Kansas City Royals News: A rare double play

Jaylon Thompson writes about the 5-6-4-3 double play from last night’s game. Anne Rogers also covered it here.

The Royals pulled off a rare 5-6-4-3 double play to end the fourth. Guardians designated hitter Rhys Hoskins lined a ball off Maikel Garcia’s glove. The baseball trickled over to Bobby Witt Jr., who fired to Jonathan India for an out at second.
India then threw to first and got Hoskins in time. The defensive play kept the score tied at 1-1 — and more importantly kept Wacha’s pitch count manageable.
The last 5-6-4-3 double play in the majors happened in 1995.

He also covered Michael Massey returning from IL.

Massey relied on the training staff and the club’s massage therapist. Typically, a Grade 2 calf strain requires 4–8 weeks of recovery. In recent days, Massey made significant progress and won’t have any restrictions moving forward. “I don’t really think about the calf too much at this point,” Massey said.

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Brent Maguire for the MLB mothership notes that both starting pitchers caught popups in last night’s game.

“I feel like pitchers don’t necessarily get to catch those very often. You always get called off,” Bibee said. “I feel like whenever the ball goes up like that, my mindset is always to catch the ball. No one called me off, and I got to catch it. It was cool.”
He wasn’t the only pitcher to grab a popup in this game. In the fourth inning, Royals starter Michael Wacha caught one off the bat of Cleveland’s José Ramírez, who appeared in his franchise-record 1,620th career game played. With no disrespect to Bibee, Wacha’s catch was certainly the more impressive of the two, considering he had to run into foul territory along the third-base line to catch it.

The Royals are expected to unveil their new City Connect uniforms this Friday. There was an apparent leak.

They are also trying to get involved in World Cup action later this summer.

FanGraphs covers Jo Adell’s three home run robberies.

Juan Soto was placed on the IL with a calf strain.

The Blue Jays have a pitcher attrition problem as Max Scherzer exited Monday’s game with forearm tendinitis.

The Rays won in their return to the Trop and a sellout crowd of…25,114.

Michigan won the NCAA Men’s basketball championship last night.

Meanwhile North Carolina hired Michael Malone to helm their men’s basketball program.

The Chicago Bulls cleaned house in their front office.

As the WNBA offseason gets underway after the CBA agreement, the Chicago Sky traded star Angel Reese to the Atlanta Dream.

The Masters is this weekend, and here’s a ranking of the players going into it.

New York Giants star defensive lineman Dexter Lawrence has requested a trade.