Chapter 1: What insights does Matt Quatraro provide about Bailey Falter?
Around here we show up for one another. We want the same for our health insurance. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City gets that because they're from here too. It's coverage from folks who know these roads and care enough to walk them with you. That's the benefit of blue.
Hour number four of the program on Sports Radio 810 WHB. I'm your host, Jack Johnson, Curtis Seabolt, Kyle Collier here. We are going to be telling you what you need to know to kick off this final hour. A little bit of audio, more Bailey Falter talk, and whatever we have time left over. Ah, Falter talk. That sounds like a... We opened this show with Falter Talk, and we've made our way back.
That's a bunch of Falter Talk, I'd tell you. He wasn't around long enough to really come up with some nicknames for him.
And almost never did he have a happy postgame because he was usually getting lit up.
That's the only one I can remember.
I was there the last time he... He pitched the prior time he pitched, and he was just like, yeah, it was crap. It was terrible. Brutal. Last night, it was like, yeah, it was terrible. But it's somebody else's fault. But I'm only taking part of the blame.
I mean, to give him a little bit of credit, sitting here, I never thought we'd lead off a show talking Bailey Falter.
That's the beauty of sports radio. Yes. Like, would it have been? entertaining for the first 30 minutes if the royals lost five to two and bailey falter pitched well and the bullpen gave up a couple of runs salvi had a sack fly and and lane thomas had an rbi ground out could we have gotten 35 minutes as we did probably not no but like if it was
Because at one point, they thought they were going to the bottom of the first at 1-0. Well, they had a couple of ropes, but, you know, they got through it. Maybe they'll get through two, and maybe the Royals can scratch some runs off Schlittler, and who knows? And then, well, okay, well, they got one more hit. Find a way to get out of this. Because the overturn made it 2-0. Yeah.
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Chapter 2: How is the Kansas City Royals' performance impacting their season?
I saw your thought, and I went, yep, I'm not going in the order here. Don't worry. I'm not going to throw Kyle off here. We're actually going toā He would have responded immediately. He would have been in my ear and said, no, look at your phone. Look one message lower here. We're actually going to start with Matt Quattrero. Yes, because it's fresh. It's much fresher. This was pregame.
We're going to pop the top off. We haven't even heard this sound yet. No, this is going to be first time for us as well. But I know a lot of you are wondering, what did Matt Quattrero have to think of all of this? Bailey Falter getting DFA'd earlier today, and then also the comments that have gone a bit viral throughout Royals Twitter.
But Matt Quattrero was asked about the designating Bailey Falter for assignment and recalling Mason Black from Omaha.
Sure. I mean, Mason is somebody that's been up here. We're comfortable. He can give us some length, you know, in case we need length today or in the next few days. He's gone, I think, as much as two and two-thirds recently, two and a third recently. So that was a big part of it. But, you know, we acquired Mason in the offseason because we like him and think he can get outs.
You know, as far as why we DF8 falter, just, you know, frankly, this didn't work out. You know, the
performance you know didn't work out the way we would have liked or the way he would have liked so we thought it was time to get a fresh start i like the fact that he said it just didn't work out it wasn't uh you know we got 26 guys up here and he was just number 27 at that point we just couldn't have him in the the clubhouse anyway just this didn't work sorry bailey it's not you it's me it's the numbers are not good
You cannot be walking around with that ERA and expect to get another outing, which would have been on Tuesday. A great American ballpark, I might add.
It's amazing in that we talked about those numbers at 12.4 or higher. Albie Lopez at least did it in one chunk in 03. Bailey Falter pitched last year and was bad and came back this year and was worse. I mean, imagine having an 11 ERA and going, phew, I've got to really make things up. Oh, nope, it's worse.
He would have been in the territory of if you give up a run every single inning you're out there, your ERA goes down. Yeah.
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Chapter 3: What are the prospects for the Royals in the upcoming MLB Draft?
Tell me the guy that you said, really? The fact that Matt Quattro said there's competition for the five spot, which happened to be Noah Cameron, who happened to be coming off finishing top five in rookie of the year voting. Chris Bubich, all-star last year. Well, he didn't pitch in the second half. You hurt the team in the second half. Seth Lugo, give me a break. Michael Walker, give me a break.
The guy who's been your opening day starter the last three years, who did you think you were going to be starting in front of? I have the guy. Go ahead. Albie Lopez. Yes. Yes. He does have the one up on him. He's the only guy.
My goodness. The only guy still alive because the other two guys died years ago.
This story has only baffled me more. Okay. We need to get to the other.
It's more baffling. Like there's more. Oh, my gosh. I can't believe you added that. But I think at this point now we have really have the entire story. We do. And the entire story is Bailey Falter was a bad pitcher and also a lunkhead. I also love that 10 years from now. Do you think Vinny Pasquantino isn't frustrated? Do you think Bobby Witt Jr. hasn't been frustrated?
Do you think Salve has been frustrated? A lot of those guys have been frustrated. I've never heard anybody in that clubhouse respond to that kind of question in that way. I can't remember the last time I heard a player after a truly brutal performance just completely lay it almost completely lay it on somebody else.
Couldn't prepare. That's awful work. Ten years from now, we will say the name Bailey Falter, and this is the only thing that we will think of. That's where I'm at with it. Remember when he did this and got run the next day? That's what will come to mind, in my opinion. But you brought up Vinny Pasquantino. He was asked about Quattrero's statement that they just have to get through it.
Yeah, we don't really have a choice but to get through this. So yeah, he's right. We're going to see what this clubhouse is made of. Um, I would agree with him. I think we've got a good group of guys in here. I think we've got a lot of confidence in here, but we've got to go do it. I mean, words are just words, right?
So it's nice to have faith, but we got to go, we got to go out there and prove it.
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Chapter 4: What challenges are the Royals facing with their current roster?
I mean, it got close in the ninth inning, but that's the recipe against the good teams. Against the terrible teams, you go sweep somebody, but they have one sweep this year in Seattle.
It's like in a basketball game, you give up a 10-0 run or a 12-0 run. You might want to give it. First, you just got to get a stop and get a bucket. Just get a bucket. Stem the tide. Then you can figure out what you got to do.
In the same way in basketball, too, when you go on those runs, what happens to your opponent? Tighten up a little bit. You see the Royals go 15-5. You go, uh-oh. They've just picked up 10 games from where their record once was. It's... It's a bad spot right now. It's not that it can't change. It's not what we're trying to get at here. They just need to do it. That's what Vinny Pasquantino said.
You got to do it. It starts with them. Doesn't matter what the lineup looks like. Go win tonight. Avoid another sweep at the hands of the New York Yankees. J.J. Cooper next. All right, back here on the program on Sports Radio 810 WHB. I'm your host, Jack Johnson, filling in for Seren Petro today. Going to talk some more baseball here with J.J. Cooper of Baseball America.
First things first, J.J., how are we doing this evening?
Good, good. How are you?
Well, other than the fact that the Royals have been playing some of their worst baseball of the season, I can't complain too much on a day-to-day basis. But, J.J., let's maybe just start there with Kansas City, a team that went into the season with such high expectation, thought they could be competing for the American League Central. Here they sit, 11 games under .500.
They're coming off the blowout loss to the New York Yankees. What have you seen from this team that has gotten them to this point at 22-33?
I would say that there are players who you expect to be key components for the Royals who just aren't producing so far. I would say there have been some wins. Bobby Wood Jr. is still Bobby Wood Jr. He's exceptional, but With Salvador Perez at the age he is, you always have to kind of worry, like, okay, is this finally the start?
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Chapter 5: How do injuries affect the Royals' pitching strategy?
what this team is going to be, barring some miraculous turnaround. I think that's where a lot of Royals fans are at, where the optimistic viewpoint is the American League's not very loaded this year. You bring up the Yankees, you bring up the Rays, the American League West seems to be wide open. Cleveland's been hot of late, but we know the Central can be so up and down.
So for this Royals team, this many games into the season, when do you go, all right, unfortunately, this is just who they are, whether that's a team that'll finish 20 games below .500, somehow get closer to .500. What, I guess, point in the season, the mark in the year do you go, stuff's not really going to change from this point on?
I mean, to be honest, it doesn't happen even over the course of the season, right? Like, even 162 games... doesn't necessarily ā it's enough to say this is what this team was because no one can say playing 162 games doesn't give you a fair picture. But I look back at the Tigers last year, right?
The Tigers were one of the best teams in the American League for the first two and a half months of the season. They were ā arguably the worst team in the American League for a stretch in August and September, but they still ended up kind of because of what they'd put in the bank at the early season, they still made the postseason.
They still basically ended up having a very similar season to the season they had the year before, even though it was the exact opposite season. The year before, they sold at the deadline because they hadn't been very good, and then they got better. The thing that kind of stands out to me about this Royals team is that I don't...
I don't see right now a whole lot of reason when you just laid some of the things you just laid out. Like, I don't feel like that there's a decision point coming anytime soon where you're like, oh, okay, we've got to, you know, if you're the Royals, like, we've got to decide, are we selling or buying?
Because I don't think that this is a team right now that makes a whole lot of sense that you're going to be buying, like, you know, we're going to make giant swings, but there's a lot of deals that can be made to improve the team that really just don't cost you much in prospects, even in salary, right? You can help bullpen.
You can help add a part-time player or even a little bit more than that to the outfield. Things like that can be done relatively low cost. I don't think that this team also is at a point where you're like, okay, everyone must go other than Bobby Witt Jr. and Michael Garcia and a few others and tear it down to the studs or anything like that either. So I guess the best answer I could give is,
I don't think that there's like this like impending decision point coming anytime soon. Obviously, the trade deadline is still more than two months away. I think you have plenty of time here still to see like what is this team going to shape up as? And I just keep coming back to like a lot of that's going to be. is Sally Perez more what you expect Sally Perez to be?
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Chapter 6: What is the significance of the Royals' farm system development?
It just hasn't worked so far this year.
I want to talk some Royals prospects with you here. We know that the Royals are not a team that has a loaded farm system. They're still building it back up over the last couple of years. Right now, the number one prospect in their system being Blake Mitchell.
Let's start with him because the Royals are right now focused on Carter Jensen, of course, who really fast-tracked his way to the big leagues last year, jumping a couple different levels. But Blake Mitchell is a top 10 pick. They rave about his defense. They rave about his arm, the maturity and the approach, the power in his bat.
But you look at the numbers and you go, is it alarming that somebody in high A and double A, he'll have the on base north of 400. But when you're hitting less than 200, it's not really putting it all together. So from your viewpoint, what has to change for Blake Mitchell to turn in from a really good prospect to maybe one of the better catching prospects in all of baseball?
I would say it's very simple. He has to make more, more consistent and better contact. That's pretty much, I would say kind of almost like it, you know, it's something where I, I do worry, like he has great on base percentages. He has great power, but I do worry when you are having this kind of contact issues in a ball, it's only going to get tougher, right?
So at some point, there's going to have to be, I would say, some sort of adjustment to this that kind of gets him to what I would say is more consistent contact. And even if that means sacrificing, his power is enough that, like, even if it sacrificed a little bit of power in the tradeoff, it would be okay. He does draw tons of walks as well.
If he's a, you know, with the catching with the defense and all that, If he can be a 230-240 hitter in the big leagues, he will be a very productive player. But that requires right now an improvement of 30 to 40 points in batting average. That means cutting your strikeout rate probably by 5%, 6%, 7% from what he's doing in the lower levels of the minors right now.
So that's a big adjustment and a big improvement that would have to be made to get him to that point. If you want, I would say like if... if we're all fans are like, okay, give me an example of guys done that.
I would say that, um, it's going back a little ways, but Matt Olson is a player who I, you know, remember when he was coming up with the A's, you know, more than a decade ago, it really was a swing that kind of was like blocks and power, but not a lot of batting average. And then he made improvements to it. And it's not like he ever became like a 300 hitter.
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Chapter 7: Who are the standout prospects to watch for the Royals?
He has major league velocity better than that right now, and that's why I kind of do view him as a little bit kind of in a different category than, say, like a Shields.
Before we move on to the major league baseball draft, I want to get one more guy in here to talk about in Justin Lampkin. I know we referenced him earlier in the previous question. He's quickly becoming one of my favorite prospects in the system. I think there's great deception in his delivery. The strikeout numbers were incredible in quad cities recently got bumped to Northwest Arkansas.
What should his timeline be? Cause I know that when you see that dominance so early on, especially in high, high a ball, uh, Those guys might get a little bit of a reality check in AA once they face better competition. And even though he's only had two starts, the strikeout numbers are still there.
It's of course not as good as Quad Cities, but with a guy like Justin Lampkin, I know he's a little bit older than Shields and Churrio. How is the developmental process with him and what do you like about him more importantly?
I would say a couple of things is really there to like, okay. One is, is that it is, I would say it's not, you know, amazing stuff, but it's present stuff, right? He has a, it's a 92, 93 mile or a fastball. And if he was a right-hander, I'd be saying, I don't know if that's enough. He's a lefty. So that's, you know, that that's not something where I'm worried about that.
I would also say like one of the things I'm looking for with pitchers who have success in a ball, right? Okay. Well, how are they having that success? If it's a guy who has below average DLO and a great changeup, I'm going to remain somewhat skeptical because class A hitters, as a general rule, are allergic to changeups.
If you have a quality changeup, you can just keep throwing it, and class A hitters will really struggle to adjust, will really struggle to hit it. That's not Lampkin. Lampkin's kind of a fastball, breaking ball guy, really more than the changeup. So, Those are kind of traits that are going to not be as troublesome. You have to improve.
You have to refine as you climb the ladder because more advanced hitters still struggle to hit a really good breaking ball. It's just something where change up. Generally, those guys have to develop the breaking ball a little bit more. The other part of this is, I would say, is he throws his fastball and his breaking balls. He's got a couple of them. He throws them for strikes.
That's important, too. So if you have kind of that foundational piece, right, that really kind of sets you up for success because he's got a fastball that plays pretty well. You know, again, I'm not going to say it's an amazing fastball or anything like that, but it's playable. And then he's got a pair of, you know, he's got these breaking balls that,
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Chapter 8: What concerns were raised about the Arkansas Razorbacks' schedule?
in that. I think Booth could end up being a very interesting pick at six, right? Because there is, like, if you said, who's going to be available at six, assuming Booth is available, that's going to be by far, I would say, the highest ceiling player that's available. Now, at the same time, There's more risk there. You are talking about a Mississippi high school kid.
Now, we had one of those a couple years ago named Connor Griffin. It ended up pretty good, right? So it doesn't mean, oh, okay, that's a risk reward, but there's no reward. No, Connor Griffin, who was picked ninth, is a pretty high reward. Booth has real significant upside. And that can be a really interesting pick at six. But at the same time, you also could say, okay,
Do they like any of that second tier of college player there, right? Which I would say there's a lot of bats where they'll all fit into that range where you're like, it's going to be very much eye of the beholder of which one is the top of that group for anyone in the team. The college arms, I think, is a little bit to be determined. We might see a Cameron Fluky.
fit kind of in that six, seven, eight range, but he's been hurt for much of the year. He's just coming back. We've got to see kind of how he pitches in the postseason. I mean, this season, this postseason may be over real soon, right? Like this is coming up this weekend. If Coastal doesn't advance out, he's done. But we haven't seen him really kind of dominate since he came back.
I would say also like with regionals come around this weekend, keep an eye on seeing like, okay, Is it Cole Carlin, who's a lefty who's up to 99, 100 miles an hour starter for Arizona State? He's been banged up a little bit lately. Lovillo's been down. But has he kind of come out and dominate in the postseason? If so, watch out.
A guy like Keegan Coons, who's gotten better and better at Tennessee, is that a guy? I would say that if you're picking at four right now, like the Giants are, There's only a couple names that really make a whole lot of sense. Picking at six, it's still very wide open, I feel like, because there's still a lot potentially to be determined, especially with the college postseason still to come.
Well, J.J., really appreciate your time, and have a good weekend. Look forward to some regional ball, and we'll see you next time. Sounds good. Thanks. All right. We'll come back and wrap up the show with the kicker.
But first, the Lafetta delicatessen end of the hour answer. We began discussing high run games in the last hour. How many games have there been in which both teams have scored 20 runs? My guess is going to be one. I think it's only happened one time. It's been two. August 25th, 1922 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The Cubs beat the Phillies 26-23.
The other, May 17th, 1979 at Wrigley Field in Chicago where the Phillies beat the Cubs 23-22 in 10. The same teams. It took them... 57 years, but the Phillies finally got some payback on the Cubs. There have been two games ever, and they've both been between the same two teams in the same ballpark. That is crazy. Which is what's on Kyle's hat.
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