Mellinger Minutes: Sports are back! Are the Royals good? Plus Julio Jones, and crying
Had a moment the other day.
Told some of this story on the Border Patrol, but it’s Sunday evening and the kids want to do a family bike ride down to the park and the answer to that is always going to be yes.
So we get the bikes out, but then my wife’s bike — a Covid purchase, so we splurged, which is why I was especially mad about this — basically falls apart. The chain falls off, and when I get it back on she tries to ride it again then part of the chain essentially just detaches from the bike. She’s done.
So, she ends up taking my bike with the kids, which was a bummer, but not nearly as much of a bummer as it would’ve been if I didn’t walk inside, grab a Banquet, and turn on Phil as he won the PGA Championship.
The golf was great, sure, but I will not remember the golf in three days.
But I will not forget this scene in 30 years:
We’ve seen versions of this before, obviously. The last group on the last day of a major is often followed by an enormous crowd like that. But rarely with that volume, and I would argue never before with that same specific energy.
They were yelling for Phil, of course, because it’s cool to be even a small part of a moment like that. But I also think they were all yelling for themselves, and for us, because that was instantly the coolest sports moment since Covid.
After the golf, I flipped over to the basketball — Knicks-Hawks, which normally I’d be slightly more interested in than fly-windshield, but Madison Square Garden sounded like John Starks and the 1990s.
The Knicks lost the game because Trae Young really is some version of Steph Curry, and it was a great game, but one that nobody involved would’ve particularly remembered without that energy.
A year ago, we had no sports. We had nothing. Not even games in empty stadiums and, in fact, games in empty stadiums sounded amazing.
We got games in empty stadiums again, and that was great at first, but wasn’t too long before we all had to know we were fooling ourselves. This is the part that people with agendas either didn’t understand or actively chose to ignore when talking about TV ratings.
It wasn’t just the compressed schedule, or that empty stadiums made sports less of an escape. It’s that the games simply weren’t as much fun.
Fans are not just customers. Fans are in a lot of ways the product. Cameron Indoor Stadium and Allen Fieldhouse are two of the most famous buildings in college basketball, but when they’re empty, the games there feel like glorified AAU.
When sports are on TV, fans are sort of the translator for people at home. They cue the announcers on what’s important, and they lift the biggest moments from fun to legendary.
We’ve missed that for well over a year now. The first game I went to with fans came late last summer, when Sporting Kansas City allowed a few thousand fans. The spontaneous yell of anticipation and then celebration put goosebumps on my arms. And that was something like 2,000 people!
The Monarchs and Kansas City NWSL are playing without capacity limits. This weekend, Sporting will play their first home game without limits. Next week, the Royals will do the same, and unless something goes very wrong the Chiefs will follow in the fall.
This is that walk closer to whatever normal is going to look like. This is more opportunities for people to connect, both with teams with themselves. This is more fun, more energy, more memories.
Sports are resilient. There’s too much money to be made, and too many of us care too much for it to be any other way.
But, holy smokes, I’d almost forgotten that feeling of when sports are at their best, with thousands of strangers bonded over the event in front of them, the athletes and fans lifting each other up and creating some of the best moments humans are capable of making.
This week’s eating recommendation is the Korean short ribs at Brown and Loe, and the reading recommendation is Alex Schiffer on James Harden’s mind.
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OK. That’s all my begging. For now.
It’s a great question. The Royals took their off day on Monday one game under .500, four games back in the division, and (because the Red Sox, Rays and Yankees are killing it) five games back in the Wild Card.
Here’s how I think about the 2021 Royals: if you think they are what they’ve been, the Royals are not only not a playoff team but they are also unlikely to finish the season this close to .500.
But if you look around the roster and through the system, you might conclude they have a chance to surprise.
Let’s do these in order.
If the Royals are what they’ve been, they are a tease. They are a team with talent but not enough pitching. They have too many holes in the lineup to hold up over 162, and some level of athleticism but not enough to win games on defense. They are a team that could win if everything goes right, but we all know everything doesn’t always go right.
The view is a little different when you think about what the Royals could be, and soon.
We’ll get into the particulars soon enough, but this is a team that could soon add Adalberto Mondesi, Bobby Witt Jr., Edward Olivares, and some pitching depth. Hunter Dozier should be off the IL soon, and I know people are sick of hearing this, but there’s much more bad luck than bad hitting in his numbers so far. It’s hard to believe that Jorge Soler is simply done as a productive big leaguer at 29, two years after leading the American League in home runs.
The 11-game losing streak remains a pretty strong warning, though. Teams that are even close to as good as the Royals believe they are don’t often lose 11 in a row. That’s more than bad luck.
The beauty of 162 games is that frauds are exposed, and the good teams rise.
It’s easy to forget this now but the 2013 Royals lost 19 of 23 games in May. That’s like losing 11 in a row AND THEN losing eight of 12. That’s terrible. And there were plenty of people in and around Kansas City who thought that group was soft. They played .589 ball (a 95-win pace) over the last 107 games and finished with the franchise’s first winning season in a decade.
The 2014 Royals weren’t very good for most of the year. They lost nine of 13 during a stretch of May, six of seven during a stretch of June, and seven of eight in a stretch of July. They sat two games under .500 on July 21 and there were people around town demanding that Ned Yost and Dayton Moore be fired. I remember being ripped for saying they should keep their jobs at least until the end of the season.
We know how that one turned out.
This is not me saying the Royals will win 86 games like 2013, or come within a Madison Bumgarner of winning the World Series like 2015.
This is me saying that if any fan base in the country should know that a definitive judgments on baseball teams in May are hooey, or that the worst stretches don’t always define a team — it should be Royals fans.
There’s a path forward for this group, particularly if it stays healthy and adds the talent already in the organization.
They need to rise to the challenge, particularly in a loaded American League and AL Central. The climb now is steeper than it was in 2013 and 2014. That’s not an excuse. That’s reality.
So I guess my answer is this:
If the Royals play like they’ve played so far, they’re likelier to lose 90 games than finish above .500.
If the Royals play like they are capable — and this isn’t about guys having career years; just reasonable production — they will be the rare team to get more talented as the season progresses and would be a legitimate threat for a playoff spot.
Would you like to watch it again?
Yes?
Big league players are just different, man. That pitch is 97 mph, and it caught too much of the plate, but it’s also down and away and Santana has to sort of lunge his arms at it and still pulls it 442 feet to the right side of center field.
Just incredible.
If you’ve watched the Royals for any number of years I’m preaching to the choir, but Santana has always had a presence about him in the box. He never looks overmatched. Never looks surprised.
A lot of this is his incredible plate discipline — the man led the league in walks last year while hitting .199, which is just silly — but it’s also about how surgical his swings are, being a switch hitter, and the body language that just makes you believe he’s in control.
I don’t know what he has left at 35. I think he’s more of a good hitter now, and not a great one. But he’s capable of great moments, and he’s the type of presence that makes his area of the lineup much more difficult to deal with.
He’s a central part of why this group has a relatively high ceiling, but they need to get some other guys going, and this is a good time to talk about Jorge Soler.
Before we talk about that, I’d like to talk about something that’s just going to make you guys yell at me. Apologies in advance. But it’s true.
Jorge Soler is overswinging. I think we can all see that. He’s not going the other way, and he’s struggling against fastballs, which is weird to see.
But if you look at his plate discipline numbers, he’s not chasing more than usual. That’s important.
And if you look at his Statcast numbers, you’ll see his quality of contact is outstanding — barrel percentage twice the league average, exit velocity and hard hit percentage in the top 5 percent of the league, and an expected slugging percentage* that’s above his career average.
* MLB.com defines it like so: formulated using exit velocity, launch angle and, on certain types of batted balls, Sprint Speed.
tl;dr — he’s got some stuff to fix, but his numbers are dripping with bad luck.
I bring this up mostly because I know a lot of you want him benched. The numbers I’m citing don’t make a lick of difference for what’s happened on the field so far, I get that, but I’m just trying to tell you that he’s not lost. He’s not suddenly overmatched.
I do think his time in right field should be limited, though. He just doesn’t cover enough ground, particularly at Kauffman Stadium. He takes bad routes at times, too, which just makes it worse.
Olivares is interesting. The Royals were excited to get his athleticism and potential, and played him in all three outfield spots last year as he slashed .274/.292/.419 in 18 games.
They didn’t love him enough to not trade for Andrew Benintendi or not sign Michael A. Taylor, and this is a small sample size, but he’s slashing .406/.488/.696 in 17 games at Omaha. He also just turned 25 years old in March.
I might write more about this soon, but I might see what a lineup like this did:
Merrifield, 2B
Santana, 1B
Benintendi, LF
Perez, C
Soler, DH
Taylor, CF
Gutierrez, 3B
Lopez, SS
Olivares, RF
That’s very imbalanced with six right-handed hitters — at least part of why Ryan O’Hearn has been playing — but with the injuries I wonder if it’s the best route.
Then at full strength — which could be sooner than later — you could go with something like this:
Merrifield, 2B
Santana, 1B
Perez, C
Benintendi, LF
Soler, DH
Dozier, RF
Mondesi, SS
Witt Jr., 3B
Taylor, CF
That will not be the Royals’ actual lineup. They’d never bat Benintendi cleanup, and they’d have Mondesi higher. I just like to space out R-L-R as much as possible, and wonder if Mondesi performs better without top-of-the-lineup pressure.
But, really, if you have those nine guys I’m not sure you can make a terrible lineup.
This is what I’m talking about when I say the Royals have the pieces already in-house to make a run.
They’d still need more pitching, particularly depth in the bullpen, but nobody really asked about that this week so let’s just move on.
You know what, it’s been so long I’m probably going to be off a few minutes on the schedule but here’s the basics:
3:15 — park, get to the press box, start computer, say Hi to whoever’s up there
3:45 — clubhouse opens. I usually have two or three guys in my targets, but it’s important to be flexible and remember that not all conversations should happen with an open notebook.
4:15 — manager talks, usually in the dugout, but it occurs to me that Mike Matheny has never done a group interview before a regular season game as Royals manager that wasn’t on Zoom. So maybe he’ll prefer to interview room. Who knows.
4 to 6 or so — you’re usually on the warning track near the dugout, and this is the time to appreciate the sport, maybe pick off a coach or scout to get smarter, and see what you can notice that might help you understand things better. Sometimes that’s where guys are shagging, sometimes it’s personal interactions you might notice, sometimes it’s just asking a direct question to someone who lives what you’re trying to write about.
6 or so to 7 — transcribe, research, dinner, whatever.
The manager talks about 10 minutes after the final out, and from there it’s a bit of a scramble. The pregame clubhouse is pretty chill, but postgame you better have a point in talking to someone, and it better be about the game that was just played, and it better not take forever. Which is fine, because you still have to go upstairs, transcribe, research, and try to write a thousand or so words that will be coherent and hopefully convince people to come back for your next one.
I usually get home around 12 or 12:30, but can never go right to sleep, so I usually watch SportsCenter or an old Chappelle’s Show or something and then get like five hours sleep before the kids are up.
God I miss that.
Sometimes I feel like the only one who’d be VERY skeptical of a move like this.
The plusses are obvious. He’s not quite what he used to be, but he’s a Hall of Famer who’d be two seasons removed from 99 catches for 1,394 yards. He only played nine games last season, but before that had a six-year run where he averaged more than 100 catches and 1,500 yards.
Players of Jones’ talent just don’t become available very often.
But I’m taking the under on this one. I believe in the strategy of trading the value of high picks for the certainty of proven veterans — especially when you’re drafting late in rounds — but I don’t think you can get in the habit of doing that all the time.
Even if the Chiefs could get Jones’ $15.3 million salary this year under the cap, he’s due another $11.5 million next year when they’ll also need to pay Orlando Brown and Tyreek Hill.
I also see Jones as an objectively great player, but an awkward fit for what the Chiefs need. Did you know that just 30 of his 60 receiving touchdowns have come in the red zone?
The Chiefs don’t need help between the 20s. They’re fine there. They need a receiver (or tight end) who can win the margins when the field shrinks, and give the Chiefs a complementary red zone target other than Travis Kelce and Andy Reid’s imagination.
I know it’s cool to dump on JuJu Smith-Schuster now, and I’m not saying he’s Julio F. Jones, but I do think Smith-Schuster would’ve been a better fit when you look at his red zone effectiveness and cost.
Jones would make the Chiefs better. There is no question about that. Mahomes dropping back and being protected by a top-half line and looking at Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce, and Julio Jones with Clyde Edwards-Helaire in the flat would just be cruel.
* Potentially top 10 or even better depending on Creed Humphrey and Lucas Niang.
But I just don’t like any of the following for the Chiefs: the acquisition cost, the Chiefs’ ability to absorb said acquisition cost, and the specific fit.
They’ve talked about it. It makes obvious sense, especially since he could presumably be a multi-inning guy if needed.
But starting pitchers are hard to find, and Duffy’s been pretty good there — would you be surprised to know he’s 23rd in adjusted ERA among pitchers with at least 150 starts since 2014?
Duffy is more frustrated about the injuries than the team, but they’re getting way more innings out of him as a starter than they would as a reliever. Besides, there’s no guarantee he’d stay healthy for a full season out of the bullpen.
I believe Duffy would be a very good relievers, and if he struggled a bit this season I’d wonder if that transition would come soon. He hasn’t. I get the problems in the bullpen, but you don’t move your best starter back there to help.
The Royals need to find a group of five starters — Duffy, Singer, Keller, Bubic and Lynch might be the bunch with the best potential — who can reliably give five to seven innings.
If they can get there, I think the problems in the bullpen are easier to navigate.
In an alternate universe, I feel like I’d watch all the NBA. The players are so good. The shot making is ridiculous. The personality stuff is a nice bonus. Objectively, it’s a far superior product than college basketball.
But I live in a place without the NBA, and I was raised in a house where the Royals were on every night in the summer and a college basketball game was on every night in the winter. My job keeps me interested in college basketball.
So I’d describe myself as more of a casual NBA guy. I watch a lot of highlights, find specific players who’s games I like to watch, and go from there.
With kids and a job that “requires” me to watch a lot of sports, it’s hard to watch an entire NBA game when I’m the only person in the house who cares.
So this is a long way to get into the point:
I love the playoffs, but am lucky to watch a full half of a game. We talked about Knicks-Hawks at the top here, but there are moments that can just wrap me up and not let me go. It seems to me that a defending champion with LeBron and Anthony Davis needs to lose before you pick against them, but I like this era of the NBA where the outcome isn’t a foregone conclusion.
There’s a world in which the 76ers win it all. The Bucks. The Nets. The Jazz, the Clippers, the Nuggets. That’s seven teams, which has to be the most in a while.
Watching the NBA is a particularly cool experience for me, because I have absolutely zero professional responsibility. I watch a lot of NFL, baseball, MLS, college football and basketball games in which no local team is playing, but even then, there’s something you’re seeing that’s relatable in some way to a team I’m paid American currency to cover.
The NBA and European soccer free me of that, which is an experience I want to protect.
I still root more for stories than particular teams, but it’d be cool to see LeBron do it again, even if it means he keeps going Paul Pierce on these injuries.
When in doubt, root for greatness.
The timing of this is great. I’m assuming this is on your mind because of the Royals’ Salute to the Negro Leagues game the other day, which is sort of like Kansas City’s Bob Kendrick Day, but I was able to spend some time with him last week when the re-branded T-Bones played their first game as the Kansas City Monarchs.
I consider Bob a friend, so I’m not going to be objective here. We talk about each other’s families. We’ve had conversations we both understood would not be shared. He’s given me advice on a lot of things, and we’ve talked about subjects much bigger than baseball.
So, there. Disclaimers. Take this for what you will.
Bob is a jewel of a human being. I cannot believe he’s met a human being in his life that he hasn’t made smile or laugh within 30 seconds. His smile and energy are unnaturally persistent, to the point that a reasonable person might be skeptical, but I’ve seen him in various moods and places over 20 years and can tell you he simply has an unnaturally high baseline.
If you knew Buck even a little bit, you would see a lot of him in Bob. The stories Bob tells are often Buck’s stories, with the same emphases, the same tone, the same punchlines. I’ve often marveled at the fact that when Bob tells a story to a big group, a significant number of them have almost certainly heard the story before, but they usually have the same reaction as the new audience.
That’s really hard to pull off.
Bob is a fierce advocate for the Negro Leagues Museum, but also for Kansas City, for baseball, for diversity, for fun. I sometimes joke that the only people in Kansas City better at their job than Bob is at his are Rusty Kuntz and the cook at the Peanut (original location obviously).
There are certain people who make Kansas City special. A lot of times I think about artists, chefs, philanthropists, architects, volunteers — anyone from Megan and Colby Garrelts to Sister Annie Loendorf to Mary Esselman and others. Because of what I do for a living I think a lot about how community-focused each of the local professional teams’ ownerships are.
Bob is in that group. Bob has spread an important message from coast to coast, promoting Kansas City along the way. He’s the perfect man for the job. Kansas City is lucky to have him.
Adam was nice enough to resend this, and I wonder if he’s going to regret it because this is basically my chance to fanboy on The Natural.
Weren’t expecting that one, were you?
I was probably 8 or so when I first saw it, which I think might be the perfect age to do anything for the first time.
I have to be honest: the love story part of it went directly over my head, and when I watched the movie again years later, I didn’t really like it. Seemed really slow.
But when I was 8, I was obsessed with baseball, and obsessed with baseball history, so the whole thing worked somehow. I even remember the part where the sports writer talks about “I was here before you, and I’ll be here after” was pretty cool.
Anyway, that final scene, where he tells the umpire “let’s play ball” and the blood is seeping through his wool jersey and the catcher wants it inside and the camera catches the spin of the ball and Hobbs causes a dang lightning show with the home run and then they cut to him playing catch with his kid ... I get that it’s corny, I get that it just hit me at the right time in my life, but mercy what a feeling.
Related: White Men Can’t Jump had the worst ending of all-time. That’s actually one of my favorite movies ever. I still quote it sometimes. It’s cinematic genius.
But, man. That ending. Just walk away, my man. Walk away.
And they weren’t even setting up a sequel?
Irresponsible.
There is a strong chance I’m simply blocking something out, you know, bottling up the darkest memories until they explode like a real man* but I cannot remember crying about the outcome of a game I watched on TV.
* That’s sarcastic! Don’t do that!
I do remember crying like my leg got cut off after a junior high basketball game, though.
This was ninth grade, and I know most people think of Lawrence for KU or hippies or Mass Street or whatever but I am telling you the truest thing I’ve ever told you when I tell you that at least in the 1990s Lawrence was a place that put an OBSENE level of importance on youth sports.
You might think the stories about the city not voting for a second high school because they wanted to maintain the Lawrence High football dynasty are exaggerated, but they are not.
Anyway. My junior high hosted a holiday basketball tournament with the other schools in town and then probably some others to fill out the field. This was ninth grade basketball, and not even a postseason tournament, but brothers and sisters I’m here to tell you it felt like Hoosiers.
For like a week straight leading up to the game, a different guy who used to play sports at my junior high would come talk to us before or after practice about how important this tournament was.
They’d tell us what they remembered about their games. They’d tell us how many people would be there. They’d tell us that if we didn’t play our hardest and (more importantly) our best that we would regret it for the rest of our lives. Many of them wore their old letter jackets when they did this.
So, as it happens, the championship game was us against the rival school across town. I should tell you now that some of the guys on that team are now my best friends in the world. They are terrific people. But I should also tell you that at that point I hated every single one of them. I hated their stupid faces and their dumb haircuts and everything else.
I was not an exceptionally talented basketball player. This should not shock you. I combined D+ athleticism with a severe disinterest in playing defense. But there is not a single activity I spent more hours on as a kid than shooting baskets, so if you left me open I could get you, especially if the first one went in because if the first one went in then I was convinced I was Chris Mullin.
So, the game’s going on, and it’s close. We had the two best players on the floor, but not a lot else, so I believe they went Triangle and 2 on us which meant the coach reluctantly put my non-defense playing hind parts in the game.
Obviously I’m shooting anything that walks, but the gym is loaded packed, louder than a rock concert, and these guys have been telling us all week that if we don’t win this game we might as well kick rocks the rest of our miserable lives so I’m nervous as hell and long story short I was 0-for-3 by the time our coach could pull me.
He did not ask me to go back in.
Anyway, we ended up losing because this kid on the other team kept hitting this baseline jumper that he’d never hit before in his life, and afterward the locker room was a bloodbath, and at some point I’d convinced myself that my jumpers in the second quarter ruined it all and I bawled like a newborn baby.
Totally over it now though. Completely. Nope don’t ever think about it still. Ever. Why would you ask that.
That’s amazing! What a life, man. Sounds like the kind of man who would say he didn’t need it, but it’s cool that you let him know what he meant to you.
My hero is my mom.
A lot of you have heard me talk about her, so I’ll try to keep this short. She taught me how to write, to love to read, to treat people with kindness, and that being strong is not about whether you can win a fistfight.
She gave up a lot so my dad could work, and when my sister and I were a little older and a little less high-maintenance she chased her own passions. She was a thoughtful and loyal friend, generous with her time, empathetic, smart, and a lifelong learner.
There were a lot of things she didn’t know or necessarily care about. But the issues and people she cared about she cared with everything she had. I know I’m speaking in generalities here, but like I said, I want to keep this short. The details are here. I’d love to hear more about your grandpa, too.
One thing that makes me smile: when I fell in love with my wife (both times), I don’t think I really understood or was conscious about how similar she and my mom are.
A lot of the stuff I love about her — fun, passionate, super loyal and dependable, great judge of character — are things my mom had, too.
Maybe that’s just as weird as it is cool, lol.
Oh buddy. This is one of my favorite weeks of the year.
My father-in-law organized this fishing trip. I don’t know when he started it, but he waited until I proposed to his daughter before inviting me, which I always thought was both funny and cool.
Funny — we started dating in seventh grade, and when we got back together the second time I think everyone knew it was a wrap.
Cool — respect the process.
Anyway, we stay in this log cabin on a lake, remote enough that even now the cell phone service is essentially nonexistent. The days start with a cordial at 8 a.m., and from there it’s six or seven hours on a boat where we make fun of each other, drink domestics, then eat what we catch for dinner.
It’s cigars and peace and laughs and a little bit like fantasy camp, because these guides basically do all the work — it’s their boats, their gear, their spots, and they clean the fish — but they somehow make you feel like you could do it on your own.
Honestly, it’s one of my favorite weeks of the year. The first time we went the guides asked the last time I was fishing, and they looked at me with this wild combination of disbelief and pity when I told them, “I don’t know, when I was like 8?”
Well, there’s a certain kind of fish in these lakes that they guides just hate, won’t eat, and my wife’s uncle always tells the story that by the end of that first trip, I’d have a cigar hanging out of my mouth as I pulled one of those ugly bastards out of the water and then banged it against the boat.
One cool thing — the days are long, the conversation easy, so I know that at least four or five of you who read the timesuck have been on the boat with at least one of the guides we use.
It’s just the best. My father-in-law made it special. He had this whole “opening ceremony” he went through the first night that involved stories and questions and brown liquor. My dad went one year and it’s the drunkest I’ve ever seen him. Like I said: it’s just the best.
My father-in-law died last year. It was shortly before Covid shut everything down, which provided this weird sense of retroactive relief. He was always very clear that he wanted this fishing trip to live much longer than him, and if things went right, longer than all of us, too. He and I talked a lot about what the right age would be to take his grandsons. Ten sounds about right?
Anyway, the trip didn’t happen last year, for the first time in at least 10 years. Covid is a bastard.
But we’re doing it this weekend. I’ve sort of become the de facto planner, the placeholder for my father-in-law, which means overplanning and schedules and down payments and everything else.
I’m so excited we’re doing this again.
Related news: There will be no timesuck next week.
This week I’m particularly grateful for the past school year. Our kids are done on Thursday, and it was nobody’s idea of a perfect year, but I’m proud of how they handled it, and more than that proud for teachers and everyone else who made it work. Here’s to more normalcy in the fall.