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MLB.com’s Jeffrey Flanagan has this week’s Twitter mailbag:
Last year at this time, the Royals were fairly adamant they were moving on from free agent Mike Moustakas. Then when the market collapsed, they got Moustakas on a bargain and were able to flip him at the non-waiver Trade Deadline for Brett Phillips and Jorge Lopez -- a sweet deal for the Royals. I don’t see that scenario happening again, mainly because I don’t think Moose and his agent, Scott Boras, want another short-term deal just to have him flipped again. And this time, the Royals really need to find out what they have with Hunter Dozier at third base. Then again, as general manager Dayton Moore always points out, baseball is unpredictable.
Leigh Oleszczak at KC Kingdom also weighs in on Moose:
The Royals have options at third base with Hunter Dozier being the likely starter at that position on Opening Day. Cheslor Cuthbert hasn’t turned into the player the Royals were hoping he would become and we don’t know what the team has in Kelvin Gutierrez just yet. Nicky Lopez is also someone who the Royals could decide to put at third in the future, just to give him some at bats and big league appearances. With those players in the organization, re-signing Moustakas wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense, but none of those players are the third baseman that Moose is. He’s experienced there and brings power to the plate.
Alex Duvall doing double duty over at Royals Farm Report.
First, he continued their Prospect Rankings with numbers 20-16.
Josh Staumont has become something of Royals folklore than an actual prospect. Almost everyone has heard of him, and yet almost no one has seen him throw. Staumont turned 25 yeas old in December and the right-handed flame thrower, who was once the Royals top prospect, is still yet to make his debut. Luckily for Royals fans, I’m here to tell you that everything changes in 2019.
Then he runs historical comps for Nicky Lopez:
So there is some good and bad here. Here’s the good news: Nicky Lopez has the 4th best speed rating among this group and he’s the only one that plays SS at an above average level. He’s more than likely bound to play 2B in the big leagues, while Adalberto Mondesi mans SS, but he’s one of the two or three best athletes on the list.
This week, Caesar’s released their win total over/unders. The Royals come in at 69, 3rd lowest in the AL. Interestingly, 7 teams in the AL are at 77 or lower. Going to be a lot of ugly games this season as “the tank” is popular.
We don’t see a lot from them about baseball, but Scout said to take the over. Interestingly:
They are averaging 75.8 wins per simulation and are projected to finish ninth in the American League. There is a sizable gap between them and the #8 ranked Twins who are projected for 83 wins.
Apparently, the Royals, along with the Tigers and Diamondbacks, watched an Adrian Gonzalez workout last week.
MLB is looking at a rule change around DL and option time, moving both back to 15 days. This is to alleviate some of the sketchy ferrying of relievers between AAA and MLB. Personally, I do think something has to be done about this issue - it’s not really fair to the pitchers who get jerked around all year and it’s definitely against the spirit of the 25-man roster. However, teams should also not risk players’ health by waffling whether they should go on the DL or not so there may be unintended consequences. I’m not sure this is the solution but I’m curious as to the results.
Major League Baseball has proposed going back to a 15-day disabled list and increasing the time optioned players usually must spend in the minor leagues, a source told The Associated Press on Thursday. The moves are aimed at reducing the use of relief pitchers and reviving offense.
In today’s The Best of Royals Review (TM), we’re looking back at a Fanpost (WhatPost? FanWhat?). I’m stealing the description straight from Max’s The Best of Royals Review: 2012
im_not_that_bright was easily Rookie of the Year, enjoying a meteoric rise that found him on the Royals Review masthead by the end of the year. We fully expect him to injure himself in an arm-wrestling contest this off-season that will affect his writing and lead to a Bob Hamelin-type decline the next few years. Before he crashes, enjoy his piece “Thoughts on the James Shields trade as if written by Kansas City Star cartoonist Lee Judge”
im_not_that_bright also had some popular stories in the style of other authors like Dostoyevsky and, my personal favorite: Dispatches from 2013 about Luke Hochevar.
It’s a leftovers Friday. Time for some older, off-the-wall stories that I don’t think were ever posted here. If they were, you can be polite and not mention it.
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This is a couple of weeks old but fairly high profile and a search didn’t show any mention of him on these pages. Enes Kanter’s a fairly non-descript Turkish player for the Knicks. He made news a couple of nights ago for not playing and wanting to get away from New York. But that basketball minutiae is best left to Posting and Toasting.
The bigger story about him staying out of a game was from a couple of weeks ago. The Knicks played in London last week and he didn’t go because he’s worried he could be detained or killed because he’s a critic of Turkish president Erdogan. And lest you think this is just some player preening for the cameras: “Kanter has said he believes the Turkish government has targeted his father in the past because of the player’s critical stance against the country’s government. In 2017, Kanter’s Turkish passport was canceled and he was held at a Romanian airport upon landing in Bucharest... [Kanter] has received death threats... According to a report by The New York Times, Erdogan has jailed, fired or suspended tens of thousands of people accused of plotting a failed coup. In December 2017, Turkey’s state-run news agency, Anadolu Agency, reported that prosecutors were seeking more than four years in prison for Kanter on charges of insulting Erdogan in a series of tweets he posted in 2016.” That’s just crazy that a millionaire basketball player can be afraid of his life because of his political views.
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Max briefly touched on this with a story a couple of weeks ago, but let’s look at it further. After Disney lobbied for copyright reform in the late 90s, no new material has joined the public domain for 20 years. Finally, we are moving forward again. At least until their lawyers revisit this issue. After all, Steamboat Willie joins the public domain in 5 years and I’m guessing they’re not very excited to lose their exclusive rights to Mickey Mouse.
There’s a lot of interesting material heading there in the next few years:
Next January, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue will fall into the public domain. It will be followed by The Great Gatsby in January 2021 and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises in January 2022. On January 1, 2024, we’ll see the expiration of the copyright for Steamboat Willie—and with it Disney’s claim to the film’s star, Mickey Mouse. The copyrights to Superman, Batman, Disney’s Snow White, and early Looney Tunes characters will all fall into the public domain between 2031 and 2035.
Of course, it’s not quite that simple:
The use of trademark law to protect works also subject to copyright is nothing new. The first 21 stories about Tarzan, being first published commencing in 1916, are now all in the public domain. Yet, there are no rival stories about Tarzan being currently written by other authors. This is because heirs of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan, had the foresight to obtain a trademark on the name “Tarzan.” Armed with this registration, they have been successful in preventing the distribution of works using the “Tarzan” trademark and variations.
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In other news, apparently it’s hard to find pants if you’re a hockey player.
GongShow was founded in 2002 and proudly boasts the world’s first pair of “hockey jeans.” The pants are a little looser in the thighs, have more area in the butt, and mix in a little spandex to be more forgiving. “They’re built for the hockey ass,” McNamee says. The biggest pair of jeans GongShow offers is called the Quadrasaurus.
Finally, from the funny files: How could I pass up the headline “Authorities warn people to not eat chicken tenders spilled on roadside”? Or “A tiny town has been overrun with ‘cute’ but confused seals”?
Back in the 8-bit generation, consoles didn’t have much graphical horsepower. The 16-bit generation was similar with few exceptions like Star Fox. Crude 3D gaming took root in the fifth (N64/PSX) generation of video game consoles, buoyed by gorgeous FMV sequences. But it wasn’t until the sixth generation where the...
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Oh, who am I kidding. I couldn’t do that to Hokius. Of course our song is from Kingdom Hearts III, which drops today in Japan and a couple days later stateside. Below is the final trailer which features Hikaru Utada’s theme song for the game (“Don’t Think Twice”). I don’t think is as good as “Simple and Clean” or “Sanctuary”, but you can be the judge:
*Unfortunately, I won’t be playing KH3 for a while as it’s not being released on the Switch and I still have to catch up on the previous game first: Dream Drop Distance for the 3DS.