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Royals Rumblings - News for December 15, 2017

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First, a few notes to close out the Rule 5 Draft.

Royals Farm Report's Alex Duvall looks at the two picks.

He also mentions the Royals signed minor league free agent Mike Broadway and gave him an invite to Spring Training.

In his MLB.com story, Jeffrey Flanagan mentioned that it only cost the Royals cash to draft Brad Keller and Burch Smith. There are no PTBNL.

While the Royals did not make any trades or free-agent signings, they were active in Thursday's Rule 5 Draft, acquiring the Reds' No. 5 pick, right-hander Brad Keller, and the Mets' No. 6 pick, right-hander Burch Smith, both for cash ($100,000 each). The Royals passed with their selection at No. 13.

Although that’s a little confusing to me as MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo says clubs pay $100K to pick a player so why would another team let the Royals basically do it for free? I’m sure they would have asked for $50K or whatever the going rate is for a pick like that.

A total of 18 players were taken in the Major League phase of the annual draft that closes the Winter Meetings, and 15 of those were pitchers. Now that group will head to big league camps across Spring Training to try and make a 25-man roster. Clubs pay $100,000 to select a player, and if that player doesn't stay on the roster for the full season, he must be offered back to his former team for $50,000.

Burch Smith, the oft injured SP prospect, is a more popular pick than Brad Keller. Keller seems like the type of player you have to hide in the bullpen. However, this KCStar Rustin Dodd article may shed a little light on why he was on their radar:

Sharp said the Royals viewed him as one of the top two talents available in the draft. He also graded out well in FanGraphs’ projections of the best available Rule 5 picks.

Dodd also writes about the pending (re)build:

The Royals are under no directive from ownership to slash payroll, Moore says. They do, however, see a leaner budget as making sense in the present as they attempt to build for the future.

As the rebuild rumbles ever closer and chatter about Danny Duffy picks up, a couple of sites are weighing in on the idea of trading The Master of Gnar. Of course, Kevin Ryan Heffernon had a front page story yesterday here on RR.

Old friend Craig Brown wrote about Duffman for BPKC:

This could devolve into a messy situation. The Royals have to be careful here or they risk alienating not just Duffy and his teammates, but the entire fanbase. Nobody wants to have to pick sides in what could be a messy breakup.

Nicholas Sullivan at Fansided KC also posted some of his thoughts on the idea of a trade and Danny Duffy’s tweets:

Some will argue with a rebuild coming that Duffy and the aforementioned trade pieces should all be moved as quickly as possible. This strategy makes sense in that it gives younger players more experience, while also leading to more losing and higher draft picks. However, big-time players like Duffy shouldn’t just be given away. Holding onto him until the trade deadline would almost certainly increase the return.

KCStar’s Pete Grathoff collects (mostly angry) Twitter responses to the trade rumors.

Grathoff also speculated about Disney's new purchase of 21st Century Fox

There is also speculation that ESPN eventually could sell season packages to fans that would allow them to stream their favorite team’s games without a cable subscription.

The timing of the Disney deal could be great for the Royals, whose television contract with Fox Sports Kansas City runs through 2019. As the number of cable subscribers have declined in the past few years, it seemed the Royals had missed out on a chance for one of the huge TV deals that other teams, like the St. Louis Cardinals, have received in recent years. But the Disney acquisition and the need for more content for ESPN’s streaming service could work in the Royals’ favor when negotiations begin.

KC Kingdom's Joel Wagler implores “Kansas City Royals can’t go halfway on rebuilding plans”:

The fans will recover, but the team needs to go all in if they decide to go into rebuild mode. They won’t be successful if they try to do it halfway.

KOK's Stuard Allard is looking back at Royals draft history. Part I was just published a couple of days ago. It reminded me of Hokius’s series from last year about the History of Royals Top 100 Prospects.

Often, we here at The Best of RR are just trying to entertain. But today, we are trying to help! For those getting a late start on your Christmas shopping? CobraCy brings you 6 Items You Don't Need From The Official Online Shop of the Kansas City Royals.

Royals flip flops? Worn with socks, of course! Microsuede bomber jacket? Only the finest for your friends and family. Want to see more? Like a Royals Toaster? Royals Recliner? Royals “GIANT MAN-BABY SLEEPSUIT”? He has it all covered in other installments of this series:

You’re welcome!

A while back, I had posted a link to this story about the 1932 World Series. I had made a note to look up some more info about a game played on August 31, 1932. Bleed Cubbie Blue actually wrote up two different historical recaps of the game. There was an eclipse and there were torrential rains. There was a double switch and batting out of order that wasn’t caught or protested. The Cubs scored 1 in the 8th and 1 in the 9th to tie the game. But then the Giants scored 4 in the top of the 10th and the Cubs answered with 5 in the bottom, including a walk-off home run by Kiki Cuyler, who was in the midst of a crazy hitting tear. The Cubs win was their 12th straight en route to the Babe Ruth called shot World Series chronicled in the CBS article at the start of this paragraph.

I don’t know much about MLS, so I read ESPN’s “Good, Bad, and Ugly” article on the season here.

It may be decade old news, but this article from last week is making the rounds. Apparently, back in the late 80s and early 90s, a manager involved with the McDonalds Monopoly promotion was rigging the game by keeping a number of the rare pieces for himself, family, and friends. He even sent a $1 million piece anonymously to St Jude's. Eventually the FBI caught up with him and 51 others in 2001.

As I’m currently playing one game with a 230+ hour save game and another over 100 hours, I thought I’d post an article about video game completism. For the record, I don’t have a problem, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM!* The author is fairly even handed: he doesn’t just paint completionism as a problem, in and of itself. However, I would argue he seems to lean a little towards hedonism as the rule of whether it’s healthy or not rather than one’s ability to moderate self-control.

*(NOTE: Also, I’ve done that nearly 100 hour completist game of Fallout 3 he was talking about, but I got bored towards the end and realized I had a glitch in my game where I couldn’t complete one quest. Nothing’s more annoying than trying to do a completist game and getting foiled by a game glitch. I had that happen on the PSP version of Sid Meier's Pirates, too. Argh.)

I believe today’s SotD is our first visit to the Game Boy Advance. It was the 3rd best-selling handheld platform of all time after the Nintendo DS and original Game Boy. My pick for the single best game on the system: Intelligent Systems’s Advance Wars.

For those who are unfamiliar with it, Advance Wars was the perfect turn based strat game for players on the go. Visually, it had Nintendo’s cheery facade, which might seem odd for a war simulation, but it works. But under the hood was a well balanced and finely tuned turn-based engine with sophisticated AI. It was a classic case of “easy to play, tough to master”, a game that looked simple on the outside but proved to be more complex with each layer you peeled away.

You were the commanding officer (CO) of a military whose units had different strengths, weaknesses, and functions. Included were ground units like standard infantry, tanks, and artillery. Infantry were the cheapest to produce, tanks were stronger but more expensive and had a fuel supply to worry about, and artillery were good at distance attacks but vulnerable up close. There were aircraft such as helicopters, fighters, and bombers and naval vessels like battleships, transports, and subs. CO’s even had their own advantages and disadvantages with some being better at ranged attacks vs nearby or better on sea vs land. Fog of war affected visibility and terrain slowed down units in a way that made sense. A ton of detail was packed into such a small cartridge and screen.

Below is the theme for the first CO you play as, Andy:

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