The Royals have made a lot of transactions today, which could be exciting for fans hoping for a shakeup, but they’re mostly internal to the team.
The first announced move was to reinstate Stephen Kolek to the 26-man roster from the Family Medical Emergency List. In a corresponding move, Jose Cuas was optioned back to Omaha. Cuas pitched two innings last night in his season debut, and while he did allow a run, he also struck out three. So hopefully we’ll see him get more chances going forward.
Then, shortly before the game, the Royals announced that they had selected Luke Maile’s contract from Omaha and added him to the major league team. To accommodate his addition to the 40-man and 26-man rosters, John Rave was demoted back to Omaha and Eric Cerantola was designated for assignment.
Personally, despite Cerantola’s unsightly big league performances so far – 10 walks and a 10.13 ERA in 5.1 innings – I would have preferred to keep him around over Mitch Spence. At least Cerantola could also get a strikeout on occasion. I also probably would have demoted Tyler Tolbert or Kameron Misner over John Rave. Rave hasn’t actually made any boneheaded plays at the big league level so far this year, which is more than I can say for the other two, and I’m still very fascinated to see where his revamped swing could take him. But the Royals didn’t agree.
Considering Salvador Perez is also not in tonight’s starting lineup, we can add 2 + 2 and get 4. Salvy is probably hurting again. So the best move probably would have been to go ahead and put him on the IL so they could have a full, healthy bench. But the Royals would prefer to demote Rave to Omaha rather than put the aging catcher on the IL, which is what it’s there for. The IL has not stopped being lava, I guess.
Oh, and the Royals made one other under-the-radar move. It didn’t even get announced on their main social channels:
Royals fans from the last few years before Dayton Moore was fired will remember this move. The “add a guy we used to like a few years ago because we desperately need someone to pitch and heaven knows we don’t want to try anyone new!“ special. No guarantees that Barlow will make it back to the bigs with KC, but considering the bullpen carousel we’ve been on all year, I wouldn’t bet against it, either.
Finally, we got this tidbit from Anne Rogers:
Based on the timeline, it’s possible Cole Ragans underwent the internal brace procedure rather than a third Tommy John surgery, but it’s a pretty brutal blow to lose him for not just the remainder of this season, but at least midway into next year, too. It would seem to make it even less likely that they trade either Michael Wacha or Seth Lugo at this deadline, even if they’re currently the only guys with trade value that it would make any sense for the Royals to part with.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.royalsreview.com ’
