Royals Rumblings - News for February 27, 2021

Thank you, Kelvin

Song of the Day

“Reflections” by Misterwives

The first game of Spring Training is on Sunday and the Royals released who they will be sending out to the mound.

Old friend, Kelvin Herrera, announced his retirement yesterday. Congrats to him. #ForeverRoyal

Pete Grathoff at The Star bumped his spotlight on the three components to Herrera-Davis-Holland from last week and it’s worth a read.

Alec Lewis at The Athletic held a mailbag.

Who are some off-the-radar names that you could see moving quickly through the minors? — Jared S.

Erick Peña, a left-handed-hitting outfielder from the 2019 international signing class, is one. Angel Zerpa is another. Clay Dungan, a ninth-round pick from the 2019 MLB Draft, hasn’t played above short-season Idaho Falls. He could move. Nick Loftin, a first-round pick from the 2020 MLB Draft, is another.

*Zerpa, Loftin, and, more lately, Dungan keep coming up when talking about under the radar names to keep an eye on. Either the Royals are telling media to say those names as often as possible or there’s truly something to keep an eye on about them.

The Royals YouTube channel has been kinda busy lately, first was an interview with Mike Matheny talking about what it means to be back in Spring Training,

And yesterday they published a video about following pitcher, Tyler Zuber, around for a day in the life at Spring Training.

The KC Star released their footage of a zoom conference with Whit that talked about their struggles with how different the game was last year.

KCTV 5 was also in on that zoom call and released their footage where Whit talks about the Royals being a surprise to many to being buyers in this offseason and why that concept is a bigger problem.

Speaking of being contenders, ATS.io gave their overall profile of the Royals’ odds this season (if you’re into that kind of thing) and it sounds promising.

Ultimately, the biggest factor for me is that I really like the Royals bullpen. When taking a risk by playing a season win total for a bad team, you absolutely have to have confidence that they will win the games that they are supposed to. You can ill-afford to have those teams blowing games late because they won’t have as many chances at leads as other teams. The Royals were 15-3 with a lead after five innings and 16-0 with a lead after six innings. They shut it down. I’d expect more of the same.

This one will be a bet for me and it seems I’m not alone, as this one is either juiced to the over or has gone up. Royals over 72.5 is actually one of my stronger positions overall heading into the season and will be a bet.

*No, being excited about winning 73+ games isn’t the end goal for anyone at this site but the Royals offseason turned some heads and it’s nice to gain a bit of respect, no?

MLB Pipeline had 5 writers do a draft of players that were under 25 years old or younger that you’d start a team with and I know we all want to see more Bobby Witt Jr. hype.

19. Callis: Bobby Witt Jr., SS, Royals (2021 age: 21)

This was a difficult choice for me because there were so many good players and I only had two picks left. Just among shortstops alone, I could have taken Witt, CJ Abrams or Marco Luciano among prospects and Bo Bichette (whom I considered at No. 12). I opted for the guy with the best all-around tools in Witt, who could have plusses across the board and has incredible makeup as well. He’s more of a lock to stay at shortstop than those others I thought about, and he could be a 30-30 player when all is said and done.

From a couple days ago, Alex Duvall at Royals Farm Report revisited the farm systems relief pitchers that made their recent Top 50 Royals Prospects Rankings.

The NW Arkansas Natural released a new “fauxback” hat that was an immediate purchase for me.

Fox Sports interviewed old friend, Lorenzo Cain, about opting out of the 2020 season.

*Mine was Ghost Rider....sigh

Adrenaline Rush of the Week

Watching a fight scene from The Raid: Redemption and The Raid 2

HOLYYYYY fight scenes, Batman. These two movies are jam-packed full of non-stop, top-notch, hyphenated-adjective-inducing fight scenes that had to have taken years to choreograph, shoot, and edit. The plot is fine, but it’s not what you’re taking away from these two films. The fight scenes are truly elite.

(FYI, these scenes are gory)

From Baseball Bat Man and Hammer Girl...

...to the kitchen fight with those raptor claw knives...

...or the stripped down fight against Mad Dog.

Holy crap...I need to do some meditation.

Have a Saturday, ya’ll.