News for October 6, 2023

royalsreview.com

06 October 2023

At the Star, Sam McDowell with a piece entitled “It sure sounds like the Royals will have a busy offseason. It’s about time”. Sounds like something people here could get behind. This goes back to the Picollo news conference on Wednesday:

As I’ve mentioned in the past, if the Royals are going to stick to Sherman’s stated preference to be transactional, that happens now, not only at the trade deadline, when expiring contracts prompt moves. It happens with cost-controlled players. It happens when you part with talent — in order to acquire a different type of talent. And, well, it does appear more likely than not to happen.
“There’s a chance we do that,” Picollo said. “An objective we should have as a front office is to take pressure off the scouting, player development, international operations. One of the ways to do that is to be more aggressive, whether it be prospects or off of our major league roster.”

At MILB.com, Jesse Borek writes about two college teammates turned rivals in the Arizona Fall League: Royals farmhand Eric Cerantola and Mets farmhand Rowdey Jordan.

“I was like, ‘He knows exactly what I’m going to try to do with him.’ So I was just trying … to figure out how to get him out,” Cerantola said. “But I couldn’t help just having a smirk on my face when I faced him.”
“I’m sitting there thinking, ‘I can’t let him get to me. I can’t let him get to me,’ and of course, he blows me up and I pop out to foul territory,” Jordan laughed. “So we’re gonna have to get him next time though.”

Speaking of the minors, some more Royals picked up hardware:

I briefly mentioned this about a month ago when it was announced. The Royals made a deal with a company called StadiumLinks that turns the stadium into a nine-hole golf course for today and tomorrow. There are still a bunch of tee times available, as of last night (when I was writing this and all). It runs about $110 a person after fees:

Book your group – using the link below – in increments of 2 or 4 players. The course will feature nine tee boxes throughout the seating bowl with corresponding target greens on the field.

Turning our eyes blogward, the Royals Reporter, Kevin O’Brien, looks back at his predictions (part 1) (part 2). The first set of predictions was made before the season while the second was made mid-season.

Prediction #1: Bobby Witt, Jr. Represents Kansas City at the All-Star Game
Result: Didn’t happen
...That said, Witt’s first couple of months were pretty pedestrian, as he posted a 90 wRC+ in April and 95 wRC+ in June, according to Fangraphs. It’s not a surprise that around that time Royals fans were wondering if he could be even a solid “regular” player, let alone an All-Star. We all know how June-on played out for Witt.
Nonetheless, Witt’s mediocre start at the plate explains why he didn’t get the Royals’ lone All-Star spot. Instead, the Royals’ All-Star selection was Salvador Perez, mostly due to a sensational May (he was named offensive player of the month).

Blog Roundup:

Joe Summers at KCKingdom: (slideshow warning) 3 Positions The Royals Must Improve to Make Playoffs in 2024 (Spoiler: somehow it’s not hitting, pitching, and defense)

I’ve already got almost 5000 words loaded for next week, but we’ve got illness in the house so this one’s going to be a bit shorter. If you want a head start on next week’s Friday the 13th Rumblings, go watch the Scream movies. But no discussing today - that’s for next week. It’s kindof weird what takes on a life of its own when I start writing.

This week, we’re going to do another one of those peek-under-the-covers OTs (sort of).

For a number of years, I’ve kicked around the idea of building a series around visiting ballparks. While traveling or deciding where to travel, one of my bucket list goals is to go to ever MLB stadium. I’ve been to 28 different stadiums /humblebrag and only have 6 to go so I could do most of the series myself.

I think it’s be a great addition to the site, something akin to the Radio Affiliates profiles. It came up once again, about a month ago, and I figure it’s time to revisit it for realisies. I could have sworn I started a template for this years ago, but I can’t find that now so we’re starting from scratch.

For the record, I can’t promise that I’m going to be able to this series. Honestly, it takes enough time in my week just to do Friday Rumblings. But let’s do this as a thought experiment and maybe I’ll get it off the ground at some point. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do for my own writing and that typically helps with motivation. Then again, I also have a 3-part series in the queue that’s about 2/3rds done and I’ve been telling myself I’ll finish it every offseason since 2019. But I’ll put some real effort into this and maybe it’ll happen. So, without further adieu, let’s BUILD A NEW ROYALS REVIEW SERIES.

The first part is pretty easy: some basic stats about the place.

Team:Kansas City Royals (I could use a link to the SBNation blog for the team rather than wiki...)

Capacity: 37,903

Opened: 1973

After this, what would you want to see? Sure, one could make this as involved as possible, writing about the history of the stadium, all sorts of minutiae about the team, etc. However, the more work that has to go into it, the fewer get done and it’s just not worth putting in the effort if it’s not desired by either author or audience or, hopefully, both.

Stadium Features: I think this would be a catch all for talking about the stadium itself. There are ways to break this down further into, say, Parking, Food, Dimensions, Unique Park Decor, etc. However, some of those are more notable than others for each place. For instance, parking doesn’t really mean much for the downtown stadiums as opposed to Kauffman or Miller Park, which are places to tailgate.

I’m most tempted to make “Food” its own category. However, whenever you visit a stadium, how much food do you really consume? Usually a dog and a drink? Maybe something unique to the stadium, maybe not. I feel like I would end up doing a lot of research, looking up what other people write about the food for the stadium, and it would be rehashing what you read everywhere else.

Almost every stadium has unique decor and that can be featured here if nothing else about the stadium stands out. “Unique Stadium Features” could be its own category. But then what would I call the rest of the hodgepodge? I like breaking this into two sections but I can’t figure out a logical way. I could really use some help here.

Some sites like to give grades to different features: you get an A+ for Parking but C- for Food. But I feel, with only one visit for most stadiums, it’s too small a sample size to do something like that. Others like to do “The Good”/”The Bad”/”The Ugly” or some variant on that. I like what a site like this does, in a lot of ways, but it also just gets overwhelming. It hurts my head to think about writing that much for one stadium, much less all stadiums. Plus, some of these stadiums I only went to once, a decade ago, and I just don’t have that copious of notes on all aspects of the visit. Sometimes you just want to go to enjoy a ballgame.

Game Attended:

on Sunday, October 1st, 2023

Game Summary: This is easy: it’s a couple of paragraphs about baseball with some color from around the game. For instance, if I were talking about the aforementioned game, I could do something like this:

The Royals won 5-2 on the last game of the 2023 season. Future Hall of Famer, Zack Greinke, won the 225th game of his career, and possibly his last. Bobby Witt Jr. was trying to become just the 4th player in MLB history to be in the 30/50 club but feel a SB shy. He was caught stealing after one AB and and other resulted in a triple with no realistic chance to steal. Off the field, I saw a rat the size of an ocelot dragging a hot dog away from the Aramark stand in section 413. That was a joke, of course, as I haven’t been to a game at Kauffman since 2014 so I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of said giant rat.

Things to Do in the City: It’s not the most baseball-centric part of the review, but a part I want to include. Usually if I’m visiting a new stadium, it’s one of my first trips to a city and I want to explore as much as I can. It’s not going to be wikitravel and won’t be a comprehensive review of everything to see in the city, but it should hit some highlights and I can share some stories about what I saw in the city. For instance, KC has some obvious highlights with the 18th and Vine district, Union Station, and the National World War I Museum. Also, the Denny’s across the street from the stadium.

Other Ideas: Back in 2017, I broke all stadiums into tiers, modeling a story that Joe Posnanski wrote. I could do something like that with links to all of the stadium reviews.

Finally, coming up with a name is hard. I’m mostly unoriginal so I suggested things like: