Surprise! I know it’s not Friday. But big thanks to Trenton! I’m going to be out tomorrow, so he graciously switched with me, and you get him tomorrow. I have even more good news for those who dislike my Friday Rumblings: I’ll be out of town the next two weeks. I believe Cullen and Max will be grabbing those, but I could be mistaken. Also, big thanks to them!
At The Star, Jaylon Thompson writes about Kris Bubic’s status:
The Kansas City Royals have scratched left-handed starter Kris Bubic from his scheduled rehab outing on Wednesday. Bubic was set to pitch around three innings with Triple-A Omaha. It would’ve been his third rehab appearance with the Storm Chasers.
However, Royals assistant general manager Scott Sharp joined Sports Radio 810 WHB and said Bubic will return to Kansas City. He will undergo further evaluation as he deals with left-shoulder soreness.
“I wish I had a little bit better news,” Sharp said. “Kris was supposed to pitch tonight. I don’t think he’s going to. He’s going to come back to Kansas City. And we just can’t get the final little bit of soreness out there. We’ll continue to be hopeful with continued treatment and rest that we can get him back sooner than later.”
Anne Rogers writes about it as well:
Bubic was transferred to the 60-day IL on Wednesday, which was more of a procedural move rather than directly related to this new setback; the Royals needed a 40-man roster spot to add reliever Jose Cuas and call him up to the big leagues. The 60-day IL dates back to Bubic’s initial IL date on May 15, so he’ll be eligible to return July 14. With this setback, Bubic wasn’t going to be back in the next two weeks, anyway.
Some better injury news from Rogers?
ICYMI: Max wrote about some of the roster moves yesterday: Cuas and Dobnak up, Cerantola down, Seabold to IL, and Bubic to 60-day.
Max also wrote about Chourio and Mitchell going to the MLB Futures Game.
Going back to Thompson, he also wrote about Cole Ragans. He had surgery and is… you know what? He put it all in a couple of sentences. Better to read it from him:
Kansas City Royals ace Cole Ragans underwent left-elbow surgery Wednesday. Ragans, 28, is expected to miss the remainder of the 2026 season. It’s his third major elbow procedure as he previously underwent two Tommy John surgeries earlier in his career.
Fortunately, the game on the field is going better than off, right?!?
At The Athletic ($), Tim Britton and Chad Jennings list their trade deadline tiers:
Tier 6: Typical sellers
New York Mets
Colorado Rockies
Kansas City Royals – SP, RPThe Rockies expected to be here, the Mets and Royals less so. While Mickey Moniak and Freddy Peralta and Kris Bubic are useful pieces to move, these squads don’t really have the rosters to shake up the deadline by embracing a more aggressive sale. Maybe the Mets make some guys with team control available (like Brett Baty or Mark Vientos), but that would be because they’re enduring disappointing seasons that have depressed their value.
At CBS Sports, their baseball writers hand out halfway grades:
Kansas City Royals: F
Two years ago, the Royals made the playoffs. Last season, they had a winning record. This season, they are among the worst teams in baseball. The good signs (breakouts from Carter Jensen and Jac Caglianone) are overshadowed, quite greatly, by the bad. Injury concerns with Cole Ragans and Kris Bubic linger and the bullpen is a complete mess. Injuries to Vinnie Pasquantino and Maikel Garcia haven’t helped matters, but the offense was lackluster even with them in the lineup. It’s just been all kinds of bad in K.C. this season. — Snyder
Finally, at ESPN, Anthony Gharib names the “Red, white, and bobby” bobblehead the best 4th of July giveaway.
And, just a quick little “around baseball” blurb, Happy Bobby Bonilla Day to all who celebrate!
Let’s lead off with Kevin O’Brien at Royals Keep “Three Ex-Royals Players Who Are Thriving With Their New Teams”:
While Clarke’s profile is flawed, which explains why the Royals were okay with letting him go, he’s been dependable for the Diamondbacks, even in medium- to high-leverage. He has 11 holds this year, his highest mark in that category since 2023 when he had 12 holds in 58 plate appearances. Clarke will likely surpass that number barring an epic collapse or injury.
Considering the Royals bullpen ranks 29th in reliever ERA and 30th in WHIP, Clarke would be a worthwhile arm to have right now, especially in the late innings. Lucas Erceg and Matt Strahm have struggled, and Carlos Estevez has only pitched in one game due to injury. The Royals closer likely won’t be back anytime soon after another setback, according to Anne Rogers.
Gotta be honest: kindof surprised Taylor Clarke is having a cromulent year.
At Into the Fountains, Craig wrote about Tuesday’s ugly loss (as opposed to last night’s, which I’m sure he’s writing about now*).
*I don’t know how last night’s ended up, honestly – the Royals were only down 2-0 when I finished writing this.
Since it’s not Friday, I figure a couple of movie reviews of movies I watched a month or two ago feels about right. Also, I went back and counted – this entry pushes us past 200 Friday Rumblings movie reviews. It’s almost a lock that I will eventually collect all of them in a low-effort link post one of these days.
I didn’t care much for the first one, due to its scattered plot and characters. This one is more focused. It still has a few different plots, but they aren’t nearly as disparate – they all mostly come together in the end. Because of this focus, there aren’t as many laugh-out-loud moments as the first due to this focus on plot. It expands the, ahem, galaxy reasonably well, but I’m not sure how much further they can go with this. As I said about the first, they tried too much kitchen sink with an origin story, lots about Bowser, Donkey Kong, Mario Kart, and more. It’s left less ground to cover for the future. Star Fox was a fine addition, and maybe we’re going towards Super Smash Bros. In short, it’s pretty and works reasonably well, better than the first. But it’s still mostly forgettable and, sadly, I think Nintendo’s movies will burn out sooner rather than later.
The first was wonderful – one of the better animated movies of the last decade. It’s a movie that didn’t assume kids are just dumb consumers and tried to teach lessons in genuinely creative and entertaining ways. It took almost a decade, but Zootopia 2 mostly delivers, even if it suffers some sequelitis. If you look too literally at this one, the main quest in this kids’ movie involves tracking down a 100-year old patent to disprove fraud. Of course, it’s really about learning to be yourself and learning to live with and finding value in others. That lesson is, once again, taught within a colorful, lived-in world with multi-faceted characters, full of modernized lessons that don’t assume kids are dumb. It’s not as fresh or original as the first. And maybe it will age better on subsequent watchings (Spiderverse 2 did for me). But it is a worthy sequel, and I’m ok waiting another decade if the Disney team wants to keep putting out
The next couple of movies are original IPs, which makes it even more unfortunate that both miss the mark. This one starts with a colorful and interesting premise. However, it leans heavily on two common Pixar tropes: a tragic introduction to our protagonist that eventually melts into the “two unlikely companions” buddy pic. There are times when the movie dreams big: like the Carl Sagan’s bits and universe-building. But, most of the time, it lacks the smartness or sharpness that Pixar used to traffic in. It feels paint-by-number: alien families are just like human families, communication misunderstandings between races that ham-handedly mirror those between our main characters, our protagonist and his new friend were always going to save the day, and he was always going to go back to his adopted family on Earth.
Some pieces of a much better movie might be in there, but the finished product is not it. I wonder about the production difficulties. Adrian Molina co-directed Coco, which was easily one of the Pixar’s best movies of the last decade. He was the original director of this film, which drew on his personal life story. However, he left for (or was pushed to) Coco 2 – it’s a little unclear. Some combination of the new directors, Pete Docter, and the 2025 political climate removed Elio (per wiki) as a “queer-coded character”. Allegedly, this made it “much more generic” and about “totally nothing”. That could have been the heart that the final cut lacked. I’ve always said that kids are almost always smarter than we give them credit for, and Pixar reliably made bank on that for 15 years. They can still surprise you, but those hits are mixed in with lots of shiny, brainless shlock or sequels of movies from when they were better.
Wish, perhaps unfairly, had the weight of Disney’s 100th birthday on its shoulders. They tried to do an old-fashioned fairy tale, right down to the legacy Disney book introduction. It employs an interesting style of animation and the more I watched it, the more gorgeous it looked. I like the basic idea of the movie, but – here come the buts – it takes a long time to get anywhere. There’s not enough plot and too much filler (like Alan Tudyk) yet still gives short shrift to major plots like Simon’s betrayal and “redemption”. Some of the morality is vague and questionable, particularly for an old-school fairy tale; the idea of stealing wishes and who those wishes really belong to is greyer than it needs to be. And, critically: the movie never quite feels earnest enough to live up to its message. I really wanted to like the “You’re a Star” scene and the animation is fun. But it’s also a reminder that metafiction is hard to do and this movie misses the mark more often than not. Considering how much musicals rise and fall with their tunes, the music for this one is just… fine. I appreciate that they really tried to make a new animated classic. They just weren’t up to the task this time out; Better luck next time. Unfortunately, because these failed, we’ll probably be treated to more safe, unoriginal sequels instead.
Song of the day? How about we use one from one of the movies above?
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.royalsreview.com ’
