Kansas City Royals news: Justin Lamkin rising in prospect rankings

Oof. I thought we’d get something lighter after last Friday. I don’t think the last week made things better.

Max covered the labor negotiations so I’m just going to link to that article here.

I know there are a lot of opportunities for jokes here. But, in all seriousness, here’s a chance do good. Donate blood at any Community Blood Center donor center and get free Royals tickets:

Everyone who donates Monday, June 1, through Sunday, June 14, at any CBC donor center or mobile blood drive will receive two vouchers redeemable for tickets to a select 2026 Royals home game, while supplies last.

In addition, CBC and the Royals will host a special blood drive at Kauffman Stadium on Wednesday, June 3, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Donors who come to give at the stadium drive may choose between a limited-edition 2026 Royals T-shirt or two Royals ticket vouchers.

At The Star, Jaylon Thompson profiles Justin Lamkin:

Lamkin has a deceptive delivery. It’s a crossfire action with a little hitch that helps him hide his pitches during his windup. His fastball sits at 91-93 mph and can play up deeper into games.

He also has a gyro slider, changeup and curveball. Those pitches have gotten better under the tutelage of Royals senior director of pitching performance Paul Gibson.

“I think the slider is better than we originally got him late last summer,” Gibson said. “I think a lot of that has to do with the preparation and taking care of business in the weight room and arm care. But the breaking ball has definitely been a big weapon for him aside from the command of all four pitches.”

Speaking of which, at The Athletic ($), Keith Law updates his Top 50 prospect list. Lo and behold, there are a pair of Royals on the list:

22. Kendry Chourio

44. Justin Lamkin

Back to The Star, Anyone remember April Fool’s Day 2016? That was a good one, Nigel P. Higginbotham. This announcement, however, is no joke! Well, ok, it’s a little bit of a joke. Something about Royals and Royals cross-promotion comes to mind. Per Pete Grathoff, England’s soccer team will be attending the Royals game on June 21st:

“We would love to have them play catch,” said Sam Mellinger, the Royals’ vice president of communications and broadcasting, “but it just depends on their schedule.”

That game of catch would be before first pitch, of course. And the ceremonial first pitch likely would involve Harry Kane, Bukayo Saka or Jude Bellingham, three of England’s biggest stars.

I’m also grabbing a story from The Star from a couple of days ago that I don’t think we’ve linked to. Want some shoes to match your City Connect jersey? At The Star, PJ Green is reporting that the Royals City Connect Nike Air Max 1 drops on June 9th. I think we’re going to talk shoes sometime in the second half of this year.

Today, it’s Preston Farr from Eight One Six leading off with some MLB draft targets for the Royals:

OF Drew Burress – Georgia Tech

Burress is in his junior season for Georgia Tech. He’s played center field again this season and set the Georgia Tech career home run record at 58. His slash line is absurd at .366/.478/.660 with 45 walks and 40 strikeouts. MLB Pipeline ranks Burress as the number eight overall prospect in this year’s draft class, grading him as a 60 grade prospect with above average grades on all five tools. The concern with Burress is his small stature. He’s listed at 5-9, but Pipeline calls him “shorter than his listed 5-foot-9.” His raw ability, work ethic, and baseball smarts could be enough to overcome that, but it’s a concern nonetheless. Burress has the smallest physical stature in Pipeline’s entire Top 150 draft prospects for 2026. Perhaps there is some Corbin Carroll to his game, but the raw tools are certainly clear for Burress despite his small frame. His right-handed swing would fit well in a farm system stocked full of lefties as well.

At Royals Keep, Kevin O’Brien looks at some takeaways from the Yankees series:

When looking at these May bullpen metrics, it’s obvious that Quatraro and the Royals need to shake up the bullpen usage. Right now, they should be investing in their young arms with upside, which includes Lynch, Avila, Cruz, and Lange. Schreiber has emerged as a key piece this month,, and he deserves to keep his spot, but Erceg probably needs to be utilized less like a traditional closer and more like the “fireman” he was utilized a year ago when Carlos Estevez closed things out in the ninth.

Even with Erceg out of the closer’s spot, the Royals need to adopt a different philosophy for building a bullpen.

Other than a year ago, the Royals’ weakness has always been the bullpen under Quatraro and Picollo. A big reason for that seems to be that they trust “experience” over “stuff”. That strategy blew up on them with free-agent relievers like Chris Stratton and Will Smith. It’s blowing up a bit, not just with Estevez and Strahm on the IL, but with Erceg as well, who looks like a shell of his 2024 self.

Here’s something new for OT today. We weren’t really going to talk much about baseball today, anyway, were we? Meanwhile, I had a couple of other things I’ve been working on, but, in light of last weekend’s closest Indianapolis 500 in the race’s long history, I thought I’d write about it today. It also flows nicely from the Olympic stuff last week.

Just to set the stage here, I know very little about racing. I literally watch one race a year, and not even every year. I’m sure there are better people to get you interested in the sport. However, I’m the one writing Friday Rumblings today, so you’re stuck with me today.

Quick Soapbox: it’s impressive just how shameless sports networks are about covering their bottom line. For years, the race was broadcast on ABC, and the story was the front-page dominating event on ESPN.com from sun-up to sun-down all day on Memorial Day Sunday. They had a race tracker that was a lot like they use for the NFL draft that updated by the minute. This year, even during the race, you had to scroll past MLB results and NBA results that were more than 12 hours old. Really? It was impressive just how nakedly transparent it was.

And CBS Sports was no better. For a while, they were trying to set themselves up as a viable alternative to ESPN. But that’s fallen off over the last few years. The Indy 500 was a story on the front page, but didn’t even have a picture – it was just a live blog entry that was the third or fourth story on the front page. Yahoo used to be excellent. Before you laugh too hard, remember where Jeff Passan and Adrian Wojnarowski were when they became household names or who broke the 2011 Miami booster scandal. But they’ve since been gutted by cost-saving measures. Unfortunately, the broadcast was on Fox. Fox Sports pivoted to video almost a decade ago, so their site has long since been hot garbage.

This isn’t even important stuff in life – it’s just sports. Theoretically, they cover the “news” of sports with the veneer of journalism while also broadcasting some of the same sports they cover. However, time and again, they are perfectly happy to throw away little bits of their integrity to chase a few dollars. SportsCenter coverage of the NHL went from 10 minutes a night to about 60 seconds the minute ESPN dropped their hockey contract in the early 00s. So next time someone wants to say something like “no, ESPN wouldn’t be biased towards overrating the SEC to try and get them extra, undeserved spots in the CFP just because they own the broadcast contract”, forgive me if I sideye something like that. Never mind what these networks do for stuff that dwarfs the money from sports – like business and politics.

Back to the more fun stuff…

Most anyone can watch it on TV – it’s still broadcast on an over-the-air network. But the reason for this post is that I have attended the race twice in person (2011 and 2025) and thought I’d share some of my experiences.

I lived in Indianapolis for a couple of years and it has some charms. I really like that size of city. The Indianpolis metropolitan area is 2.2M, about the same as Cleveland, Nashville, Columbus, Cincinnati, and… Kansas City. It’s big enough that you have all the amenities of a city, but not so large that it’s endless miles of concrete. Plus, Chicago was only a couple of hours up the interstate if I needed anything larger.

Generally, I liked the people, and didn’t care for the weather. The climate wasn’t that different from Kansas City, but it was enough. The daily mean temperature differs by only 1 degree. However, winter felt longer – a few weeks longer – and that was enough to throw off the whole year. Both years I lived there, winter arrived the first week of November and just didn’t let up. In KC, you’ll usually start to see signs of spring in February – I didn’t see that in Indy. It was well into March or later. Kansas City gets an extra 400 hours of sunshine per year, and that probably shades my perception, as well. Weather aside, though, I really liked the city.

If you asked 100 random strangers if they knew anything about Indianapolis, the 500 likely sits atop the Family Feud list.

While the total attendance is not officially announced, they do occasionally note records like how this year was a sell-out, which means more than 350K people. That makes logistics challenging at times. Indy is no stranger to conferences or major sporting events like the Super Bowl or Final Four. But 350K people is 350K people.

Flying into Indianapolis that week can be challenging. However, you can also get creative. Many people fly into Chicago or other surrounding cities. Trivia time! There are 8 MLB stadiums within a 6-hour drive from Indianapolis. Can you name them all? Results in the comments, provided someone tries to answer. Personally, we flew into Indianapolis on the Friday before the race and flew out of Cincinnati a few days after it, visiting some friends there. The ticket cost no more than a usual airline ticket. However, I bet if you tried to do Friday to Monday to Indy, you might be paying a pretty penny.

Hotels can be similarly challenging. I lived there the first time I went so no big deal. The second time, I used hotel points to great effect. The airport hotel we stayed at is normally economical so it had a low point cost and I booked it close to a year in advance. However, if we had tried to reserve it with a month or two to go, it was running $400 a night. It was not a $400-a-night room.

Tickets have some interesting quirks.

You can buy your tickets or better from year to year. They do ticket “renewals” every year and there’s a whole FAQ about it. For instance:

Requests for upgrade/change are processed by availability, account seniority and reorder date. Again, another reason to renew early. You gain seniority by purchasing tickets on a yearly basis on the same IMS account. Due to limited inventory and high demand in our more popular locations (Penthouses, Decks, Stands B and E), higher seniority levels will see more opportunities for improvement. Specific requests, such as aisles, front rows, etc. make upgrade requests more difficult to fulfill, so the broader your request is, the higher chance of fulfillment.

In short, if you buy your tickets through the track (not resale), you can try to upgrade your tickets each year. They mentioned something on this year’s broadcast about X number of 50-year or more ticket holders but I don’t remember the number and can’t find an article about it. Here’s a 2016 story from the local Fox station about families that have attended for decades.

In 2011, I went on a whim. I didn’t have anything else going that weekend so I bought resale tickets the week of the race. For 2025, I bought tickets in October 2024. You can apply as soon as the previous race ends, but you have less control over where you sit. I waited until single tickets went onsale and we did, fine-ish.

In 2011, I was in Paddock Section 18. In 2025, we were in Tower Terrace S78. Both times I wanted shade and was fortunate to get it. The race is long. There is a lot of pageantry before and after it. And there’s always a chance of rain. Both years, I was near-ish but before the finish line. One time I was inside the oval, the other time I was outside. There are a lot of strong feelings about the best seats in the house. My seats are on nobody’s list, but I was happy with them.

Before we go much further, we have to talk about the track and the sheer size of it. The broadcast can’t clue you in since it’s constantly cutting from camera to camera. Saying it’s a 2-and-a-half-mile oval doesn’t capture it. Even looking at it from the air doesn’t really give you an idea. One thing really brought it home to me a couple of years ago. If you have any sense (or hearing), you wear earplugs. However, if you’re in the middle of the oval, you can’t even hear the hum of the cars. I don’t really know how to convey the size of it any better, but we’ll talk about it more later.

There are a number of events leading up to the race, though we haven’t attended any at the track. Practice laps are pretty popular as is Carb Day. Carb Day also features the Wienie 500 “where six Oscar Mayer Wienermobiles traded paint — or at least ketchup and mustard bragging rights — in a race for the coveted Borg-Wiener Trophy”.

Also, there’s a cool Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum at the track. I don’t think it’s open the day of the race and I wouldn’t even try. I remember taking the tour on a bus around the track back when I was a teenager.

Saturday, before the race, the 500 Festival Parade rumbles through downtown Indianapolis. It’s your usual municipal parade with local law enforcement, floats, and marching bands. We saw the Purdue “All-American” marching band and the “World’s Largest Drum”. We would also see them at the race.

No matter how you get to the race, I think you have to pack your patience. Once again, 350K people is 350K people. While some camp there or get there (days?) in advance, the rest of us have to get there that morning. On the day of the race, dozens of streets are shut down or have alternative traffic flows.

One of the most popular ways to get there is by shuttle. Hundreds (thousands?) of buses from around the region carry people from the airport and downtown Indianapolis to the race track. This was how I got there both times.

This most recent time, we took our hotel shuttle to the airport at 7:45, waited in line a half hour, and boarded a school bus. Most of the time, we were on streets reserved for the shuttles. It still took an hour to go 12 miles.

Security and tickets were Midwesternly efficient, so we had a lot of time to explore before the race. As we were there pretty early, getting souvenirs and food was easy, too. We walked around up by the suites (I think someone accidentally left some stairs open that weren’t supposed to be).

We went down by the Pagoda. There was a celebrity red carpet, but we were far enough away that I couldn’t see who was up there. Supposedly, Keanu Reeves and Terry Crews were there. Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Michael Strahan were there, probably contractually obligated because it was on Fox. Looking through my pictures, I think I caught a picture of Crews – by which I mean, I have a picture of his orange jacket and white pants walking up there, but you can’t see his face.

Wikipedia has an entire page entitled “Indianapolis 500 Traditions” and I couldn’t possibly do it justice. Pomp and circumstance abound.

I’m going to miss some, but these are ones that I remember:

Then it’s almost time to race. From the above page:

The pre-race ceremonies usually go in the following order:
* Invocation
* “Taps”
* “America the Beautiful” and “God Bless America”
* “The Star-Spangled Banner” followed by flyover
* “Drivers to your cars” command
* “Back Home Again in Indiana” (accompanied by a balloon release until 2021)
* Starting command

YMMV with each individual item, but I think the package as a whole lends an air of importance to the proceedings.

After that, it’s race time.

I don’t know how to describe what 200 mph looks like. But this is the only place I’ve seen it. Sure, you go faster in an airplane. But your frame of reference is skewed by three dimensions.

I also can’t describe what 200 mph sounds like. The TV broadcast tries to do it justice, but there’s no way to adequately replicate that sound.

You can’t see the whole track – it’s just too big – and somehow they race around this 2.5-mile circle in about 30 seconds. Then there’s pit strategy and the alternate strategy and the cautions and all the stuff that makes up the race.

However, we didn’t just sit there and watch all 200 laps. We watched a few dozen and then started wandering. The whole environment is interesting.

We made our way back to our seats with 50ish laps to go. Without cautions, it can take less than half an hour. With cautions, a bit more.

The 2011 race was one of the more notable in history as rookie J. R. Hildebrand hit the wall in the final turn and was passed by Dan Wheldon. The 2025 was dramatic as Álex Palou held off Marcus Ericsson and there were no lead changes after lap 187.

After the race, there is more ceremony: the victory lap, the milk, the kissing of the bricks. It’s fun, but it’s also at the end of a long day.

Then you have to find your way out of the speedway, line up for shuttles, and make your way home. I think it’s safe to say it’s a bit of a drinky crowd and, in the hour we were standing in line for shuttles, our son learned some colorful new language.

We had a similar experience with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade a couple of years ago in New York City – maybe I’ll write about it one of these days. I can’t imagine doing this year after year – it’s just a lot. However, it’s neat to experience at least once. In future years, when we’re watching, we can do the “remember when”s and look back fondly.

I guess I could use “Back Home Again in Indiana” here. But I thought the better video was the final crazy lap from this year: