The big news yesterday was the Kyle Isbel injury. Anne Rogers reported it:
On Thursday, he was diagnosed with a Grade 3 tear of a portion of his left plantar fascia, which is a severe tear and will take some time to heal before he gets back to baseball activity. The Royals are hoping to have a better understanding of a timeline for his return after Isbel is further evaluated in the coming days.
Jaylon Thompson also wrote on it for The Star:
Isbel began limping as he got aboard with a single. He knelt on the base before walking slowly toward the Royals’ dugout.
“I think it was like my first step past the base,” Isbel said. “Kind of tried to turn it on and get a double and felt it in my foot.”
The Royals placed Isbel on the 10-day injured list Wednesday. Now, he will begin the long road to recovery.
It sounds like this recovery is going to be measured in weeks or months, not days.
The team got better news about Seth Lugo and his scary injury. Again, per Anne:
Lugo went through the necessary testing and protocol Wednesday night, and his CT scan came back clear, which is an even better sign. With the welt that has formed on his head, Lugo said he feels the throbbing when he bends over but hasn’t had any headaches. His left elbow is cut up and actually hurts the most from falling on it.
Thompson also wrote about him:
Lugo received a lot of support from his teammates. Multiple players came up to check on him as he got ready for Thursday’s game.
“It’s family in here,” Lugo said. “When something like that happens, it’s scary. You know, it’s one of the dangers of baseball. And as a pitcher, you know, you can’t think of that before it happens. You would never throw a strike. We all feel for each other when something bad happens out there, but you know, it’s part of the game.”
The Royals haven’t determined Lugo’s next steps. It’s still too early to tell how his symptoms will progress in coming days. He had a large bump on his forehead and a few scratches on his arm.
How about three stories from The Athletic ($) about the Royals?
Caleb Mezzy wrote about Bobby Witt Jr.’s new cleats from Under Armor:
On June 18, Under Armour will drop a player-exclusive cleat and turf shoe for Bobby Witt Jr., a move that, on the surface, reads as a standard brand decision for one of baseball’s best young players. But for Witt, it’s the ultimate “Dream Pull.”
…“Dream Pull” is inspired by the thrill of ripping a pack of baseball cards and chasing a big hit. It’s that collector’s high that has driven recent growth in the hobby and prompted pro players like Witt to collect.
…Collectors and fans have multiple ways to get the new footwear. Starting on June 18, limited quantities of the Dream Pull will be available in both cleat and turf versions on Under Armour’s website and mobile app, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Academy.com. Anyone who purchases through Dick’s Sporting Goods or Under Armour receives an exclusive Panini card in the box. But on June 20, the Under Armour Factory House in Kansas City will stock pairs with some boxes containing randomly placed autographed Witt Jr. cards. (The Dream Pull PE will be playable in MLB The Show 2026’s “Road to the Show” game mode.)
This is my second or third shoe story in the last couple of months. I’m currently working on a shoe-related OT, but it’s not ready yet. Can you do a little better on your timing, guys?
In an article by Ken Rosenthal about the trade deadline, he mentions “Royals’ Wacha, Lugo likely not in play”:
When the Kansas City Royals traded catcher Freddy Fermin to the San Diego Padres at last year’s deadline, they were happy to acquire right-handers Stephen Kolek and Ryan Bergert. They also knew Carter Jensen was nearly ready for the majors, making them deep enough at catcher to pull off such a move.
The Royals lack the pitching equivalents of what Jensen was, potential candidates for next year’s rotation in the upper minors. So, even if they fall out of contention, they likely will not be as comfortable moving starters such as right-handers Seth Lugo (under club control through 2027) and Michael Wacha (through 2027).
Left-hander Kris Bubic, a potential free agent, would be more likely to go, along with others on expiring contracts — outfielder Lane Thomas, lefty reliever Matt Strahm and righty reliever John Schreiber, among them.
The Royals, like all teams, are open to anything. If they could trade Wacha and/or Lugo for quality pitchers under longer club control, they would need to consider it. Any form of teardown, though, is likely not an option. The Royals want to win with shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. and third baseman Maikel Garcia, both of whom are under contract through at least 2030.
Keith Law released his Mock Draft 2.0 yesterday and had the Royals taking “Jacob Lombard”.
Blog time!
At Royals Keep, Philip Ruo makes “The Case For Michael Massey To Lead Off Against Right-Handed Pitchers”:
Over the past few weeks, the manager Matt Quatraro has been shuffling around his lineup. Maikel Garcia has not led off for the Royals since May 27, partially to place him in the heart of the batting order, and partially due to a hamstring injury. Since May 27, Quatraro has favored Carter Jensen to lead off against right-handed pitchers and Lane Thomas against left-handed pitchers. However, Jensen has been slumping lately, and it could be time to shake up the order yet again.
…Massey is far from the perfect leadoff hitter. His current on-base percentage of .283 is less ideal. His baserunning does not stand out in particular. His sprint speed is below average in the 37th percentile. He has only one stolen base attempt this season and has been thrown out more often than he advances when trying to take the extra base on the basepaths. If Massey can‘t improve his baserunning, he could be a frustrating fixture on the bases with stars like Bobby Witt Jr. at the plate.
Also at Royals Keep, Matt Crossland writes about one of my… do I say “favorite” topics(?)… in “The Tragic Tale of Gil Meche”:
In a memorable game against the Diamondbacks, Meche pitched a complete game shutout, only giving up four hits and striking out six. At the time, it was seen as Meche’s masterpiece, but there was only one stat that stuck out like a sore thumb: his pitch count. Meche threw 132 pitches, which is too many pitches to throw for a shutout, and it would eventually take a toll on him. Manager Trey Hillman again gave Meche too long a leash in his next two starts as he threw 121 and 114 pitches in back-to-back starts. He would finish 2009 with a record of 6–10 and an ERA of 5.09 while giving up almost 8 earned runs per game over his last nine starts. He would not be the same pitcher after that.
And this is the perfect time to link to Poz’s article from the time. The “how would you wash a unicorn” analogy has stuck with me to this day:
I don’t know. Maybe at some point, when you’re SO FAR down the wrong road, you just go: “What the hell, might as well keep going and hope we run into something good.” Maybe it would have been more damaging to have Meche throw 117 pitches and then pull him before the inning was done. I don’t know. I really don’t know. We are in such la-la land here, there can be no logical questions … these are like “How would you wash a unicorn?” questions. I do know that Meche threw four more pitches and did get Morneau to fly out to right.
We have a couple of blogs that don’t post very often.
Actually, that’s unfair to Jeff Wayman at The Diamond Chronicles. He posts mostly on Mondays. But I never get to link to his stuff because, well, it wouldn’t be very timely for “Friday Rumblings”. Still, I’ll do it this week to remind you to check him out on Mondays.
Patrick Glancy is mostly posting to his new blog, Powder Blue Pulp. But he did some baseball writing this week, too: “Back to Baseball”. He wrote about what has happened with the team this season so far.
I’m writing this on my birthday, the day before I actually publish it on Substack, and it feels a little strange to be back in baseball mode again. As most of you know, I’ve been hard at work on my debut crime novel, Shivering in Hell, which I announced in my most recent post. I’ve also been publishing short fiction through my other newsletter, Powder Blue Pulp, and I haven’t actually written about baseball since I made my preseason predictions back in March.*
Blog Roundup:
- Darin Watson at U.L.’s Toothpick: This Date In Royals History–1976 Edition: June 11 – A second straight shutout win for the Royals over the Orioles
- Caleb Moody at KOK: MLB.com’s top Royals trade chip seems like one name KC can’t afford to lose at deadline
- Also, Caleb Moody at KOK: 2 reasons Royals fans should be excited about Kameron Misner, 1 reason they should be wary
A few weeks ago, over on another blog, we were talking about dinosaurs and the idea of paleontology came up. I was also in Chicago over the past weekend and we were at the Field Museum.
We joke all the time about civilizations from the future that dig up our current time and make bad assumptions. You know, the jokes about how future archeologists will dig up Memphis and assume large swaths of the population worshipped a god-king named Elvis. Better authors than I have come up with great angles on this idea.
But I was having fun noodling around with the (literally) mind-boggling concept of time and had a little fun.
I’m not a great student of history so we’re going to fall down a wiki rabbit hole. I know Wikipedia is imperfect, but it’s good for general knowledge like this.
* * * * *
We’re going to start with this concept: Events from 50 years ago seem old to an individual human. We only get, at best, maybe 100 years on this earth. 300 years ago is another civilization entirely. It seems like a good “block” to measure time in this exercise.
. <- You are here (2026)
300 years ago (1726), the world was a very different place. Humans hadn’t achieved space flight, automobiles, or flight. But there were crude trains and civilization had sailed the seas for much longer. There was no United States, but there were a lot of other modern countries you could name. How many people could you name that were alive in 1726? Benjamin Franklin? Isaac Newton? Johan Sebastian Bach? Voltaire? Maybe you couldn’t have told me with certainty they were alive then, but you know who they were and that we were in the ballpark. It’s history, but it’s nowhere near ancient history. And this is where our journey starts.
We’re going to use a quick little “o” to represent each 300-year block. A graphic designer, I am not.
.o <- You are here (1726)
Another 300 years before that (1426) is the late Middle Ages and the start of the Renaissance. I could probably give you a few bits off the top of my head. I’d be wrong about some of it, but I’d be right about quite a bit. Joan of Arc, Vlad the Impaler, Johannes Gutenberg? We know those names. Gotta be honest, I only know of Donatello because of TMNT. But anyone with a real appreciation of art would know him. FYI: Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael don’t come along until later in the century.
Suffice to say, I feel like we have a “decent” grasp of these first two sets of “300-year” blocks. There are many major events logged in many parts of the world. There’s just a lot of written history from these times. Modern history is aware of so much happening at these times that Wiki’s editors have to spend a significant amount of energy to limit pages to “important” things.
.oo <- You are here (1426)
Map courtesy of https://www.worldhistorymaps.info/medieval/1100-ad/
I think this is our first major jump. Could you even tell me anything about 1126? Maybe a couple of things, but it wouldn’t be many. Dark Ages, Indeed. How much do people even know about that time? I asked Gemini who are the most famous people alive at that time and didn’t recognize any names. Anyone here a big fan of Peter Abelard, Henry I, Imad al-Din Zengi, or Emperor Huizong of Song? I’m not saying they aren’t famous – Gemini assures me that Huizong is one of China’s most famous rulers – I just don’t know who they are. Looking at the map, there’s a few countries that have their modern name, even if they’re in different shapes (England, Scotland, Denmark, Norway, France, Poland, Hungary, Ethiopia, Oman, Yemen, Japan, etc). But there’s no Spain, no Germany, no Turkey, no Greece, no China, no India, no Russia.
.ooo <- You are here (1126)
Our information is becoming sparse very quickly. Know anything about 826? 526? Each of those years barely has a page worth of stuff on Wikipedia. We just don’t know much. How about that 500 AD map above? I don’t think there’s a single country there that has the same name. Maybe Nepal? Ghana and Albania exist, but not where they are today. 226 has an artifact in modernity: Saint Valentine! He was born in 226 and died in 269.
.oooooo <- You are here (226)
* * * * *
Now we’ve crossed over into BC. 74 BC and 374 BC have a couple of entries of known events. 674 BC only has one. Just think about that for a second. This is less than 3000 years ago. It’s in a time when there was paper and civilization. Various estimates have the world population between 50M and 150M, so let’s split the difference. There were 100M people wandering around and we know of exactly one thing that happened in the entire world. 100,000,000 people! That’s more than France, the UK, Germany, Turkey, or Iran. That’s Italy plus Canada put together. That’s California, Texas, New York, and Illinois combined (using 2022 estimates).
And we know next to nothing. If you’re curious:
Esarhaddon puts down a revolt in Ascalon supported by Taharqa, king of Kush and Egypt. In response, the Assyrians invade Egypt, but Taharqa is able to hold them off.
.ooooooooo <- You are here (674 BC)
Here’s our next big gap. When I search Wikipedia for 974 BC, it redirects me to the page for 970s BC. We can’t even tell you anything that happened in 974. But we know that Egyptian pharaoh Shoshenq I was born and King Zhao of the Chinese Zhou dynasty ascended to the throne during that decade. In Israel, King Solomon may have had his coronation and King David might have been born – but it’s listed as “possible”.
.oooooooooo <- You are here (974 BC)
The 1270s BC were surprisingly busy. While 1274 doesn’t get its own page, there are a number of events on the 1270 page listed as happening in 1274. For instance, the Battle of Kadesh is noted as being “the largest (5,000–6,000) chariot vs. chariot battle in antiquity”. The 1570s BC page is starting to look like the pages for 826 and 526 AD. Only instead of knowing of only a couple of events those years, it’s only a couple of events from that decade.
Did you know that the Bronze Age isn’t a specific set of years for the world? It’s different for different parts of the world? I guess that makes sense, but I didn’t know that until I started looking this up.
.oooooooooooo <- You are here (1574 BC)
* * * * *
So, after 12 hops of 300 years, we get another major jump in Wikipedia chronology. Our 13th jump gets us to 1874 BC. It doesn’t even redirect me to a decade. Now it’s just a century. None of the dates are exact, and there are only about 20 major events. Kansas City gets a mention(!): “1836 BC-1818 BC: Head of Senusret III is made. Twelfth dynasty of Egypt. It is now kept at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.”
.ooooooooooooo <- You are here (1874 BC)
This is both fascinating and boring at the same time. For each entry I run across, the picture gets fuzzier and fuzzier. I’m not going to keep stretching this out one by one.
We’re going to skip a few to 20 jumps of 300 years. A nice, round 6000 years. This is the last page Wikipedia has for a single century: 40th century BC. There are no entries on the page that can point to a single year. There are things like “approximate time of the construction of the Merheleva Ridge complex”, “the Linear Pottery culture gives way to the Funnelbeaker culture in the north”, and “plough in use”. That’s it. That’s all we’ve got.
Also, here’s a sobering thought for anyone trying to make a name for themselves across history. Population estimates have the world at anywhere between 7M and 50M people. And you know what? There isn’t a single name of a single person known from that century. Or for the next century. Or even a few more. Seriously.
Writing doesn’t come about until about 3300BC and do you know our best bet at who is the oldest name in history? A guy named “Kushim the Accountant” who signed his name to a number of stone tablets counting barley shipments. Eat your heart out, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. The first person in recorded history? Kushim, a late Stone Age Excel guy.
I’m hesitant to add this because of the sensitive nature of the topic. But we’re all adults here, so we can talk about it. Biblically, this is about how old the Earth is. That is, if you add up your begats, take your ages literally, and claim the Earth was created in six literal 24-hour days. It assumes fastidious record-keeping with very limited corroborating evidence, documents people who are hundreds of years old (969-year-old Methuselah, 950-year-old Noah, and 930-year-old Adam come to mind), and even whistles past some minor genealogical conflicts in different books of the Bible. Personally, I could also argue that it misses the main message, claiming it as literal and perfect records rather than trying to point towards the idea of God keeping his covenant.
.oooooooooooooooooooo <- You are here (3974 BC)
* * * * *
After that, Wiki skips to millennia. Not just our individual years, but our whole 300-year blocks aren’t good enough to have their own page – we have to lump them in with a couple of others. But I don’t even see the point anymore. We don’t know years, we don’t know people, we’re making best guesses at places, and we’re often heavily speculating on events. We’re well past “they worshipped Elvis” territory if you’re trying to study history.
As I was writing, I needed a pause here. That’s a lot to take in. We’ve gone back 6000 years and the picture is very fuzzy. This is more-or-less what is considered “recorded history”.
On the one hand, that’s after “only” 20 of these 300-year blocks. Or 60 of 100-year lifespans. If you want to call 20 years a generation, that means 300 generations. That sounds a lot longer. It really depends on how you want to chop this up. In short, for an individual human, it’s a long time. For humanity, it’s the blink of an eye. For the history of the Earth, it’s imperceptible.
* * * * *
Humans, as in homo sapiens, have been around for 300K years, give or take.
We barely know anything after 6K years or 20 blocks.
“Modern” humans have been around for 1000 blocks.
At this point, my simple visualization starts to break down. This probably will look pretty bad, but we’ll see how it goes.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo <- You are here
We were just at 20 blocks and that seemed an almost unfathomable time ago. And this is 50x that. Humans, as we understand them, have been around that long. But we’re really in the “making best guesses” territory now. So little is around from 6000 years ago, much less 300K years ago.
If you want to take the whole “Homo” genus, that’s roughly 3M years. It was probably closer to 4M years that we evolved from Australopithecus. But let’s just roll with the 3M number to keep it an even 10,000 blocks.
Before you start thinking “well, 10K blocks, that’s not very many”. I mean, we just jumped from “we know very little about the world from 20 blocks ago” to “10K is pretty similar”? I mean, it’s just 3 more 0’s 20 -> 10000. Yeah, the logarithmic scale is rough. No, I’m not going to take that block of 1000 o’s above and draw 10 of them here. Use your imagination.
I considered taking that 6K span of time, that time we have gone from knowing nothing about it to modernity and making a block to represent that. But, really, when we’re getting into these numbers, does it even help? I think we’re just too abstracted at this point.
Besides, how different could Australopithecus be?
The brains of most species of Australopithecus were roughly 35% of the size of a modern human brain with an endocranial volume average of 466 cc (28.4 cu in). Although this is more than the average endocranial volume of chimpanzee brains at 360 cc (22 cu in) the earliest australopiths (A. anamensis) appear to have been within the chimpanzee range, whereas some later australopith specimens have a larger endocranial volume than that of some early Homo fossils.
Jokes about your friend who uses only a third of his brain aside, it kind of feels like we’re talking more monkey than man at this point. So in the time it takes to get from monkey to modern man, it’s 3M years.
…
At this point, I think our exercise has broken down and we’re just having funsies.
Want to walk back to the age of dinosaurs? That’s the Mesozoic Era. I think most of us know about the 65M years ago number. So, if we use 3M year blocks to go from monkey to man. You have to jump through 20 of those just to get to the end of dinosaurs. And dinosaurs were around for 60 of those. So, in short: the time after dinosaurs is one giant honking block. Dinosaurs lived for three of those.
Do you know how hard it is to find a timeline to scale using search? I just can’t find a good one to link here. We’re so egocentric that everyone wants to make the Paleozoic (252-539 Ma, Mesozoic (66-252 Ma), and Cenozoic (now-66 Ma) the same sized blocks. Since we lived in that later period, we want to make it as big as other periods that are much longer. Never mind that humans are only a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the Cenozoic.
How tiny (using round-ish numbers)?
The genus Homo is around 1/20th of the Cenozoic
Homo sapiens only 1/200th
Recorded history is only about 1/10000th
And, your entire life, if you’re lucky and get to 100, are only 1/660,000th
One more? There are about 70 of those periods (from now to 65M years ago) between the start of the Earth and now.
Homo has been around for 1/1500th of that
Homo sapiens for 1/15,0000th
Recorded history for 1/750,000th
And, you, maybe 1/45,000,000th
How’s your little corner of existence feel right now?
* * * * *
This whole conversation came up because of Tyrannosaurus Rex. T-Rex was around 69-66 Ma, though it could have been around as early as maybe 80 Ma. So it was around at least as long as the Homo genus. Want a rough estimate of how many ever existed: “Over the span of the genus’ existence, it is estimated that there were about 127,000 generations and that this added up to a total of roughly 2.5 billion animals until their extinction”. Add this up with “Lastly, the study suggests that in most cases, only one in 80 million Tyrannosaurus would become fossilized, while the chances were likely as high as one in every 16,000 of an individual becoming fossilized in areas that had more dense populations.”
Obviously, there are huge error bars for something like thi- wait, what did that say? Roughly 2.5 billion (with a “B”) T-Rexes existed in history. No kidding? Wow!
Sadly, we’ve only found about 60 specimens. It’s hard for things to survive 100 years, much less millions
FYI: The estimated number of humans who have ever lived is a little over 100 billion. There’s a cool graphic at the top of the wiki page about that.
* * * * *
Finally, as I went back further, I ran across the name Rodinia. Most people have heard of Pangaea, but there are other supercontinents (theoretically) before that. It was from roughly 1130-750 Mya.
How was it?
Unlike later supercontinents, Rodinia was entirely barren. It existed before complex life colonized on dry land. Based on sedimentary rock analysis, Rodinia’s formation happened when the ozone layer was not as extensive as it is now. Ultraviolet light discouraged organisms from inhabiting its interior. Nevertheless, its existence significantly influenced the marine life of its time.
Yikes.
That page also had a link to something called the Snowball Earth hypothesis.
Then again, supercontinent theory gets really theoretical really fast.
Growing up, I loved the book “An Incomplete Education” (which is probably a bit outdated now). An entertaining reference book? Catnip for adolescent me.
In the science chapter, there’s a section on different types of numbers: integers, rationals, reals, etc. Then it starts getting a little out of control, with things like transfinite numbers and ending with quaternions. This is its explanation of them:
The feeling that, once having learned to walk, one can run. Also fly. The lesson here is that when you extend numbers beyond the complex stage, you do so at the expense of something called permanence; one by one, properties you took for granted fall away. For instance, with quaternions, you have to give up either the role 0 plays or multiplicative commutativity (i.e., x times y no longer equals y times x). Say good night, Gracie.
Yup, I think it’s bedtime.
* * * * *
This seems like the perfect opportunity to revisit Chrono Trigger.
Today’s song plays with the idea in the previously linked to Canticle for Leibowitz.
“Corridors of Time” is the overworld theme for the Kingdom of Zeal. The game starts in the present (modern-ish) times. Shortly after, you’re thrown into a dystopian future and the assumption is that civilization had peaked before the Lavos cataclysm. It’s not until late in the game that you come to find out that a much more advanced civilization existed long before, in 12000 BC. However, their hubris set in motion the events that doomed Zeal and would doom the future. But no one in the present even knew, because nothing of their civilization remained.
