Royals Rumblings - News for April 11, 2025

Royals start a 10-game road trip today

Anne Rogers was joined by Twins beat writer Matthew Leach. They wrote about old friends Cole Ragans and Twins pitcher Cole Sands:

They pitched in the same high school starting rotation. They live down the street from each other. They work out together in the offseason. And this week, Cole Ragans and Cole Sands once again got to share something they dreamed about as kids: pitching in the Major Leagues.

The two old friends, both natives of Tallahassee, Fla., and graduates of North Florida Christian School, were reunited at Kauffman Stadium this week, the latest overlap in a lifelong connection between the two friends.

“He literally lives eight houses down in the same neighborhood as me,” said Ragans. “His brother [Carson, also an NFCS alum and a former pro ballplayer] lives 10 houses in the other direction. Same neighborhood, all of our wives get along really well. And we hang out basically every single day in the offseason. We hunt together, work out together, play catch together.”

Yesterday, Jaylon Thompson wrote a story with part of the title being “What makes Bobby Witt Jr. special?”

The final element of the “Bobby Witt Jr. Special” could have a lasting effect on the Royals: He has emerged as a leader in the clubhouse alongside team captain Salvador Perez.

Witt leads by example. Teammates rave about his passion for every aspect of the game. He is often the first one to take his position and last to leave the field.

He’s also typically among the first to congratulate his peers when something good occurs. That’s because he takes the time to relish special moments. In 2023 he raced to center field to retrieve a baseball for former teammate Samad Taylor after the latter’s walk-off.

Pete Grathoff writes about the Royals having a winning record against the AL Central last year and continuing into this year:

From 2017 to 2023, the Royals had a losing record each season against their American League Central foes, and they failed to finish with so much as a .500 record in any of those years.

That changed a year ago when the Royals made the playoffs with an 86-76 record after posting a winning mark against AL Central teams.

The correlation between success in the division and overall achievement doesn’t seem like a big revelation, but it highlights the importance of beating teams in the Central.

Grathoff also had some thoughts from Jonathan India about his crucial 10-pitch at-bat on Thursday:

“I shorten up a little more. I want to kind of just put a better swing on the ball rather than free swing a little bit, swing a little harder with no strikes or one,” India said. “But with two strikes, I’m kind of just trying to stay up the middle, hit the ball on a line somewhere.”

...“The cutter away I was trying to foul off, because that was just a pitch I couldn’t square up, so I didn’t want to let him have a strike if it was a strike,” India said. “It was probably way outside.”

...“He was heavy fastball, but I had in my mind the cutter, because that’s his pitch,” India said. “But I could tell he wanted me to ground out into a double play. So I was like if it’s in, just turn on and put a good swing on it, so I did.”

So a little more than “see ball, hit ball”. I think I’m going to really like him come playoff time, if the Royals make it.

Speaking of “see ball, hit ball”, this is good, right?

I’m on record as saying that it’s entirely unrealistic to expect Caglianone, who was playing college ball this time last year, to play in the majors in 2025. We all remember Alex Gordon’s first career AB, right? And that was after he was rushed through the minors. And eventually had to go back. Well, if Cags keeps doing this, maybe I’ll eat crow. But I think it’s still unrealistic to expect it.

The Royals traded Shawndrick Oduber to the Dodgers for, everyone’s favorite, Cash Considerations. I get a little ooky when I see the Dodgers coveting one of our players.

Blogs? Everyone gets thrown by weekday day games so we have a mishmash of game recaps and stories that aren’t quite features. How about we go full blog roundup today?

• Michael Farina at Farm to Fountains: Jonathan India and the Royals break through heavy winds for wins, defeat Twins 3-2
• Royals Data Dugout: Royal Scrolls: Izzy’s Hot, India’s Air-Balling and Ragans is Altering His Arsenal
• Darin Watson at U.L.’s Toothpick: This Date In Royals History—1985 Edition: April 10 - The Royals lose to Toronto in 10 innings, but two players sign their lifetime contracts
• Patrick Glancy at Powder Blue Nostalgia: The Questionnaire - Let’s get to know each other
• Caleb Moody at KOK: KC Royals bullpen is starting to take shape after series clinching win over Twins
• Also, Caleb Moody at KOK: KC Royals Prospect Update: Jac Caglianone and Carter Jensen shine, Noah Cameron spins a gem
• And again, Caleb Moody at KOK: Low scoring games expose KC Royals desperate need for Vinnie Pasquantino to improve

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We do have a couple of MLB stories.

Team USA named their leaders for the 2026 World Baseball Classic:

On Thursday, USA Baseball announced that Mark DeRosa will return to the dugout to manage the United States at the 2026 WBC, marking his second consecutive stint leading the stars and stripes at the Classic. DeRosa guided Team USA to a silver-medal finish at the ‘23 WBC. Meanwhile, Michael Hill, a longtime baseball operations executive and the current senior vice president of on-field operations and workforce development for Major League Baseball, has been named GM for Team USA.

Alex Bregman’s dad, district attorney Sam Bregman, is running for New Mexico governor in 2026

This AP story from Mark Anderson has the headline “A’s remain on track for June groundbreaking for Las Vegas stadium”. Ask yourself: What does “on track” even mean in this whole process?

Andrew Marchand at The Athletic ($) is reporting that MLB.TV might license games “to networks and/or digital platforms”.

Finally, saving the worst for last, Alex Sherman writes that team owners are strongly considering a salary cap as part of the next CBA negotiation. I’m sure the MLBPA is down with that.

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My kid is in a local play of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, so we went back and reviewed everything we could find about the franchise (and now you have to as well).

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The Original Novel: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)

I must confess that I’ve never been a huge Roald Dahl fan. He has a dark world view that I don’t subscribe to, current moment in history aside, as I get frustrated with stories where all authority figures are either inept or cruel. That said, I know many people feel that his stories give the downtrodden hope and he can be incredibly creative in his use of language. If you haven’t read anything from Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket), he was clearly influenced by Dahl, as much of the above can be said about his writing as well. This is his most famous book and is rightly viewed as a classic.

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The Sequel Novel: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972)

This is a bizarre sequel that’s tonally much different than the original. Sure, the original was odd, but this is 70s fever dream bizarre. While the original novel plays somewhat like a demented Grimm’s fairy tale, this reads more like Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon meets Dr. Strangelove. The characters suffer from becoming sequelitis caricatures, there’s some odd political satire, and the zany antics are amped to 11. At one point, our main characters crash the glass elevator into a space station and are chased by aliens that Wonka somehow recognizes. That’s a pretty far cry from even the oddest moments of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It’s downright Whovian, and there’s a reason it isn’t mentioned in the same breath as its more famous predecessor.

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The Original Movie: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Gene Wilder is the perfect fae trickster Wonka and commands the screen in a way that other film iterations of the titular character don’t. Despite having the shortest run time, it feels like it has the most meat of the three versions. However, it also adds significant plot elements to the espionage theme. It also has the bubble room scene that thematically goes against one of the core ideas of the book. The movie still shows Charlie as good and the other children as not, but part of the way that is shown in the book and other incarnations is by him following the rules while the others do not. But here, he doesn’t heed Wonka’s advice and is still rewarded for it. Still, I think this is the version of the film that most people my age are familiar with and hold up as the definitive version.

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The Remake: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

Prior to seeing this movie, if you had asked me to describe a Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version of Willy Wonka, I think I’d guess pretty close to what you see on screen. The visual language is everything you’d expect from Tim Burton and it mostly fits the source material, including the new versions of the Oompa Loompa songs. Depp’s interpretation of Wonka is more complicated - he’s more awkwardly weird than the unexplainable force of nature that Wilder was and the dentist dad backstory with Christopher Lee attempts to humanize Wonka in a way that isn’t necessary. However, the rest of the movie holds slavishly to the novel and is not necessarily better for it. It’s not a bad movie, but it’s a safe one.

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The Prequel: Wonka (2023)

Apparently, after 20 years of estate fighting, we got a prequel that I’m not sure anyone was asking for. Timothy Chalamet gives an energetic performance that holds the screen - but he’s chaotic good vs the chaotic neutral of other iterations. More importantly, I don’t really feel like he’s Wonka, but more like James Franco from Oz the Great and Powerful. The movie bounces between whimsically fun to frustrating to boring and back. It’s a pretty movie with a large, accomplished cast and modern moviemaking trappings held back by a plodding story and slow musical numbers. In the end, if you accept it as an upbeat children’s movie, everything works(-ish), but it could have been more than that.

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The TV Parody: Futurama – “Fry and the Slurm Factory” (1999)

When Futurama is at its best (“Luck of the Fryrish”, “Jurassic Bark”, “The Sting”, etc), it’s a more emotional version of The Simpsons, balancing universal humor with esoteric nerdy jokes. When it’s at its worst, it’s a better Family Guy: mostly unlikable characters doing wacky things while leaning on humor that relies far too heavily on ephemeral referential humor and pop culture gags. This Wonka parody fits somewhere in between but skews more towards the good, landing towards the bottom of IGN’s “25 Best Futurama Episodes”. Yes, much of the episode is a heavy-handed homage/parody of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but there’s a lot of original humor and the final act is definitely original.

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Sure, we could have used something more famous from one of the other movies. But, nope, we’re going with the doofy Futurama Oompa Loompa gag: