O-Royals notes: Stephen Randolph, rotation questions, etc.

A few notes from Rosenblatt last night:

–Dusty Hughes made the start because scheduled starter Stephen Randolph‘s contract was apparently bought by a Japanese team. I haven’t had this confirmed, but it came from someone much closer to the team than I am. We’ll keep an eye on that.

Randolph has made all of two appearances with the O-Royals since his acquisition on July 3. By itself, his departure (if it happens) is not a huge deal, but it will definitely cause manager Mike Jerschele some headaches when he tries to come up with a rotation.

Currently, the Omaha roster sports just four starters: Kyle Davies (who could go back to KC at any time), Lenny DiNardo (who could also go to KC as a reliever at any time), Brandon Duckworth, and Heath Phillips. They had Matt Wright, but he wasn’t very effectve and was released on July 6.  Will the organization acquire someone to fill in that 5th spot, or will they leave Jerschele scrambling to stretch his relievers into quasi-starters?

-A while ago, I noticed that the Royals held the worst record in the entire Pacific Coast League, and it wasn’t particularly close. Apparently New Orleans has gone on a 13-game losing streak to make it a difference of only percentage points. So there’s that.

-Thanks to Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild About Omaha” weekend, a lot of fans got to experience O-Royals baseball for the first time – and for free! – last night. The announced attendance was nearly 14,500. It was great to have so many people, and I hope a lot of them decide to come back for more games. I had a lot of fun working last night because of all of them. Lots of cute little kids everywhere, too.

If you were a member of last night’s crowd, you can see if you ended up in any of the pictures of the team website.     

Related posts:

1. Billy Butler, O-Royals notes, etc.
2. LOTS of baseball notes
3. Links ‘n’ notes