Spring Training games start today! Like, real baseball games (that don’t count in the standings)!
In yesterday’s Rumblings, Max posted that Stephen Kolek would start today’s game against the Rangers. Jaylon Thompson wrote an entire story about it for The Star:
“I’m excited for it,” Kolek said. “It’s a great honor to be the first one out for us and (I am) just ready for the opportunity to kind of continue what I was doing last year at the end of the season. I’m excited to get out there and get the team rolling on a good note.”
He also collected Mike Moustakas’s thoughts about the late Terrance Gore:
“It’s sad,” Moustakas said Thursday at the Royals’ spring training camp in Surprise. “You know, losing a member of our family and the Royals family, it’s really sad…”
“As great as a baseball player as he was — you guys saw what he was able to do on the field with all the speed — he was such a better person,” Moustakas said. “Just a great human, a great friend, father and husband.
“And, you know, we miss him a lot. We love him and his family. This organization is so great, we are going to do everything to help (his family) out.”
He also wrote about Jac Caglianone:
“When I went to see him in January, he’s completely open to what he learned from last year and how he wants to make corrections and move forward from last season,” Royals hitting coach Alec Zumwalt said. “And he’s come in here and is in a great spot mentally and physically.”
And, finally, he listed “three things” he was hearing:
This season, the Royals have a few NRIs who can earn a spot. MLB veterans Jose Cuas, Hector Neris and Eli Morgan have an opportunity. Each has experience pitching in the bullpen and could be welcome additions for organizational depth…
The offensive side features Brandon Drury, Abraham Toro, Kevin Newman and Josh Rojas, among others. There is expected to be a competition for the final bench spots, and these players could impress with a strong spring.
One of his other “things” was about Jonathan India, whom Anne Rogers wrote about:
Calling it a “family-involved offseason,” India trained at a local youth park near his house so his wife, daughter and parents could come with him. He trained in the gym with his dad. On the field, he reunited with the coach he trained with in high school, Bruce Charlebois, who runs a baseball school in Florida and is someone India has known since he was 7 years old.
“It was like bringing it back to my roots,” India said.
Looping back around to The Star (and because I don’t want stadium stuff harshing my Spring Training buzz), Michael Collins suggests Truman and Troost for the new Royals stadium. I don’t hate the idea.
A stadium near Truman and Troost would be served by an 18th Street streetcar expansion, linking it to the Riverfront, City Market, the Central Business District, the Crossroads, the West Side, Union Station and Crown Center, Midtown, the Country Club Plaza and 18th and Vine., Kansas City’s major cultural and entertainment districts would be connected by a single transit line, allowing people to move easily between neighborhoods and share in the city’s energy — connectivity we have not seen since the 1950s.
Listicles?
At the Athletic ($), Jim Bowden gives us his “MLB rookies to watch this spring: 20 players poised to make an impact in 2026”:
5. Carter Jensen, C, Kansas City Royals
Scouting grades: Hit: 60 Pwr: 60 Run: 45 Arm: 60 Fld: 50
When last season began, Blake Mitchell was considered the Royals’ top catching prospect. During spring training, however, manager Matt Quatraro kept raving about Jensen, 22, and his ascension as a prospect. That conversation continued throughout the year until Jensen was promoted to the major leagues on Sept. 1. He lived up to Quatraro’s expectations and beyond as he slashed .300/.391/.550 with three homers and 13 RBIs in 60 MLB at-bats, good enough for a 161 OPS+.
Jensen profiles as a middle-of-the-order hitter and his power will benefit from the new, smaller dimensions at Kauffman Stadium this year. The most improved part of his game is his defense and it certainly helps that he has future Hall of Famer Salvador Perez as a mentor as he continues to develop as a big-league catcher.
J.J. Piccolo, Royals GM: “Carter is a gifted hitter who makes great decisions at the plate. Great combination of on-base (skills) and power. He’s also done an incredible job working on his defense and has become a well-rounded defensive player.”
At ESPN, Buster Olney is doing position rankings. Yesterday was 1B:
10. Vinnie Pasquantino, Kansas City Royals
After a string of injuries, Pasquantino stayed on the field in 2025 and finished with 66 extra-base hits, 113 RBIs and a career-high 120 OPS+. He played 126 of his 160 games at first base last season but could have more time at DH in ’26, as the Royals rely more on Carter Jensen behind home plate and Salvador Perez plays more games at first.
Blogs?
At Inside the Crown ($), David Lesky looks at players with a lot to gain in Spring Training:
Daniel Lynch IV
I don’t think Lynch is a lock for the Opening Day roster, and if he goes to AAA, he may never see the big leagues again. That’s probably hyperbolic because lefties get chance after chance after chance after chance af…fine, I’ll stop. But this is the first camp that Lynch isn’t doing any starting in. Once a starter gets moved to the bullpen because he’s not good enough to start, there isn’t really anywhere to go if he’s not good enough to relieve either. Last season, he put up a great ERA. The underlying numbers, though, were anything but great. He struck out just 15.6 percent of hitters while walking 9.0 percent. He gave up a hit per inning.
He looked nothing like the pitcher he was down the stretch in 2024 when he was starting to look like a legitimate weapon. He has an edge over a lot of guys because the only other lefty in the bullpen who isn’t guaranteed a spot is Bailey Falter. The non-roster lefties are Chazz Martinez, Frank Mozzicato, Hector Olivares and Hunter Patteson. Knowing the Royals would like multiple lefties in their bullpen, Lynch has a huge edge, but if he looks as hittable as he did last season, he might not lose his job for Opening Day, but he’s going to be on thin ice. And, truly, if he’s on thin ice now, his career will start looking like a lot of non-roster spring training invites.
Over at his new Into the Fountain digs (update your URL), Craig Brown asks “Did the Royals do enough this winter to contend in the AL Central?”
So from this list, I’m left to wonder how the Royals missed out on Harrison Bader? When the offseason started, I didn’t rate Bader as a good free agent bet. The industry consensus projected something like a two year contract at close to $30 million. I just kind of saw that as an overpay if that was the deal he was truly able to sign. He inked with the San Francisco Giants for two years at $20.5 million. That seems more than fair. Again, I did not see Yaz getting a bigger contract than Bader.
We can mark it down as a miss, but it’s not a huge whiff. The larger point is, there just weren’t many good options that fit the Royals needs on the free agent market. We see where the Royals spent the majority of their money: signing Lane Thomas. Maybe he will have that bounce-back season and impress.
Despite the less than appealing optics on how much they spent in the free agent market, their roster and the players available always made a Royals-sized splash something of a long shot. Doesn’t make it any less disappointing, though.
At Royals Keep, Kevin O’Brien picks out one pitch from three different pitchers to watch in Spring Training:
Bergert threw six pitches and produced an overall TJ Stuff+ of 105, which is impressive. He also sported five pitches with grades of 52 or higher and a 51.7% zone rate overall. Unfortunately, his chase rate was 25.1%, his whiff rate was 23.9%, and his xwOBACON was .373. Those are all mediocre marks, to put it nicely, and Bergert should produce better results with that kind of TJ Stuff+ profile.
One thing Bergert seems to be working on this spring to help him overcome this issue is adding a new breaking ball.
Blog Roundup:
- Philip Ruo at Royals Keep: Who Will Lead Off for the Royals in 2026?
- Caleb Moody at KOK: Royals’ duo of rotation contenders can build their cases in first Cactus League games
- Andrew Banks at KOK: Predicting the Royals’ best Opening Day bullpen ahead of spring training
Since we’re about to start a new season, let’s continue on with our nuts and bolts from last week. This week, I’m going to look at the state of Royals media. Back in 2023, when I changed over my OT format from video games to… everything, one of my first topics was “How to Write a Rumblings”. As mentioned:
I have an incomplete, unpublished story called “Future Royals Rumblings Notes” which is a giant scratch pad of story ideas and lists of content I’ve already used (to avoid duplicates)… I organize my Rumblings into 5 main sections: “Official Royals news”, “Royals blogs”, “MLB news”, “Off Topic”, and “Song of the Day”. I often combine a couple, especially in the slow offseason.
Let’s check in on those sources and see how they’ve changed.
BIG REQUEST: If you know of any Royals site that I’m missing, please post them in the comments!
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For the first section, here’s what I consider “official” sources. Some writers have come and gone but the sites are all still there. Bluesky has also added another avenue for social media.
KCRoyals.comhttps://www.mlb.com/royals – And associated Twitter/BlueSky accounts like the Royals official account (https://twitter.com/Royals ; https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3rkgpi6qhb4p6ne4jk2kspzw), Royals Player Development account (https://twitter.com/KCRoyalsPD; https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x6tn4x7vcrgtxmzzuxjzj4lz), Royals PR account (https://twitter.com/royals_pr), beat writer Anne Rogers (https://twitter.com/anne__rogers ; https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:i4yq27mpdcvjy7brupe3kaee), broadcaster Joel Goldberg (https://x.com/goldbergkc), and communications VP Sam Mellinger (https://twitter.com/mellinger/).
KCStarhttp://www.kansascity.com/sports/mlb/kansas-city-royals – The local newspaper of record needs no introduction. Its writers can be found on social media. Since this list was last created, Lynn Worthy went on to St. Louis and Jaylon Thompson has taken over at the primary Royals beat writer (https://twitter.com/jaylonthompson). Other writers at The Star who cover the Royals include Pete Grathoff (https://twitter.com/pgrathoff) and Blair Kerkhoff (https://twitter.com/BlairKerkhoff).
The Athletichttps://theathletic.com/royals/ – They don’t have a “beat writer” for the Royals after Alec Lewis moved to cover the Minnesota Vikings a couple of year ago. I have a number of former Royals writers who also occasionally write for this or similar outlets. I think these names are all recognizable to longtime Royals fans: Joe Posnanski (https://x.com/JPosnanski ; https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3fip3tf6aqianjsuq7qqdwop), Rany Jazayerli (https://x.com/jazayerli ; https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:yckd7jrcohsawasws2zdqilf), and Rustin Dodd (https://www.twitter.com/rustindodd)
Royals MLBTRhttps://www.mlbtraderumors.com/kansas-city-royals – Not “official”, per se, but if any little transactions fall through the cracks, the Royals page for MLB Trade Rumors might have them
Google Newshttps://news.google.com/search?q=kansas%20city%20royals – Finally, for anything I might have missed earlier, this is a bit of a catch all. It’s a random aggregator and sometimes has stuff days or weeks old. It’s also a good place to pick up oddball stories from non-standard outlets.
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Next up is my first checks for the “MLB” section. I have links to major sports outlets as well as their Royals-specific pages to try and grab even more stories to share.
Fangraphshttp://www.fangraphs.com/http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/category/royals/
ESPNhttp://www.espn.com/mlb/team/_/name/kc/kansas-city-royalshttp://www.espn.com/mlb/
CBS Sportshttps://www.cbssports.com/mlb/
https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/teams/page/KC/kansas-city-royals
Yahoo Sportshttps://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/
https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/teams/kan/
Associated Presshttps://apnews.com/hub/mlb (Their Royals-specific site is gone, but their MLB hub remains)
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Blogs have had the most turnover.
Reddit (not really a blog, but you know what Reddit is) https://www.reddit.com/r/KCRoyals/
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Inside the Crown (David Lesky) The first of two OGs. Many of David’s stuff is behind a paywall, but he still has free posts. (https://insidethecrown.substack.com) (Twit: https://twitter.com/DBLesky)
Into the Fountains (Craig Brown) In the last couple of months, Craig moved from Substack to Ghost. https://intothefountains.ghost.io/ (old site: https://intothefountains.substack.com/) (https://bsky.app/profile/craigbrownkc.bsky.social)
Royals Keephttps://royalskeep.com/ Kevin O’Brien continues to write at the #3 Royals blog after he moved here from Royals Reporter (https://royalsreporter.com/); social media: (https://bsky.app/profile/royalskeep.com, https://x.com/royalskeep)
Kings of Kauffmanhttps://kingsofkauffman.com/ Maybe I was too hasty. We’re lumping the venerable Fansided KOK in with Royals Keep at #3. Keep has longer posts, KOK has more plentiful posts. Both are frequently cited in this space like today.
UL’s Toothpickhttps://ulstoothpick.substack.com/ Darin Watson (https://twitter.com/Darin_Watson) is doing something wholly unique. His site is fairly old. But what he’s been doing the last few seasons is a “This Date in Royals History”. Last year, he was looking back at 1985. So, on July 6th, his entry would be about what the Royals were doing on July 6th, 1985.
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In the last couple of years, we’ve lost a couple of major Royals minor league sites. Pour one out for these two.
Royals Farm Report: hxxps://royalsfarmreport.com/ (Alex Duvall’s farewell)
Farm to Fountains: hxxps://farmtofountains.com/ (Preston Farr’s note about the site)
EightOneSixhttps://royalsminors.substack.com/p/roster-preview-10-royals-sign-john Looks like Preston has a new gig that I just learned about today (https://x.com/royalsminors)
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Below are sites that post infrequently but you never know who will wake up for a new baseball season
Royals Data Dugouthttps://royalsdatadugout.substack.com/
Diamond Chronicleshttps://diamondchronicles.substack.com/
Powder Blue Nostalgiahttps://powderbluenostalgia.substack.com/
Kansas City Royals on SI (formerly Inside the Royals, now mostly a junk news aggregator) https://www.si.com/mlb/royals/
Fansided KC Kingdomhttps://kckingdom.com/kansas-city-royals/
Swinging Buntshttps://swingingbunts.substack.com/
Bleeding Royal Bluehttps://bleedingroyalblue.com/
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And there’s my full list of links. Again, if you know of any others, please post them in the comments. I’m happy to link to Royals sites, particularly blogs that could use the extra hits.
If you’ve been reading me for a while, you know what clip is coming today: