Royals Rumblings - News for November 30, 2018

Old friend Craig Brown at BPKC jumps around a few topics from Mike Matheny to Connor Greene to non-tenders:

Even amateurs know you use the Friday after the holiday to bury the bad news, so it wasn’t exactly surprising that the Royals chose that day to announce Mike Matheny would be joining the club as a special advisor. Despite protestations from the beats not to read too much into this move (as in, the Royals just brought the successor to Ned Yost into the org), it’s never too early to panic. Dayton Moore is quite predictable when it comes to matters such as this.

Two timer Alex Duvall who moonlights on RR for the Pop Tarts, but whose first love is RFR* continues his series comparing the 2008 and 2018 Kansas City minor league systems:

The 2018 farm system does not currently have the top tier prospects that the 2008 farm system had at the time, but what they might have on them is depth. Specifically when it pertains to key positions on the field. Adalberto Mondesi is no longer a prospect, sure, but he is the future at SS for this team. Not having to acquire a player like Mondesi opens up a ton of options for the Royals moving forward. Throw in the likes of Nicky Lopez, Blake Perkins, Michael Gigliotti, etc., and the Royals current crop of young players may give the franchise something of a head start on this rebuild.

*Likely not true, but it’s the offseason and things are slow so maybe manufacturing conflict will help get us through the winter months.

KOK’s Tyler Dierking asks “What to do with Cheslor Cuthbert?”

As the Royals continue to push for younger players with high-upside and continue rebuilding, they have to ask themselves a difficult question. Does Cuthbert fit with the future of the team? If the answer is anything but “yes” then they have to move on. Keep in mind, moving on from Cuthbert isn’t a money saver. Contract wise, he would be making hardly anything compared to other players. This would strictly be based on his upside with the Royals future.

And... that’s it for the Royals. Well, except...

This week, we visit another one of the great series in Royals Review history. A self-described “radio geek” (another fun story on that link, btw), Will wrote profiles about a number of the cities that were Royals radio affiliates. These spotlights contained interesting bits of trivia about each city as well as some of Will’s personal anecdotes.

Here’s his summary of the series:

One of my favorite things about baseball, in a cultural sense, is the way that certain teams take on regional identities. Having criss-crossed the Midwest many times, its always a joy to scroll through the AM dial with the possibility of listening to the Cubs, Cardinals, Royals, Twins, Reds or Indians depending on where I happen to be. In a homogenized, often generic world, these sports loyalties sometimes seem like all that's left of an older, more regionally diverse America that's floated away. The regional pull of the Royals isn’t what it used to be -- we all know how many casual fans the Cardinals have claimed back in Missouri in the last decade -- but it isn’t wholly erased either. Throughout the season I’ll be profiling some of the more far-flung Royals affiliates that together compose our regional fan base. The next time you’re listening to the Royals in metro KC, think about the expanse of space that's united under the dial...

Our Best of Royals Review (TM) today is a repost of the very first one: Royal Radio Affiliate Spotlight: [KAWL AM] York, Nebraska

If you want to check out other Royals Radio Affiliate Spotlights, they are linked here (provided they have the correct tag).

Wednesday, the A’s revealed plans for a new ballpark that looks quite nice.

Nary a Royal can be found on David Schoenfield’s “Way-too-early 2019-20 MLB free-agent rankings”.

Utility infielder Ronald Torreyes went from the Yankees to the Cubs for “a player to be named or $2”.

A Canadian scientist named a newly discovered weevil after Jose Bautista.

For the longest time, if you had asked me “What is the best game of all time”, I would flip flop between a game we’ve already looked at and today’s game. I’m still perfectly comfortable with listing Super Mario Bros 3 as the best game of all time (again, relative to its peers). However, with The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, I think I might be guilty a little of ranking something higher on the “best” list because it fits on my “favorites” list.

That said, I don’t want to sell it short. With all due respect to older games like Adventure or third generation titles like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, or Phantasy Star, the 16-bit generation was the first that had enough graphic power for truly epic storytelling (of course, the fifth generation neo-Playstation RPGs take this idea and run with it). This prequel establishes a lot of the themes and motifs used in future Zelda plots, fleshing out the limited story from the 8-bit originals. The late night journey to Hyrule Castle, the hoisting of the Master Sword, and the parallel Dark World are all indelible images for those who played it.

The game boats an impressive creative team with the brilliant Takashi Tezuka (longtime Mario and Zelda producer and director) once again directing and the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto producing the effort. Kensuke Tanabe (longtime Mario and Kirby team member as well as Metroid Prime series director) also joined the series for the first time.

Despite all this praise, I’m forced to admit that, over time, its place in video game history has been eclipsed by its successor. While Link to the Past comfortably resides in most “best game of all time” lists, Ocarina of Time sits atop many of them. It’s still one of my favorites and I’m grateful that the sequel, 2013’s A Link Between Worlds, plays much more like a loving homage than a cheap cash-in.

The music for this game was composed by the incomparable Koji Kondo and, as noted on Wikipedia, “helped to establish the musical core of the Zelda series”. I think this is a soundtrack we’ll revisit a lot and I was surprised I hadn’t already done it. Today’s selection is the prologue of the game which whets the appetite for what will follow. The bulk of the music is “Seal of Seven Maidens” and “Hyrule Castle”.