Category: Sports News

As we enter the season’s third month, with the Royals all but technically eliminated from playoff contention but still a bit too early to speculate about the trade deadline, it seems like a good time to take stock of how they could have handled the offseason better. Matthew LaMar already looked at how some of the players the Royals targeted have done this year, with most of them not performing particularly well, but what about some of the lesser-known names the Royals could have targeted?

Now, obviously, I’ve argued that I think if they were serious about contending in 2026, they should have pursued the top names in the market. I’m a huge fan of the arguments that interim MLBPA director Bruce Meyer has been making about how the Padres increased their profits and franchise value by spending real money despite being in a similarly small MLB market.

But even if you allow that those guys were too expensive for the Royals, there were lots of other guys who were much less expensive that the Royals could have considered. Some of them are doing quite well for themselves. Why did the Royals miss on them?

JJ Bleday, Dane Myers, and Nathaniel Lowe

Coming off the Reds series, these are obvious guys to look at. Bleday was signed to a 1-year, $1.4 million MLB contract on December 27, while Lowe required only a minor league contract on February 13, right as spring training camps were opening. Myers was acquired in a trade with the Marlins for a minor league outfielder with no pedigree who hasn’t been hitting well. The biggest problem for the Royals with the first two was that both of them hit left-handed, and the Royals are already so lefty-heavy. Lowe is, additionally, a first baseman only. This is, of course, a position the Royals thought they had locked down with Vinnie Pasquantino.*

*Vinnie, by the way, has been slashing .289/.396/.422/.818 since his day off against Boston a couple of weeks ago. Good for a 124 wRC+. Perhaps he’s back?

Lowe has all of 16 at-bats versus lefties, but he has yet to record a hit and has only one walk. If you think Vinnie has struggled against lefties… eesh.

Bleday, on the other hand, has been hitting lefties just fine with a 134 wRC+ against them. He’s been better against righties, but should the Royals have known that Bleday had this in him? Actually, maybe! Bleday’s career splits are 90 wRC+ against lefties and 109 against righties. Obviously, 10% below average isn’t where you want to be, but it would still be better than any of Pasquantino, Starling Marte, Carter Jensen, Jac Caglianone, or Isaac Collins this year.

Bleday had a crummy year for the Athletics last year, but he is only playing in his age-28 season this year and barely making more than Marte. He also had a higher walk rate and ISO than Marte last year despite the down season. And he’s under the Reds’ control for each of the next two seasons without being guaranteed anything. You have to imagine he wasn’t on the Royals’ radar, or they would have been able to outbid $1.4 million. But it sure seems like he should have been.

The Reds got Myers from the Marlins for 24-year-old minor league outfielder Ethan O’Donnell. Myers is an interesting case. Despite the fact that he’s a righty, he’s hit righties much better this year than lefties. Though his career splits suggest that’s a fluke. He’s also walking much more this year than in the past. His swinging strike rates have come down every year since his debut, and he was reasonably good two years ago. He also went on the IL three separate times last year, so you have to wonder if injury played a part in his ineffectiveness. But that didn’t stop the Royals from pursuing Lane Thomas. (Though, admittedly, Thomas has been plenty good against left-handed pitching this season, the whole reason the Royals signed him.)

Still, Myers is playing his age-30 season, so perhaps the Royals simply didn’t think the swinging strike trend could continue. And honestly, it plummeted pretty far this year, so I’d be interested to revisit at the end of the season and see if he’s still doing all that well.

Tristan Peters

Peters is a 26-year-old outfielder the White Sox acquired from the Rays for cash or a player to be named later (PTBNL). He’s hitting well for the White Sox, but he’s a lefty who isn’t hitting lefties, so the Royals probably made the correct decision to stay away here.

Curtis Mead

Mead is a 25-year-old corner infielder acquired by the Nationals from the White Sox for a catcher with an excellent name – Boston Smith – who is hitting well in high A but is already 23 years old. So, basically, some guy we will probably never hear about again. Honestly, Mead came out of nowhere. This is his fourth season in MLB, and he’d never come close to the walk rates or power output he’s shown in Washington. He’s always had good bat speed and a decent eye at the plate. His youth means he is an excellent guy for a team that doesn’t expect to contend to take a shot on as the White Sox did last year when they acquired him from the Rays.

The Royals, of course, have a couple of corner infielders they feel pretty good about in Maikel Garcia and Pasquantino, and they expected to contend this year, so I think passing on Mead or at least not getting into a bidding war over him probably made sense even if he’d look a lot better as a right-handed bat on the bench than Marte has.

Dominic Smith

This name might bring shivers down your spine, and you might not remember why. He’s the one who hit the walk-off grand slam against Carlos Estévez in Atlanta at the start of the season. He’s a left-handed first baseman who hit well last year but signed a minor league deal with the Braves. He has a 97 wRC+ against lefties this year, but it’s only 14 ABs. And did I mention he’s a left-handed first baseman? Once again, I think we can see why the Royals passed here.

Troy Johnston

See: Dominic Smith

Technically, Johnston can play the outfield, but he’s also got a -7 wRC+ against lefties this year. So he still wouldn’t have made sense for the Royals. The Rockies got him off waivers from the Marlins and he has hit .320/.377/.437 with two home runs in 58 games. He is not completely a product of Coors, hitting .293/.358/.404 in road games. He has mashed righties, hitting .358 against them, while just .158 against lefties.

Vaughn Grissom

The Angels acquired the 25-year-old, right-handed second baseman from the Red Sox for a light-hitting, low minors outfielder. The Royals have a few of those. Now, KC had decided that they were going to quasi-platoon Jonathan India and Michael Massey at second base to begin the year, so maybe that could explain why he wasn’t on their radar. But in retrospect, it sure seems like they might have considered making a minor trade for this kid instead of giving India a guaranteed $8 million.

Grissom broke into the bigs with Atlanta in 2022 as a 21-year-old. He was their top prospect playing in AA, and Ozzie Albies was hurt. In retrospect, it seems like they rushed him a bit. He did well that year but struggled in 2023 and 2024 before spending all of 2025 with the Red Sox’s AAA affiliate. And he put up a lot of red in statcast metrics there.

He wasn’t walking, and he wasn’t pulling the ball in the air enough, but he did almost everything else at a high level. You have to especially like the Zone Contact rate combined with a lack of Ks. Now, suddenly, his strikeout rate is cut in half from 2024, combined with a modest improvement in walk rate. His ISO is back to where it was all throughout the minors in the .160-.170 range. A 104 wRC+ isn’t tearing the cover off the ball, and he’s not a tremendous defender, but he would have been quite a bit better than anything the Royals ever got out of India.

Since India went down with an injury, the Royals have been mostly platooning Massey and Nick Loftin at second base, and, at least lately, they haven’t been the problem in the Royals’ lineup. Massey, at least, has been tearing the cover off the ball for two weeks with a 171 wRC+. And Loftin is one of the few guys who has had some luck with runners in scoring position. But, really, we should be comparing Grissom more to the at-bats of Marte with the positions of Loftin. And he would be an improvement, there, too.

Even though there are quite a few cheap bats that seem like they could have been available to the Royals, most of them make sense for the Royals to have passed on because the vast majority are left-handed hitters. No team can be perfect at this sort of thing. It’s easy to argue that the Royals did make similar gambles with players like Kevin Newman and Josh Rojas – their moves just haven’t worked out so far.

But, really, when was the last time such a gamble did work for KC? It sure seems like these kinds of guys break out or come back around the league all the time, but never for the Royals. And you have to wonder if their scouting, development, or coaching departments couldn’t use some improvement to make it easier to generate some of this luck.

San Diego Padres (32-28) at Philadelphia Phillies (32-29), June 4, 2026, 10:10 a.m. PST

Watch: Padres.TV

Location: Citizens Bank Park – Philadelphia, Penn.

Listen: 97.3 The Fan

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The Yankees recently returned home from a successful roadtrip during which they swept the Royals and took two out of three from the A’s. The offense awoke from its mid-May slumber, putting up 51 runs across the six games. One of the unlikely contributors at the heart of that scoring outburst was Paul Goldschmidt. Initially re-signed over the winter as cover at first base but more importantly to retain his veteran leadership, the 38-year-old former MVP has been one of the Yankees’ most productive bats, bringing much needed stability to a DH role impacted by the injuries to Giancarlo Stanton and Jasson Domínguez.

We join Goldschmidt in the top of the first inning last Friday in West Sacramento. The Yankees are looking to make a first inning statement facing old friend Luis Severino, and have already opened the scoring after Ben Rice reached on a throwing error and scored on an Aaron Judge single. Cody Bellinger followed with a single of his own, he and Judge advancing into scoring position on a Jazz Chisholm Jr. soft grounder. Goldschmidt is a base knock away from making it 3-0, but Severino is also an out away from limiting the damage to one.

Severino starts Goldschmidt with a first pitch sinker at 97 mph, he and catcher Shea Langeliers looking to bust Goldschmidt inside.

Severino executes just the pitch he was intending, the sinker starting over the plate before riding in on Goldschmidt. It requires an impressive take from Goldschmidt given the pitch lands just a few inches from the zone — he starts his swing before recognizing that the movement of the pitch will run it off the plate inside for ball one and stops his swing in time.

Perhaps Severino spots Goldschmidt’s initial temptation to offer at that sinker, because he looks to throw a sweeper down a similar tunnel hoping he can get the batter to chase a pitch that breaks in the opposite direction.

Instead, Severino releases this pitch early, and it sweeps across the inside edge for called strike one. It is clear this is not the location that Severino intended to throw to when you see the target low and away that Langeliers flashes, but he gets the desired result all the same.

Severino next looks to leverage the result of the previous pitch — a sweeper that starts aimed inside and breaks glove-side back into the zone — to try to get Goldschmidt to chase a sinker in off the plate. To Goldschmidt, it should look like a hanging sweeper, and the increased velocity of the sinker means that by the time the hitter realizes what pitch is coming, it should be too late to halt his swing.

Once again, Severino rips of perfect execution of a sinker up and in. He buries this slider in on Goldschmidt’s hands, but Goldschmidt is forced to fight it off given that this one is in the zone. The location and movement of this pitch makes it impossible for Goldschmidt to do anything but fight it off foul.

Now that he has pushed the count to two strikes, Severino goes for the kill with the sweeper, Langeliers again setting a target low and away as the pair attempt to induce a chase and whiff from Goldschmidt over the breaker.

This is such a piece of professional hitting from Goldschmidt. He must have diagnosed the pitch early out of Severino’s hand, because at first glance this sweeper looks like it is aimed at his front hip. He also must have cued in on a subtle deficiency in Severino’s release point with all four pitches sailing up and in. To the eye, it certainly appears that Goldschmidt is hunting a breaking pitch in exactly this location based on what he has seen already from Severino in this encounter as well as the scouting report that reveals Severino’s tendency to throw the sweeper immediately upon reaching two strikes. Look at the way he stays in their despite the pitch exiting Severino’s hand aimed at him before unloading on this hanging sweeper for a three-run homer to give the Yankees a 4-0 lead.

Here’s the full AB:

Goldschmidt’s re-signing was initially derided as representative of the Yankees’ broader run it back approach to the offseason. However, his retention has proven an inspired decision in the wake of the injuries to Stanton and Domínguez. At the time of writing, Goldschmidt boasts seven home runs, 23 RBIs, and a 151 wRC+ in 35 games, which makes him the Yankees’ third-most productive hitter in a limited sample. The fact this home run came off a righty when Goldschmidt was expected to bat exclusively against lefties is also encouraging. Ben Rice has credited him as a mentor in learning the intricacies of playing first base, Goldschmidt giving them a capable defender as a late game substitution or when they want to give Rice half a day off at DH. The Yankees would not be within touching distance of the Rays for first in the division if not for Goldschmidt filling the void at DH, removing a ton of pressure off Stanton and Domínguez as they recover from their injuries.

Due to injuries to both Drake Baldwin and Sean Murphy, the Atlanta Braves are currently having to dip into their reserve tank for help at the catcher spot. Part of that help had been provided by Chadwick Tromp, who did deliver a walk-off knock not too long ago. With that being said, Sandy León has been getting most of the reps behind the dish since the both of them became the top catchers’ duo in Atlanta and as a result, Tromp is now the latest Braves player to take the uncertain ride on the DFA cycle.

The Braves announced that they’ve acquired catcher Austin Wynns from the Los Angeles Angels in exchange for cash considerations. Wynns is clearly taking the place of Tromp on the roster because Tromp has now been designated for assignment.

To put this in the nicest terms possible, Wynns has been very underwhelming at the plate so far this season. He’s had 43 plate appearances with the SacramentoAthletics where he hit .077/.143/.077 with a .285 wOBA, a -40 wRC+ and three runs scored. Wynns had been released by the A’s in mid-May, picked up by the Angels a few days afterwards and stashed at their Triple-A affiliate from then until now, as he’s been acquired by the Braves and subsequently called up from Triple-A as well. With all of that being said, Wynns does play some solid defense and as evidenced by the fact that León is getting regularly playing time seemingly solely due to his defense, the Braves have made their decision as to what they value from the catcher’s spot while Baldwin and Murphy are gone.

There was also some shuffling going on elsewhere on the roster that corresponded with this move. Outfielder DaShawn Keirsey Jr. reportedly had an opt-out in his contract where if he wasn’t added to Atlanta’s major league roster by a certain date, he could elect free agency. Well, apparently the Braves didn’t want to lose Keirsey to an opt-out because they called him up to the bigs and then immediately sent him back down to Triple-A. Congratulations on your return to the big leagues, DaShawn Keirsey Jr., we hope you enjoyed your time while it lasted.

Anyways, in order to make roster space for all of this to happen, Sean Murphy has now been transferred to the 60-day IL. This was always going to happen once the Braves needed a roster spot since Murphy’s going to be out for a significant period of time with that fractured finger. This doesn’t change anything with his recovery timeline but it does mean that the Braves can now maneuver with him being on the long-term IL instead of taking up a roster spot on the short-term IL.

So there you have it! There’s some more roster shuffling for you. What do y’all make of all these moves?

TV: NESN

First Pitch: 1:35 p.m. ET

The Red Sox and Orioles will compete in the rubber match of their three-game series on Thursday at Fenway Park.

Brayan Bello, who has been absolutely phenomenal as a bulk reliever, will return to the starting rotation with the hope that he can keep that form without the help (or lack thereof) of an opener. Jovani Morán and Tyler Samaniego, the two men who have opened for the veteran right-hander, have combined to allow nine runs in four innings across their four starts, while the should-be starter has a 0.71 ERA in 25.1 innings of relief in 2026.

It’s just a matter of bringing that same mentality and execution to his original role…

Jarren Duran, Ceddanne Rafaela, Wilyer Abreu, and Willson Contreras will remain as the first four in the order, with Andruw Monasterio, Carlos Narváez, and Connor Wong slotting back into the lineup after missing the 8-1 victory on Wednesday. Marcelo Mayer, Masataka Yoshida, and Mickey Gasper are out.

Yes, Wong is the DH…

The O’s will essentially run things back, with Leody Taveras and Colton Cowser replacing Tyler O’Neill and Blaze Alexander. Trevor Rogers will get the start.