A baseball hangover

A late, and brief, newsletter today. Pretend you're reading this on the West Coast or something. Or in Kansas while trying to poach the Royals from Jackson County.

This will be brief today because West Coast baseball is brutal. Especially when you combine that with a torpid performance we’ve seen from the boys since they arrived for their farewell dates at Oakland Coliseum.

Two games. Two losses. To a team that was about 20 games under .500 and had dropped nine in a row ahead of this series. That’s what we’ve seen this week in a nutshell.

Cole Ragans was Cole Ragans. Which means he was good enough that, had the Royals offense shown any kinds of life, they should’ve beaten the A’s. You put starter A1 on the mound and the expectation is he will keep you in the game until the bats have a chance to make some noise. Ragans held up his end of the bargain. The bats most decidedly did not.

The Ragans four-seamer averaged 96 MPH. His change featured 10 MPH of separation. He recorded seven whiffs on the heater and six on the cambio. He located his knuckle curve for strikes. It was a good outing.

The blip came in the third. Ragans took temporarily leave of his command, walking the first two batters of the inning. Miguel Andujar seemed intent on helping Ragans get back on track as he looked foolish on the a couple of pitches, radically expanding the zone on a cutter and again on that knuckle curve to fall being 2-1. He then chased a 97 MPH fastball that was well out of the zone for an opposite field single.

That was one run.

Brent Rooker was next. He spit on a slider that was well elevated and then went down and knocked a change into right field.

That was two. And that was enough.

As for the offense…Do we really need to discuss the offense. Nick Loftin reached base three times. Kyle Isbel had a couple of knocks. Bobby Witt Jr. did his thing, which meant he singled and drove in the Royals lone run with a double.

And that’s that. The Royals lone run. Even with your ace on the bump, you’re going to need more than one run to get things done.

The A’s salted the game away in the later innings against the bullpen. It’s exposing the weaknesses on the team, but it’s not like we’re discovering things we didn’t already know. The bullpen needs help. The lineup needs lengthening. Even the A’s can work you over when the flaws are bubbling too close to the surface.

Monday, the Royals were bumped from second place in the division. Tuesday, the Red Sox have closed what had been a five game gap between them and the last Wild Card spot down to a single game.

Nobody said it was going to be easy, but this stretch where the Royals have now lost eight of 10 means the padding they built up over the first almost three months of the season is now toilet paper thin. Single ply.

Hey! We haven’t discussed stadium news lately. Why not?

In the least surprising twist of this whole stadium saga, the state of Kansas is coming for the sports teams on the other side of border. Have you ever seen someone standing on a street corner just drop their pants? That’s what the Kansas legislature did on Tuesday, with both houses voting to authorize bonds that could pay for up to 70 percent of two new stadiums and facilities. The minimum investment is $1 billion. Given that both structures (and surrounding facilities because as we all know, it’s not just about shiny new stadiums for these teams) are estimated at this moment to cost around $4 billion, that would kick the state’s investment closer to $3 billion.

Here’s the catch, though. There’s only a minimum investment in the bill. There’s no maximum, no cap. In business parlance, this is known as “a blank check.” Oh! And to use the STAR bonds as the state plans, they will be adjusting the percentage that these bonds are legally allowed to cover, bumping it from the current 50 percent to the proposed 70 percent. Also, the bill allows the teams to designate the STAR district around their facilities where the sales taxes are directed to the repayment of the bonds.

And…And! The bill has a provision that “any agreement between the state and the teams would be confidential until after it’s been executed.” So much for transparency.

At least the good citizens of Jackson County were afforded the opportunity to tell a couple of billionaires to shove it when presented with a plan light on details and heavy on public funding. These charlatans in Kansas are more than happy to hand the Royals and the Chiefs a blank check to get them over the state line.

That said, this was always going to be the second act. I’m having a difficult time wrapping my head around the idea the Royals would move 22 miles down I-70 to the west. To another junction where 70 and 435 meet. No Adams Mark? No problem. There’s a Nebraska Furniture Mart. The Chiefs? Yeah, that may make sense. Why not give the Hunt family their cherished domed stadium?

Yeah, yeah, yeah…ballpark village for the Royals and all that. When they started lifting up Atlanta’s Battery as the gold standard of new stadium developments, it never made much sense they would look for an urban location. The Battery is in suburban Cobb County, 10 miles from downtown Atlanta. The Legends area sort of meets that in terms of location and space. Plenty of land to turn over to the bulldozers and cement merchants. (Watch out for that concrete cancer!) Although, if there’s a less interesting patch of land in the metro than where the Truman Sports Complex is located, it just might be the Legends.

But I digress. The Royals aren’t looking for a site. They’re looking for leverage. Leverage that will get them public funding. And the state of Kansas just stepped up. Big time. Maybe Sherman and company aren’t that dim when it comes to getting what they want.

Your move, Missouri.

Then on Tuesday a nifty new stadium render dropped:

A crown on the scoreboard. Fountains. A view of downtown. It took someone this long to come up with that?

Apparently this is just a little bit of freelance from Robb Heineman and MANICA, a sports stadium architecture outfit. Their pitch—if you could even call this a pitch because they have yet to formally present an idea—is that the stadium would be built in the West Bottoms…right on the state line.

So a batter could launch a ball in Kansas and it would land in Missouri. That’s kind of…cool? Maybe the state line could bisect the pitcher’s mound. Right-handers would be releasing their pitches in Kansas. Southpaws get Missouri. You think the states are getting ready to fight for these teams, how about the state income tax implications? Could be fun.

Anyway, this is just a reminder we’re still in the early stages of this drama. Missouri will have a chance to answer Kansas. Kansas City will be involved. About the only party that’s been disqualified is probably Jackson County because of the personalities involved. But this render is the best I’ve seen. The idea is unique. This is where we should’ve started from.

Central Issues

Tigers 0, Braves 7

Atlanta jumped all over Detroit starter Tarik Skubal, tagging him for five runs in four innings, his shortest outing of the season. Austin Murphy hit a pair of two-run home runs for Atlanta. The Tigers won just one of six on their just-completed road trip.

Mariners 0, Guardians 8

The Guardians forced Seattle starter Bryan Woo to throw 30 pitches in the first inning and, while they only scored one run, served noticed the offense was there to do damage. Steven Kwan hit a two-run dinger in the second. That guy is having a phenomenal season, hitting .397/.456/.554. Josh Naylor clubbed a pair of homers later in the game and drove in three. All the offense was a tad unnecessary as Tanner Bibee had it working. He struck out 12 in six innings.

Rays 3, Twins 2 - 10 innings

The Twins threw this one away. Literally. A Royce Lewis throwing error with two outs in the tenth allowed the go-ahead run into score for Tampa. The Twins couldn’t get their Manfred Man home in the bottom of the frame.

Astros 4, White Sox 1

The Astros were without Kyle Tucker and Yordan Alvarez, but no worries. Hunter Brown went six innings for Houston, with the only damage coming from an Andrew Benintendi home run. The Astros bullpen brought the win home with three scoreless frames. Ryan Pressly picked up a hold for his work in the eighth and Josh Hader secured the win in the ninth for his 10th save.

And the aforementioned Wild Card standings:

The Royals play this afternoon. A victory is encouraged.