellrone does nothing but bangers. I saw Tucker, what's his last name? I'm blanking on his last name. Yeah, put out a thing about Chappellrone on Twitter the other day talking about you. She puts out nothing but bangers and he is right. She does put out a ton of bangers. But anyway, that's enough for our music criticism. Let's talk about baseball. On this week's episode, we're breaking down a fairly tame week from the Royals because they only played like five games this week. And then we're discussing what the Royals will need to compete with the tough teams that they have coming up on their schedule. And then we'll preview this next week's slate of games. But first, we want to remind you, go out and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts, go out and subscribe to the Royals Weekly Substack. We're putting out a bunch of content through there. We had a good episode this last week. talked a little bit about, Mike, what did we talk about in our last episode? My brain is mush. new trade people that we got. Was that it? Or was that? yeah. is the number of it was number innings the starters had pitched. We talked about that. Yeah. in his starters pitch. We talked about the farm system in some interesting ways. A couple of people who have done some interesting things lately. So yeah, make sure you're subscribed to the Royals Weekly Substack. Make sure you're leaving a comment on Apple Podcasts. We haven't had a comment on there in a while. We'd love to hear what you have to say, even if it's negative. We take negative criticism very well. So yeah, just let us know by reaching out to us, leaving comments and giving us likes and stuff. We also want to remind you that BetOnline is the world's most trusted betting platform and your number one source for everything online sports betting. Not number two, number one. Right now you can receive a 50 % free bet of up to $250 on your first deposit to bet on anything from the Olympics, although that's over now, so you can't bet on that anymore. Baseball to Formula One racing. Bet online has every stat, every matchup, and even live odds and spreads while the games are being played. When the games are over, head on over to their online casino and get in on a game of Blackjack or a game of Pope, Coke, or unwind on one of their over 150 slot games. Head over to the website today to get on the action. Use the promo code BELIEVE, that's B -L -E -A -V, for your 50 % fee free bet credit on your first deposit up to $250. Bet online, the game starts here. We'll start the review of last week with roster news. Weekly Review There wasn't much, but there was kind of one important bit of roster news we need to talk about. Hunter Harvey was placed on the 15 day IL retroactive to August 7th with mid back tightness. Also Michael Massey scratched from a lineup with some back tightness as well. Back tightness was a real thing this week. It was like a theme of the injury news. Mike, so Hunter Harvey is going to be down for a little bit. Carlos Fernandez was recalled to replace him. What are your thoughts on seeing Hunter Harvey go down and Carlos Fernandez come up? Well, it sucks to see because, you know, Harvey's who you traded for. He's somebody you expect a lot out of. although he has not been great since he got here, I think he's still probably been better than Carlos Hernandez can be. So, you know, that sucks. My hope is that as he's coming back off of this, he does something to get maybe a little bit more feel for the split finger or something to locate his secondary pitches a little bit better, stuff like that. Things maybe he can improve a little bit. Or maybe it's just get your head right before you come back and pitching the bullpen again. you know, take the time you need, get better, and hopefully we can cover over Carlos Hernandez or he can give us something small. I don't know. I don't have a lot of faith in him anymore. Yeah, that's my thoughts exactly. It's not ideal to see one of your big bullpen trade acquisitions go down to the IL, you know, but you know, this is the downside of trades at the deadline. I kept warning people like, hey, guess what? Not every trade you make at the deadline is going to hit. Some guys going to get hurt. Some guys going to perform like they can't all be bangers. Everybody was talking about like, if we trade for somebody, obviously they're going to give us their 100th percentile performance for the rest of the year. It's like, Quit dreaming, quit living in fantasy land. This isn't MLB the show, you like you have to think realistically. And so the idea that Harvey would go down, he hasn't been exactly what we wanted to be so far. He's now hurt. That's all like bad outcome. I hope like you do that this time down in some way refreshes him. Maybe he gives him a little bit of a break for his arm. I know it's mid back tightness and they'll do treatment on that, but a few days not throwing certainly won't do damage to his arm. And so he gets a little bit of a rest in that sense and maybe he gets a chance to work on some stuff coming back. that might help them out a little bit. We do always have to wonder, I always wonder about stuff like this. I went, especially when they're like, it's mid back tightness. When it's like these really kind of, you know, I'm like, is this, is this, is this the shadow IL that we're seeing right here? Are they putting them on the ship? Right. So, so there is this notion and it does happen where teams put guys on the IL, not because they're hurt, but for other reasons. They want to give them a rest. They want to work on something that is a possibility. Is it 100 % the case that it's happening here? No, we have no indication that that's what's happening here. But it would, you know, we're just saying if that is what's happening here, he has a chance to work on some stuff, which isn't a bad thing. On the field last week, it was weird because every once in a while the Royals have this week where they're like, we're only gonna play five games, we're gonna have two off days this week. And that's what happened this week. There was this three game series against the Red Sox that was really important and a two -gamer against the Cardinals. They got off days in between and after, and it was just like a lot of not playing baseball this week. But somehow things look better today than they did a week ago, mostly because the Guardians and Red Sox have been losing. quite a bit this week, even though the Red Sox took those series with the Royals, they've done a lot of losing other than that this week. And so the Royals have actually gained ground in the AL Central and in the wild card standings. They're now up three games in the wild card standings, and I believe they're back four games in the AL Central. So things look pretty bleak for the Royals after they dropped the two of three from the Red Sox earlier last week, but they managed to grab a split from the Cardinals. So that helped a little. Mike, how are you feeling about the action that took place on the field last Still a little disappointed that the bullpen hasn't taken a bigger step forward yet. We saw complete bullpen meltdown in the Red Sox series, then we saw it again in one in the first game when the game is still close and the bullpen just lets it go. I mean, in that first Cardinals game and so a little bit disappointed that we didn't see a step forward. Not that we haven't seen some things from from Ersig. He's been very good. We did see him go over like a pitching inning and a third to get a save the other day, I think. Yeah. So, you know, there's there's been some things that you like. It's just the bullpen's still way too volatile, still way too too likely to give up a game. Yeah, that's sort of what the theme that's why we've been talking about the bullpen so much lately is it seems to be the thing that is really holding this team back. That whole Red Sox series, though, kind of put a sour taste in my mouth because the play generally was pretty sloppy. The Royals didn't play great defense during that series. Michael Massey had a couple really key errors. One of them was maybe wasn't an error. I don't know if they counted as that was at least a mental mistake. And then he did have a. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. my gosh. literal error in game one of that Red Sox series that cost him a couple of runs. And so, you know, the play itself was not tremendous. There was some mistakes made in this Cardinals series too, honestly. And so, you know, it wasn't a real crisp week of play from the Royals. They managed to get two wins out of it, which is, you know, salvaging something. But after that Red Sox series, I was starting to think, man, this is not good because, you know, they're going to have trouble if they can't beat teams like the Red Sox and Cardinals. You know what I'm saying? We'll see as they get into the tougher stretch of the schedule here, was not tremendous. I didn't come out of this week thinking, they're definitely going to make the playoffs or anything like that. They did have some strong performers this week, though. I mean, especially because the offense did some nice things. Mike, what who did you choose for the strong performer this week? I went with Kyle Isbell, one of the guys you often put in there pretty much every chance you can. So scooped him up before you could put him in there. First I look at his stats and I think, it plausible for me to put Kyle Isbell in here? Cause I love him so much. Then I consider the others, okay? everybody else on the team. Probably would Junior. So I Kyle Isabel. There we go. Five for 15 this week with five runs, two triples, two RBIs, two walks, just one strike out and one stolen base. He seemed like he was kind of always in the middle of the rallies that the Royals were having this week when they had them. And, you know, the triples were big, the walk, you know, I think he's five runs every time he got on base, basically scored. So Yeah, if he can continue to be an offensive contributor, that sets up a lot of big things at the bottom of the lineup. Well, really to turn the lineup over to get Bobby Jr. and Vinny Pasquantino and guys like that bringing him in. I think and I'm going to talk a little bit more about this later. I think he and a couple other people are key in getting more consistency within this office. Yeah, he getting those guys at the bottom of the lineup on base is such a huge advantage when you have a Bobby way, Jr. hitting second, when you have any passing to know hitting third, that would have perissing fourth and things like that. Like if you can get Isbell and Garcia, who have been really their eight, nine tandem, that's really worked out well. If you can get those guys on base, man, it opens up possibilities. And, you know, he did a great job this week and has really sort of. his offensive profile in a way that I think is really interesting and gives him a chance to be an everyday player basically for the Royals. here's the thing, I didn't think he actually had. He had good plate appearances, but I thought at times this week he was just pounding the ball on the ground and it was like, man, you know, but then he comes up and boom, there's one off the wall. You're like, okay, so it felt a little inconsistent even and he ended up with great numbers and being, you know, scoring some important runs. Yeah, another guy who did pretty well offensively for the Royals this week, MJ Melendez, he went five for 13, one double, three walks and only one strikeout. And that strikeout number is always gonna be hugely important for Melendez. If he's putting the ball in play, he'll be fine, right? Like if he's putting the ball in play, they will fall, cause he does hit the ball very hard. Like when Melendez makes contact, it is hard. And if they're hard, it's gonna find a place to get down at some point. And so we were wondering. What would MJ be like coming off the injury that he came off of? I think in late July, July 28th, I think was when he was activated. I was looking up his numbers because I wrote about him for the Substack Post today, honestly. He's got a 113 weighted runs created plus since coming off the IL. Pretty good. Not terrible, knocking the rust off, you know? And that's on the back of like a 140 batting average on balls and play. The thing that impressed me is that his strikeout percentage is really low since coming off the IL. He's finding a way to avoid doing the things that were causing him to strike out in the past. And that was mostly chasing high fastballs and not being able to touch them. And so if he can continue to be in this place where he lays off those high fastballs, where he doesn't strike out a ton, where, you know, if his strikeout rate is in the teens in any way, look out, MJ Melendez is going to be an extremely valuable player. And so far in the last month or so, it's been roughly in the teens, low 20s. And so I'm very interested to see what Melendez will do for the rest of this stretch. We're gonna talk a little bit moving forward about what the Royals have to do to compete against good teams. And I think MJ Melendez might be a pretty important part of it. Not everybody had their highlight week this week. Mike, who was your week performer for the Hunter Renfro, I don't know if there could have been a weaker performer, but because he went 0 for 16, he didn't get a hit. He played in every game, played in every game, did not record a hit. Yeah. And so it was six strikeouts and no walks. He wasn't even on base at all. So, yeah, Hunter Renfro. Bad week has been OK, has made some adjustments that you and I have liked and talked about, but it wasn't it wasn't his week. It was not his week. I actually I went and looked at his numbers too on the year because I got into a back and forth a while back with Alex Duvall, who's friend of the show, good friend of Mike and I's about Hunter Renfro and Renfro, his assertion that Renfro has been exactly what they signed him to be and a good value. And I'm like, I don't think he has been like, I mean, I'm really grateful he's turned some things around. I think that's going to help the Royals. But he has been worth you how much guess how much F war Hunter Renfro has been worth this year, Mike. Well, I looked at Vinny's today. His was, I know that was B -War, but his was almost exactly one. So my comparison will be 0 .7. Lower. F4. Lower. 0 .2 F4, minus 0 .1. on the season He has been worth point one F for now. They paid him about eight and a half million dollars, right? Which is about which is worth about one F for right? And so if he makes it to what to one war one F for I'll say hey Hey, worth the money valuable. That's really but I don't think he's yet anywhere near that honestly and so we'll see hopefully he picks it up, but The thing that is just crazy to me about Hunter Infra is there are still people out there who argue and they will talk about on the broadcast that he is a great outfielder and it's like. outfit. That's the thing that's killing his F -war actually. He's actually, he's not quite a league average hitter, but he's close on the season. His defense is horrible. Like it's bad. And that's by, that's by fan graphs as measurements. That's by baseball savants measurements. You can watch him and see the fact that he can't get to a lot of balls. If you know what you're looking for. three to his left. He can't go outside either of those. Three steps right, three steps left. That's it. And yes, he's got a good arm. That's worth it once a week, maybe. is worth it every once in a while, but you know, my performer this week is a guy Mike likes to give me a lot of crap for. So I just thought I would preempt him and then put his name down as a weak performer. And that is an hell's Zerpa. He pitched very poorly this week. Up to this point in the season, I would say up to this week, he has been one of the only guys who's been in the bullpen the whole season who you would say, hey, he's been OK. He's been all right. Has he been great? No, but he's been OK throughout the entirety of season this week. Not the case. That was not the case. He pitched in two games. He got a grand total of two outs in those two games. He gave up eight hits, six earned runs, two home runs, two walks, just the one strikeout. It was not good. He was not getting generating round balls. He was not. He was not staying in the strike zone the way he needed to. Everything was down the middle. If it wasn't the strike zone, the command was bad. The pitch quality was bad. And, you know, Serpa doesn't have an elite arsenal, but it's not. garbage and so but it looked like garbage this week and so hopefully he can turn that around because boy do they need bullpen help in a bad way. All right, Mike, with such a weird week, what are you going with? You got a weird theme for us? Or what's the theme here? Well, you're reading going, man, that's weird. That's some weird stuff because I don't get it I can't make the connection. OK, but I had to go with it because. Do you read it? You get it? OK. So this is kind of this is a weird week because the Royals didn't have a winning week, but their situation improved and it got me thinking about like, where else in life would does that happen? And actually it happens in the professional world all the time. All the time. who don't really give you any value, they get promoted, like, because they've been there the longest or they're related to somebody or friends with somebody. It happens all the time. We've all seen that, right? But it drew me to an episode of Seinfeld where I think it's called the Camo, if I remember the name of the episode right. And Elaine is running the catalog and she promotes this guy because she just doesn't like him and doesn't want to be around him. Right. And then people get mad about it. Jerry Seinfeld says, well, if it's that bad, maybe he's in line for another promotion. And so like, that's what I'm thinking of. Like the Reals didn't play great this week. I mean, they fumbled it around that Red Sox series, but it got better for them. Yeah, we'll take it. I'll take I'll take luck over skill any day. Yeah, nobody likes, everybody likes money for nothing. know, like that's what I should, now thinking I should have gone with dire straits, money for nothing and chicks for free. That's exactly what we're doing this week, right? It's money for nothing and chicks for free, you know? Which to be clear, chicks should always be free. You shouldn't be paying for that, it's really. But anyway, I digress. Don't do drugs, kids. My theme this week is also coming from a great comedian. My great comedian is a man named James Acaster, who I've talked about before on the show. And I was thinking along similar lines, Mike. I was thinking about like the theme of like getting help from others, which is what happened this week for the Royals. And James Acaster does this bit about he's a British comedian and he's a very staunch. What's the anti -Brexit person? So he was like very much for staying in the EU for Britain. And he does this hilarious bit. where he talks about the stupidity of Brexit. And he's talking, he's like essentially playing the character of Great Britain or the UK, I guess. And he's like, keeps going, we need us, you need us more than we need you. You need us more than we need you. And he constantly kind of like falling to the ground as he's saying it. And he just keeps saying it, you need us more than we need you. And then he's all the way down to the ground and he's like, help us. Because that's what Britain, the UK essentially did. They kept being like, the whole campaign was you need us more than we need you. And then. when the deal came down and they were left and they were then Britain was like, wait, help us. And there's the same thing is true here. We're like, help us. We lost to the Red Sox. Help us. Yeah, no kidding. You know, it reminds me of reminds me a few years ago when the chiefs needed the Dolphins to beat the Patriots to get the one seed. Remember that? And everybody was like, yeah, it's magic. Like, these this massive comeback. And all of a sudden now the chiefs are the number one seed. And they end up like, you know, going through the playoffs or whatever. And it's like, holy crap. This is that like we need we need Boston to keep trying real hard to suck. And actually, James Paxton just went down for them, Today, I think today or yesterday. Yeah. So who knows? The Red Sox may not hang on and I'd be fine with that. Royals Weekly is brought to you by Eric Occher of WestUSA Realty. Phoenix has all of our favorite things. Year -round golf, year -round baseball, and Eric Occher of WestUSA Realty. Whether you want to buy your dream retirement home or just stay a while and catch spring training, Eric can help you find the perfect house. We've known him for 30 years and trust him far more than we even trust each other. Sun Tzu once said, trust is the heart of that which will lift and drop you. But you never have a mark, so you'll drop you in just to pick up a cupcake or a piece of candy on the floor. So Sun Tzu, smart man, never met that trash bag right there. That quote is completely fiction. just made that up. does long -term rentals for the snowboard crowd at home sales and purchases for those who want to stay a while longer. Are you a baseball player or parent who needs a place to stay in the Phoenix area? Eric will help you find the perfect spot fast. You want to spend your day shanking golf balls into the great beyond? Eric knows the golf scene like Mike knows how to fill his car with empty water bottles without actually drinking any water. Find Eric online at ericoxure .com if you can figure out how to spell his name. It's E -R -I -C -K. A U X I E R dot com or just shoot him a text at 480 -383 -9745. That's 480 -383 -9745. Even if you're just curious about what he can do for you, he's 100 % no pressure. One of the best people we know. And he kinda looks like Eric Bana if you squint just a little bit. Just a little bit. And he's probably taller than Eric Banda, for sure. Spotlight We are in the proverbial home stretch right now for the Major League regular season. The Royals have 44 games remaining to solidify a playoff spot and set the fan base up for a disappointing first round exit. That's less than a third of that. I know, I know, it came to my mind. It came to my mind like, hey, will fans be okay if we just make the playoffs and get bounced in the first round? It seems like we could have never even asked for that to start the year, but they'll be so pissed if that ends up happening. That's less than a third of the season remaining that we have left and plenty has been made about the fact that the second half of August and the first half of September see the Royals facing a number of really good teams including the Twins, Guardians, Phillies, Astros and Yankees. That is gonna be a rough four weeks. Obviously, there's a lot of opportunity in that stretch because they play the Guardians and the Twins, but it will not be easy. Mike, you and I have discussed the Royals struggles facing good teams. Besides the obvious, why do you think they struggle so much against the good competition? Well, I think when you talk about good teams, one thing is the good teams in Major League Baseball have figured out is that starting rotation usually, right? You're not you're not skating through in a playoff race when you haven't figured out who your five starters are and you know, you don't have a little bit of competency there. And so the things that those types of pitching staffs can do are exploit the biggest weaknesses of our lineup. OK, those staffs a lot of times have guys that. can take advantage of you being too aggressive. They can exploit those weaker hitters in your lineup because you don't have a really deep lineup. know, they can throw it. Well, they're like Michael Walker. Michael Walker is the kind of guy that, you know, he may have a higher ERA, but he's a competent pitcher. Those. ERA is under three right now. Michael Walker? No way. yeah. Give me a second. I'll look it up. You keep talking. I'll look it up. under three. Wow, that'd be but he's the kind of guy I'm saying it's the style that he pitches, right? He won't cave into you. I'll continue to throw a curve ball that leaves the zone a little bit and the change up and the change up and the change up again and it'll be out of the zone out of the zone in the zone. You never know what's happening, but he has a mastery of facing those types of hitters and then he can kind of skate through on your weak hitters, you know, and that's why the Royals struggle with guys that sometimes don't. have the best stuff in the world or maybe a little bit more command first and the the teams that make the playoffs have that's their four and five starter a lot of times or they're the Dodgers, you know, just pile strikeout guys all over the place. But you know, these are these are teams that have a rotation that has figured out how to pitch and everybody in that rotation knows how to pitch and they can exploit some of those things in our lineup that that make us streaky. Waka has a three and a half ERA, I was wrong. It's not under three, three and a half, but that's still very good. Yes, it's been coming down significantly. Yeah, it's that, think on the flip side of that, early in the year especially, especially the first three months or so, the Royals had a ton of lack of swing and miss in their bullpen earlier this year. And that could allow, they could get the weak contact and the stuff they needed to beat the bad teams, because they have a lot of bad hitters. Good teams have this more depth in their lineup. And if you can't generate any swing and miss against them, they will just keep fouling pitches off and fouling pitches off until they put something in play hard or until they get an extra base hit or something like that. And that lack of swing and miss from the Wolfpen early in the year really hurt them against good teams. It might still hurt them against good teams though they have improved their swing and miss adding guys like Sam Long and Chris Bubich and Lucas Ercig and even Hunter Harvey to some extent. That should help them. but we haven't really got a chance to see what they'll look like against good lineups with this new bullpen. Mike, in your thought, what can the Royals do to have a better opportunity to beat these good teams? Well, the first thing I think and we've mentioned this, I think in the midweek episode last week, you got to get the bullpen rolls figured out, which I think they're starting to do a little bit, but it should have happened. I mean, they should, you didn't want it to take this long even, you you wanted it to kind of fall into place, the usage of these guys and how they work best and then start rolling, but they just haven't done that yet. And then the starters need to continue to be what they've been so far this year. And that's a tall ask. Continue to be healthy, continue to be able to go six plus innings every start, continue to make every start every fifth day, you know, and, and, you know, strike guys. mean, they've been so good. It's almost like waiting for the next, the other shoe to drop. Like something's got to give at some point. You got to find a way to rest them. We got to find a way to do something, but the starters need to be that good. And the bullpen rules got to get situated. Yeah, I think they kind of have a sense of what those bullpen roles are. And I put down here, like figure out bullpen priority as well. I think they kind of know Ersig, Bubich and Long will be our best three at this point. Harvey will kind of be just behind them. And then after that, they're kind of still figuring it out. Like, where do you like, where does how do you how do you hide Will Smith? How do you hide Chris Stren? Like they still have a couple of real liabilities in this bullpen and they're doing their best to hide them in these low leverage situations and stuff. But at some point you hit a point where, Chris Stratton's gonna have to pitch in important spots. Will Smith's gonna have to pitch in important spots. And when that's the case, just have no choice. Yeah, Zarpa's gonna have to. that's, you can't, your four, five, and six reliever are definitely gonna have to. Your seven and eight reliever are still gonna have to occasionally. Like, and so, you know, they have to sort of figure out what they're doing with those guys. And then with their top three guys, Long, Ersig, and Bubic, They have to figure out which one is gonna go in where and who's gonna sort of fill what role. I think they've kind of figured that out at this point. I think they see Ursig as their number one guy out of the bullpen. I think they see Bubic as their number two and I think they see Long as their number three, honestly. And so those guys will fill different roles different nights. I'm not a big fan of the notion that, this guy needs to be a closer. He can only pitch in the night. I think that's ridiculous. But hopefully they deploy those guys in the most valuable spots. I also think though, that a big part of their success against good teams will come down to depth in their lineup. So I'm looking at two guys in particular, MJ Melendez and Hunter Renfro. What are they gonna provide offensively? If they can provide something offensively that takes their lineup from a lineup that has like four or five guys you like and can trust to one that has six or seven, and then a couple of guys at the bottom who in like Garcia and Isbell who if they're on that day, your offense is just. is gonna score 13 or 14 runs, right? Because you then have a lot of offense that's really, really deep. And so I think MJ and Rinfer are the two I'm looking at offensively as key to their ability to beat good teams. Mike, in September, rosters will expand and the Royals will have a chance to bring two players up from AAA to supplement that September run. Do you have thoughts on how they should fill those roster spots? I do, but I actually think that I want you to go first here. I'm going to, because you've done something that's not possible. You're not allowed to have those. So I will go first. Let me give you my thoughts first. Yes, they can only bring up one pitcher. You can only have 14 when the roster is expanded to 28. Yeah, so go find it. Yeah. So my thoughts are that I would like to see them bring Alec Marsh back up to relieve, to go some relief innings. He's been throwing three inning stints down in AAA, but he has been starting for those three inning stints. I wonder if they may not transition him to the bullpen. to have him throwing some three innings stints or something like that. Or they may do some other interesting things. This also may just be like, hey, Alec Marsh is essentially done for the season. We're having him throw three innings stints because we don't want his innings count to get any higher. It could be something like that. But I would like to see them think of Marsh as supplement for the bullpen in September and bring him back up to relief. I would also like to see them bring Tyler Gentry up to relief. And I actually went back and forth on this one about what position players should be brought up to help with the bench or to supplement or something like that. And I just started thinking, you know what? The guy I want them to bring up, they don't need more speed off the bench really. They got Hampson, they got Blanco. They're good for speed off the bench. I want them bringing up somebody who I know will give them a good plate appearance, who has a little bit of power potential, not a ton, but a little bit of pop, and who's really, really hot right now, offensively. And that's Tyler Gentry. And so a right -handed bat to help with some lefties. They struggle with lefties generally. I think he might be a good addition to their bench and he's already on the 40 man. So that's good too. Alright Mike, what do you have? Well, I was going to go with two pitchers. That was my thing because I didn't know you had to be one position player one pitcher. I guess I don't know the roster rules. I guess. Well, still I'm going to say this real quick. I think it'd be smart to find a way to get Alec Marsh and Jonathan Boland into that bullpen at the same time. You can get rid of somebody right Will Smith. You know what I'm saying? That's what I would like to do because I think your goal is going to be to rest that starting pitching staff as much as you possibly can, whether that's finding a way to add one of them as a six starter or, you know, as a piggyback kind of guy or a way that you can get poor guys out after five instead of letting him go seven, whatever it is. I think that's smart. But I'll throw I'll throw Alec Marsh in there because I think they need to figure out what his bullpen role can be in September. So that way he's ready to go. Come playoff time and then for the hitter, go with the Velasquez, I guess, you know. Now he hasn't had the greatest numbers in AAA so far, but he's hit some home runs. He's hit for power. He gives you a right -handed bat off the bench that has a chance to hit one over the fence in a big situation if you need to. So that's something. Yeah, he was one of the ones I sort of thought about. Royals Weekly is brought to you by All In Physical Therapy. You already know that All In Physical Therapy turned our mother into a trained weapon of destruction. But, what you don't know is that Mom loved her experience there because of the personal attention she got from Tommy and the staff at All In. They guarantee a personalized, one -on -one experience to suit the needs of patients recovering from total joint surgeries, sports injuries, or any kind of injury or pain. I get a shooting pain in my shoulder every time I pee. Now is that normal? Yeah, I think that sounds normal to me. mean, all in physical there. Yeah, exactly. All of physical therapy is owned and operated by Tommy Frebert with locations in Blue Springs, Lee's Summit and now Belton. And they are just just I put I just said that already. We're good. Most importantly, they're in network for nearly all insurance providers. I'm not sure what role the shoulder has in urination, but thank God I'm in network so I can find out. Yeah, this is more of an exploratory kind of a thing. If you're a high school athlete recovering from injury or someone bouncing back with a brand new hip or knee, check out the best physical therapy in the KC Metro at allin -pt .com. That's allin -pt .com. Or give them a call at 816 -427 -5300. That's 816 -427 -5300. Weekly Preview It's a six game road trip this week with the boys in blue headed to Minnesota to take on the twins for three before jumping over to Cincinnati for some Skyline chili and a date with the Cincinnati Reds. Mike, have ever seen that Skyline chili and if so, would you eat it? It does look disgusting. I would need it either. I would need it either. No. I want spaghetti, I eat spaghetti. If I want chili, I eat chili. I don't smash those things together and then call it legendary. Get out of here. that looks terrible. Anyway, tell us about the twins. They're good at baseball. I can tell you that in that twin series. Let's The twins are 65 and 52. So extremely close to us. A second in the central right ahead of us. And they are also occupying the spot for the first wild card spot. Is that correct? they're the second wild card spot. Yankees, yes, I think there are three now. So Yankees, twins and us. Okay. The first game would be Singer versus Pablo Lopez, the 28 year old righty out of Venezuela. He's got a 4 .47 ERA, which doesn't sound great, but his whip is in good shape with a 1 .16. He's a good pitcher. He's a solid guy. We saw him on opening day. Actually, he seven innings, one run. So he didn't do too bad on opening day. We have seen him quite a bit in the last couple of years. He's got a four seam fastball in the mid nineties, a sweeper change up curveball and a sinker. He's got a great fastball, but his secondaries get hit a little bit more. The question will be, can he keep, can he keep Vinny off of some of those secondary pitches and some of those better left handed hitters in the lineup? So after that, we know it's going to be Lugo and Reagan's have been announced. You like that singer Lugo Reagan's. You love that in the series gives you a good chance, but the twins have not announced their starting pitchers yet. So we don't know who they'll be going against. But that series is not only huge, it's also sets up pretty well for the Royals. and Joe Ryan's hurt, by the way. And I can be Joe Ryan. Yeah, but they do have some other good pitchers. We'll see what they're doing to fill out those last couple of games. After Minnesota, they head to Cincinnati to the tiny Great American Ballpark. For the Reds, who are 57 and 61, that's fourth in the NL Central. Their offense, you would think that they'd be a great offensive team given the ballpark they play in. Not very good. Their offense has a 91 rated on its graded plus, which is good for 25th in Major League Baseball. They're getting good years from Ellie De La Cruz, who's got a 130 OPS plus, and Tyler Stevenson, who's got a 110 OPS plus. But that's about it. They have a pretty shallow lineup. It's not very deep. Their pitching has been better than they're hitting. Their pitching has a 3 .91 ERA. That's 11th in Major League Baseball. Hunter Green is their best starter. He's been a revelation for them with a 2 .90 ERA and about 130 innings. Andrew Abbott and Nick Lodolo are also having pretty good years. Their bullpen has really hit and missed though. So they'll have some chances late in games to come back if they need to. Just a Bit Outside We'll end this week's episode, let me end every episode with the Just About Outside segment where we talk about something that's entering to us outside the world of baseball. Mike, you and I played golf earlier this week. You've had a lot going on as this is your, is this your last week? Your last free week of summer here. yeah, last free whole week, I've got Monday and Tuesday off still, but yeah. so tell us what went down in your last fun week of summer. Well, ton of fun stuff went down the golf. I played golf three times in one week. that was cool. Took a lot of naps, you know, that sort of stuff. but what I've been hearing a lot about and you and I talked about it when we were golfing is kind of the discourse over the stock market recently and like, you know, people fearing of a recession for about a 24 hour period. And then everybody's like, what are you guys talking about? That doesn't make any sense. Turns out people on the internet overreact to stuff. I guess, yeah. But it got me thinking again, like, know, I've mentioned on the podcast many times, personal finance is kind of a hobby of mine, hobby, a passion. I don't know what you call it. Something I've read and learned a lot about. Is my passion sewing hats for little kittens is my passion, but no. So I thought I'd throw this out there. Like if you're wondering about all this stuff, people are talking about the stock market and you're a person who's like, I've never invested a dollar in my life. I don't understand how the market works or anything like that. or what you should be, should be, and could be doing or a simple way to grow your wealth as a younger person. I'm going to throw this out there. I've, I've done a lot of, reading and research and listening to podcasts on growing your personal wealth and, creating good habits to do that and all that sort of stuff. The best book I've ever read to simply lay out how you invest in the stock market is a book called The Simple Path to Wealth by guy named J .L. Collins. Okay. It's a very cheap book. can buy it paperback. It's in a lot of different languages and stuff too. But it lays out simply how it all works in a safe and effective way to invest and a simple way to understand it for ordinary people. Because you and I weren't as advantaged monetarily as youngsters. And so You know, for us to get into investing and things like that, you kind of have to do it on your own. So it is the best book I've ever read for that. The Simple Path to Wealth by J .L. Collins. Give it a shot if you want to, you know, be the one who knows what they're talking about when they're talking about the stock market and investing really more about investing than the stock market itself. At the very least, you'll just annoy me less because having to hear people talk about it who don't know what they're talking about annoys the crap out of me. Like, and it's just, you know, and there are a few subjects on which people will offer. Well, actually, there are so many subjects where people offer opinions. investing is one that people feel very comfortable offering opinions they know nothing about. It's like, stop talking about it. You don't know what you're saying. And so, yeah, it's rough. But yes, that is probably a good book. I've never read that one. I'm sure it's tremendous if you recommend it. I'm talking about something else that came to me a couple of nights ago, and it was such an interesting thought that I had to write it down so I could talk about it today. I don't even know what sparked it in me. I think I heard somebody online talk about the fact that if something exists on the internet, it exists forever, right? Which is a thing that a lot of my students express to me. And I don't actually believe, in fact, I think it's verifiably true that things that existed on the internet only 20 years ago are either completely gone or so difficult to find they might as well be completely gone, right? Which to me is virtually the same thing. But it got me thinking about the notion of like internet and memory and whether or not we can or should or whether it's better for us to forget things. And it got me thinking to the idea that like, The internet has created a situation where our memories are worse, but also we cannot collectively forget things, right? And so like, I believe that the internet has in some ways robbed us of the ability to remember things because we sort of rely on the internet as kind of this repository of memories, right? And so like, I don't need to remember the date of, you know, anybody's birthday. Facebook will do that for us, right? I don't need to remember important dates like D -Day or, you know, what else? I don't even know. because I don't remember any dates, right? See? And so like, like all these important dates in history, we don't remember all these. the day that JFK was shot, November 22nd, I think, 1963. don't, we just don't, there are so many things we don't need to remember. And as a result, I think this makes our memory worse. And so people talking about, talk about like how we memory hole everything. Like people just forget stuff that was like extremely significant, right? Like they just forget it. It's poof, it's from, it's gone from there. Like if you remind them of it, they might remember, but it's like gone from the memory that I would consider like the front of their brain. The internet has basically eroded the front of our brain. to the point where we don't remember anything that happened before last week. And so that's one thing, right? But also because the internet exists as like this repository of our cultural memory, we don't get to forget things that might be useful for us to forget. You know I'm saying, Mike? There are some things where it's like... the resurgence of bell -bottom jeans in the mid -90s. exactly. Stuff like that. Sort of stuff like that, right? or things that are like, like, anytime I hear about a kid who like made a mistake and it got documented online, and it's like there forever, as long as it's not a mistake that was like, this person like, you know, killed somebody or something, you know, like, as long as I'm like, man, wouldn't it be better? Like, maybe it's good that I didn't grow up in a time when my actions could be documented for the world to see it like. And so There's that, but then there's also like, sometimes I think culturally we need to forget some stuff that will just let us move on from something, you know, like, and we're not moving on from it because the memory is just always there on the internet and comes back up over and over again, you know, like, and so it just got me thinking like, yeah, maybe the internet is doing something to our memory that is not best for us, if that makes sense. There's just a thought I had earlier this week. Anyway. thoughts than me. I'm like, how to get money? You're like, well, what if the isn't a memory hole? thinking about how to get money too. In fact, have cash rules everything around me, you know, on my phone right now, know, like dollar bills, y 'all. Anyway, that's all we have for you this week. Please join us again next week and we'll talk more about the Royals and the internet and money and whatever else comes into our crazy minds. We would like to say thanks for joining us here on Royals Weekly presented by BET Online. Make sure you're out subscribing to the Royals Weekly Substack. You're leaving us comments on Apple Podcast. You're leaving us comments on YouTube and everywhere else. Giving us thumbs up. All that stuff's great. We will see you next week. Until then, be good to each other. And go Royals!